Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

1. Upland Alternatives

2. Frontier Dynamics

3. Borderland Livelihoods

4. Livestock Transactions

5. Locally Distilled Alcohol

6. Farming under the Trees

7. Weaving Livelihoods

8. The Challenge

Notes

Glossary

References

Index

Promotional Information

Frontier Livelihoods is one of the first books to systematically analyze the recent history of the same ethnic group in Vietnam and China. It is particularly valuable because it explores reactions to different policies with respect to 'development' in minority communities on both sides of the border. In addition, the analyses of commodities, from alcohol to buffaloes to cardamom, makes for fascinating reading. -- Stevan Harrell, author of Cultural Encounters on China's Ethnic Frontiers A highly readable and informative account of local economies under pressure from both market and state forces. This is a wonderful record of the realities of everyday decision-making among an ethnic minority in the borderlands between two socialist nation-states, presenting the full complexity of social and cultural contexts in which livelihood decisions are taken. It shows a diversity of indigenous responses to modernization, and will shed new light on our understandings of the workings of local agency at the margins of power and domination. -- Nicholas Tapp, Australian National University

About the Author

Sarah Turner is professor of geography at McGill University. She is the author of Indonesia’s Small Entrepreneurs: Trading on the Margins and editor of Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork Dilemmas in Upland Socialist Asia. Christine Bonnin is lecturer in geography at University College Dublin. Jean Michaud is professor of social anthropology at Université Laval. He is the author of The A to Z of the People of the Southeast Asian Massif and coeditor of Moving Mountains: Ethnicity and Livelihoods in Highland China, Vietnam, and Laos.

Reviews

"Recommended."
*Choice*

"A powerful ethnography of economics that reaches deep into local and regional economies and histories, tracing the pathways of key products made and traded."
*Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute*

"[This] important contribution . . . provides new insights into borderlands and everyday politics of ethnic minorities in the Southeast Asian Massif."
*SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia*

"Provides a vivid description of a myriad of activities in the everyday lives of Hmong on the fringes as they make their living in the sectors of agriculture, livestock transactions, locally distilled alcohol, cardamom, and the textile trade."
*Southeast Asian Studies*

"Written in an extremely clear and engaging style, this book has a lot to offer to all those interested in borderlands studies and in the lives of those who inhabit the Southeast Asian Massif."
*New Books Asia*