Date：June 8 (Mon), 16：00-18：00

Venue：Tonan-tei (Room 201), Inamori Foundation Memorial Building, Kyoto University

Speaker：Dr. Magnus Fiskesjö (Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology,Cornell University)

Title：The Wa former headhunters of the China-Burma frontier

Abstract：
There is a longstanding view of the Wa people of the Burma-China frontier, which juxtaposes
the contradictory notions that the Wa were both “primitive” headhunters and opium exporters,
at the same time. In this presentation, revisiting Wa history and society, I suggest an
alternative understanding which requires dispensing altogether with the notion of primitive
headhunting, which I think is a recent, and misleading, idea. I argue that headhunting, is ―
like the opium export trade―a recent historical phenomenon contingent on the integration of
the Wa into a larger regional system, likely only since the mid-to-late 19th century. Also, Wa
“headhunting” was not a hunt for heads, but warfare that involved trophy-taking, itself a
widespread global phenomenon. At the same time, like the trophies of the past, the notion of
“primitive” itself was not only deployed by outsiders such as the Chinese for the Wa, but also
by the Wa themselves, in a curious modern-era dialectic that continues to this day.