Panel

EuroSEAS 2010, Sweden

ZOMIA AND BEYOND.TAKES ON A HIGHLAND TRANSNATIONAL SPACE.
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Panel
Organizer and chair:
Jean MICHAUD
Département d'Anthropologie
Université Laval, Québec City, CANADA, G1K-7P4
Phone : 1 418 656-5867
Fax : 1 418 656-2831
jean.michaud@ant.ulaval.ca

From the fields of social anthropology and human geography, panelists posit that cross-border notions such as Zomia and the Southeast Asian Massif, though not without problems, are important for the advancement of scholarly considerations of the transnational highland societies of southwest China, northeastern India, eastern Bangladesh, and upland Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma (Myanmar). It is routinely considered that these inter-area highlands are marginal and, in the larger scheme of things, lack the cohesion and political significance to be considered as a sub-area within Asian studies. Yet, with the publication of James C. Scott's The Art of Not Being Governed. An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Yale 2009) the time is ripe for a re-examination of this position.
Traditionally, the subdivision of cultural areas within Asia has been based on national borders, which structurally cancelled the consideration of populations in relation to cross-border social spaces. Moreover, for most political scientists, ethnic minority issues are best studied in country specific contexts (Duncan 2004). We argue that the stamp of marginality applied to the highlands from a lowland perspective reduces scholarly consideration of these societies from coherent trans-border cultural entities to marginal populations within national borders. This reductionism severely undermines the importance and validity of research findings.
The contributors to this panel share their experience of cross-border studies across these highlands. Case studies reveal that on the ground levels of complexity vastly exceed what is commonly thought, with local considerations of this understudied cross-border social space challenging opinions at the macro level.

References:
Duncan, Christopher R. (ed.) 2004 Civilizing the Margins: Southeast Asian Government Policies for the Development of Minorities. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Giersch, Patterson, 2006. Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China's Yunnan Frontier. Cambridge: Harvard U. Press.
Lim Joo Jock. 1984. Territorial Power Domains, Southeast Asia, and China: The Geo-Strategy of an Overarching Massif. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Michaud, Jean, 2006, Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif. Lanham: Scarecrow Press.
Scott, James C. 2009 The Art of Not Being Governed. An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press.
van Schendel, Willem, 2002, "Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Southeast Asia from the Fringes." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20(6) 647-68.