F. K. Lehman (Chit Hlaing)
Professor of
Anthropology and Linguistics
and in the Program of Cognitive Science
Chair, Burma Studies Group of the Association
for Asian Studies
Treasurer, The Burma Studies Foundation
My main research efforts are being devoted to mathematical anthropology, cognitive science, and linguistics, as well as to the linguistics of Burmese and of the Chin languages of the India-Burma borderlands (and the anthropology of the Chin peoples and of the complex of peoples involved in cross border ethnic and trade relations on the China-Burma border. This last work began in January of 1997, during my attendance in Kunming, Yunnan, PRC at an international conference, where I presented a major paper, long since published, after which my former student and late colleague, Dr WANG Zhusheng and I did pilot field work on the basis of which my subsequent t field research has been projected. In the Summer of 2001 I did some research in a Buddhist Wa village near Ban Hong, in Southern Yunnan, with graduate student Wa specialist LIU Ts’u K’ai, and in particular was concerned with the relationship of this Wa polity and its Buddhism to the Dai (Shan), with whom I have worked in Burma and Thailand previously. Then, in 2003, for about eleven months under invitation from Yunnan University's Research Center of Border Regions and Minority Nationalities in Southwest Chin, I did field work on the inter-ethnic cross border trade between China and Burma, mainly on the gem trade but on other aspects as well — mostly in Ruili, in Southern Yunnan, but also at Teng Chong and in Mandalay, Myitkyina and Lashio, in Burma. In the Summer of 2006, after presenting a paper at the 8th International Conference on Burma Studies at Singapore, I went back to Kunming and to Mandalay to arrange extensions of this work along other sections of that border, which I undertook during the Summer of 2007 under a grant from the National Science Foundation. I am currently starting work on a cognitive anthropology project, the computer modelling of the differentially distributed knowledge system characterizing this inter-ethnic network. For more information see my web c.v.
Research Interests:
Linguistics, ethnography, ethnology, cognitive theory, formal analysis of cultural and social systems, kinship; Southeast Asia, India
EDUCATION:
Ph.D. Columbia University, New York 1959
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
| 2007 | in press for 2008 -- Communities of Interpretation of Burma: An Overview of the Anthropology of Burma and its Historical Trajectory Special Journal of Southeast Asian tudies, Singapore |
| 2007 | Review of Nancy J. Eberhardt, Imagining the Course of Life: Self- transformation in a Shan Buddhist Community, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. |
| 2007 | Review of Hjorleifur Jónsson, Mien Relations, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies |
| 2007 | Introduction: Notes on Edmund Leach’s Analysis of Kachin Society and its Further Applications IN M.Sadan and F. Robinnne, ed. Reconsidering Political Leach. Leiden: Brill Handbook of Oriental Studies series, Section 3, South East Asia. |
| 2007 | Remarks upon Ethnicity Theory and Southeast Asia, with Special Reference to the Kayah in Burma: Ethnic Diversity Past and Present., edited by Mikael Gravers,. Copenhagen: NIAS Press. |
| 2007 | (2006) Research Methods and Mathematical Anthropology: Prolegomena to The Logic and Place of Statistically Based Methods. Paper presented to the 2006 annual meetings of the Society for Anthropological Sciences |
For a complete list of publications and more see my web c.v.
COURSES TAUGHT:
| ANTH 230 | Sociocultural Anthropology |
| ANTH 260 | Peoples of the World: An Introduction to Ethnography |
| ANTH 270 | Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology |
| ANTH 286 | Southeast Asian Civilizations (History) |
| ANTH 439 | Anthropological Theory: Form and Argumentation |
| ANTH 470 | Mind, Culture and Society (Cognitive Anthropology |
| ANTH 486 | Peoples and Cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia |
| ANTH 513 | Kinship and Mathematical Anthropology |
| ANTH 515 | Peoples of South Asia |
