Hjorleifur Jonsson

Above and Beyond: Zomia and the Ethnographic Challenge of/for Regional History

James Scott’s notion of Zomia proposes a new look at historical and social dynamics in a vast area of the Asian hinterlands, in terms of deliberate state‐avoidance that came to an end through the nation state’s superior techniques of control. Zomia is a concept metaphor that defines the social reality it purportedly only describes. My examination points to a pervasive problem with the historicization of highland regions in Europe as much as in Asia. Juxtaposing Scott’s case with two other definitions of Zomia, I call attention to the way concept metaphors define social landscapes and historical dynamics. Drawing on the work of several Europeanists, I suggest a model of rural–urban relations that does not privilege either a community or the state as the principle of society and history, which may overcome the separate disciplinary biases of anthropology, history and political science.

Mimetic Minorities: National Identity and Desire on Thailand's Fringe

Representations of identity are always political acts, but their politics are unpredictable. Among ethnic minorities in northern Thailand, there is a striking difference between the absence of ethnic markers from a political confrontation and the profusion of ethnic markers at non-confrontational festivals. I situate the difference in engagements with a national contact zone where so-called Mountain Peoples are denied political agency. Minority assertions of ethnic distinction and national compatibility take various forms that resonate with mimesis. Thai notions of Mountain Peoples suggest equally mimetic aspects of self-making through denied similarities. Theoretical approaches to mimesis emphasize interaction and denied resemblance as much as representation. Performances and imagery involving minority identity and difference in northern Thailand contradict common expectations of a fundamental tension between rural and minority communities and the state, and highlight often-overlooked dimensions of identity-work.

Yao Minority Identity and the Location of Difference in the South China Borderlands

The place of Yao and other ethnic minorities in official museums and histories in China, Thailand, and Vietnam shows the state’s involvement in identity politics. The museumizing of minority identities tends to endorse particular markers of difference, and simultaneously conceal both the state’s role in sanctioning particular identities and the state’s suppression of the cultural and agricultural practices that previously reproduced social difference. The discursive framework of modern nation-states contrasts with the explicit exclusion of upland populations by pre-modern polities in the region, and I argue that this apparent othering was only partly about the nonstate peoples and had as much to do with tensions among levels of the state. The Yao case suggests various entanglements of ‘tribal’ identities and the state’s projects, and indicates how anthropological theorizing about ‘peoples’ systemically failed to observe the historical role of the state in bifurcating the social and natural landscape.

Paths to freedom: Political prospecting in the ethnographic record

The recent discovery that Southeast Asia’s highland peoples had not been traditional tribals but were instead clever freedom-seekers brings up various questions regarding the politics of ethnographic prospecting. The ostensible anarchism of standing outside the state dismisses the possibility of political negotiation. It offers instead liberalist moral geography that celebrates individualism and the cutting of social connections, as it disregards anyone – at home or far afield – who may have to bargain for basic rights and services. I offer historical, ethnographic, and political counters to the case. Aristotle and feminist history deny categorical certainties in favor of practical concerns with equality and justice. Analytical mastery and academic point-scoring distract from ethical concerns: subversive levity may offer the only non-authoritarian counter-move.

Mien through Sports and Culture: Mobilizing Minority Identity in Thailand

The recent importance of sports competitions and cultural displays among highland ethnic minorities in Thailand suggests a growing resonance of national forms of sociability and presentability. A national contact zone simultaneously provides a context for unprecedented ethnic mobilization and identification among the countrys minorities. Taking the case of Thailands Mien (Yao), I explore the restructuring of social life that emerges with this ethnic mobilization for sports and culture. These activities produce an identity effect that defines Mien in national terms. The ability and need to organize in relation to the nation facilitates the position of a select few Mien villages as the bearers of social life and cultural traditions, and imports new forms of inequality into local life.

Does the house hold? History and the shape of Mien (Yao) society

This article reexamines accounts of Mien (Yao) ethnic minority populations in northern Thailand, in particular generalizations about social structure in terms of household formations. Two ethnographic accounts from the same province of Thailand during the 1960s suggest opposite tendencies in Mien household dynamics, but each makes a case for Mien society. This restudy proposes that the dynamics of the 1960s were largely specific to engagements with the regional political economy and a reworking of social relations, which led to the prominence of the household in social life. These dynamics were in and of the twentieth century, and this article draws on a contrast with the two generations immediately prior to what the ethnographies describe to situate households in relation to the shape of Mien social formations.

The village concept in the transformation of rural southeast Asia: studies from Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

Using examples from Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, the book considers what scholarship has defined as a village within the rapid changes taking place in rural Southeast Asia.

James C. Scott, The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia.

In this feature we highlight a recently launched book. We invite specialists in the field to comment on the book, and we invite the author to respond to their comments.In this issue we focus on James C. Scotts, The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia. Those invited to comment on the book are Michael Dove, Hjorleifur Jonsson and Michael Aung-Thwin.James Scott, in keeping with his long-standing practice, has chosen not to react to the reviews. The editor regrets that the author of The art of not being governed, reviewers, and editor have had different expectations of this discussion, but respects the decision of the author. The comments of Michael Dove, Hjorleifur Jonsson, and Michael Aung-Thwin are worth to be published also without a response by James Scott.Registered readers may participate in the debate.

Mien Alter-Natives in Thai Modernity

This article discusses the repeated framing of Mien ethnic minority highland people as unmodern in relation to projects of modernity and modernization in Thailand. As upland livelihood has become increasingly precarious and entangled with state regulation, Mien people are engaging with national modernity and modernization through public displays that variously highlight their tradition or modernity or creatively combine the two. In this national space, modernization has hegemonic force and serves as the anchor to varied projects of self-fashioning in relation to modernity, including those of tradition. Articulations of tradition are one aspect of modernity, and the notion of ethnic groups as the carriers of tradition may be equally specific to modernitys conceptual schemes.

Dreams of the Hmong kingdom: the quest for legitimation in French Indochina, 1850–1960

this direction; however, assumptions about density of site occupation may require revision, such as the notion that the entire area designated as a sema was utilised simultaneously for habitation. This work makes frequent references to the dynamic nature of Buddhist networks and the need to focus on these connections at the global, extra-regional and regional as well as polity-specific levels, but most of the chapters address specific countries or sites rather than focusing on examples of intra-regional interaction. The extent and intensity of this interaction are mainly assumed rather than explicated. Buddhist Dynamics will be useful for individuals who are interested in existing scholarship on pre-eighteenth century Buddhist Southeast Asia. Several chapters, particularly those by Woodward, Whitmore, Leider, Edwards McKinnon and Skilling, contribute meticulous discussions of art historical material and inscriptions and make important but understudied material available for scholars and students. The subject of intra-regional interaction still requires further research.