Event Focused Fieldwork and Comparative Methodology: Exploring Ethnic Boundaries and Cultural Variation

understanding” (Johnson, 1987: xiv-xv) My Santal experience had drawn my attention not only to the fact that so-called primordial attachments were reproduced and changed in daily events of cultural constructions. However, I had hardly any observations on the ‘cultural constructors’ who were most active in such construction processes, and on their search for metaphoric imageries that expressed and fostered ideas of belonging to a particular group. During fieldwork among garment traders in tourist resorts in Southern Thailand I was surprised when I discovered that most of them were Nepalese. This triggered my curiosity: Why had so many Nepalese ended up as garment traders in a tourist resort in Thailand. To explore this I followed Vayda’s advice on progressive contextualization (Vayda 1983) and tried to search for linkages that connected the Nepalese garment traders to other events outwards in space and backwards in time (Haaland, 2008). From a small survey I found that most of them had not come from Nepal but from the Shan state of Northern Myanmar, and I decided to explore the Myanmar connection and went to Myitchina district. From interviews there I found that the earliest group were Gurkha soldiers from the British Army that had been sent to pacify the Shans and Kachins from the early eighteen eighties and into the twentieth century. Their fighting skills had reduced the local population significantly, but thereby also reduced the land tax revenue to the colonial power. In order to stimulate economic activities the British actively encouraged settlements of Gurkhas in the Shan State. The Burma District Gazetteer expresses explicitly this concern as it was perceived in the beginning of the twentieth century: “A very large influx of cultivators is still needed in the plains in order to bring the fertile area, now lying uncultivated, under the plough” (Hertz, 1960: 77). Most of the Nepalese garment traders in Thailand were descendants of Nepalese settlers in Shan State. I wondered about how the Nepalese in Burma had maintained Nepalese identity in the multi-ethnic community of Northern Burma where they were greatly influenced by another and larger culturally closely related immigrant group – Indians. It was Hindi music and songs they listened to, and it was Hindi films they watched. In interviews with people they also explicitly stated that the Nepalese had increasingly been adopting cultural features associated with the Indians. However, about 50 years ago a particular event happened that came to reverse this process of Hindization. A gifted Nepalese singer, Rocky Thapa, came to play an important role in giving meaning to the value of being Nepalese in the Burmese context. He was the son of a Gurkha soldier and was born in the Shan state. His primary education was at a missionary school. He was interested in music and was a member of a band who performed at various functions. However, in the 1950ies they had very little idea about Nepalese music and culture, so the music and songs were mostly learned from Hindi films and records.