Contestation of etic categorizations and emic categories: resurgence of Zo ethno-national identity in the Indo-Myanmar borderland

Abstract

Colonial ethnographers employed certain categories for classification, invariably picked from neighbouring communities, to identify the people they studied. As a result, such categories have ‘regional’ connotations, depending upon the routes taken while entering their territory. This article examines how various local group identities were formed across clans and lineage identities, and argues that such identities have directional, locational and dynastic connotations. These identities may be characterized mainly as etic categories of description, as they were given to them by others. The article argues that the failure of colonial categorizations to subsume a cultural entity in its entirety has engendered the resurgence of the Zo identity, which is a self-ascriptive identity considered through emic perspective for the cultural collectivity referred to as Kuki-Chin by colonial ethnographers. This article examines the contestation between the resurgence of a self-ascriptive identity, the Zo identity, and the etic categorizations adopted by the colonial ethnographers.