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Zomian or zombies? What future exists for the peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2010

Bernard Formoso
Bernard Formoso
Affiliation:
Paris Ouest University, France E-mail: bernard.formoso@mae.u-paris10.fr
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Abstract

Against the simplistic thesis that hill peoples are marginal and unruly groups by choice, in conflict with state power, this article shows that, in the context of mainland Southeast Asia, hill peoples develop relationships with lowland state societies that are more complex and ambiguous than usually portrayed. Ethnographic and historical evidence reveals that they compromise and cooperate with the lowland state more often than they oppose it. Although hill peoples are commonly conceived as ‘barbarians’ of the periphery, and ill-treated or instrumentalized accordingly, in some circumstances they played a central role in the defence and the reshaping of pre-modern and modern Southeast Asian states. Moreover, their political and religious acculturation by lowland societies sometimes proves to have been instrumental in the perpetuation of a specific identity under the guise of surface assimilation. This article not only highlights the dynamics of past and present interactions between lowland and upland societies but also questions the future of the latter, in the context of an increasing engulfment by nation-states and, conversely, of new perspectives offered by globalization. The analysis thus demonstrates that hill peoples often take advantage of new forms of partnership resulting from globalization to renegotiate their image and status more favourably, and to counter the pressure exerted by the dominant society. Finally, they appear to be neither Zomian – that is, uncompromising rebels to ‘stateness’ in James C. Scott’s formulation – nor zombies, unable to adapt.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , July 2010 , pp. 313 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © London School of Economics and Political Science 2010

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References

1 See for instance Charles F. Keyes, The golden peninsula: culture and adaptation in mainland Southeast Asia, New York: MacMillan, 1977; John Mc Kinnon and Bernard Vienne, eds., Hill tribes today: problems in change, Bangkok: White Lotus/ORSTOM, 1989; Gehan Wijeyewardene, ed., Ethnic groups across national boundaries in mainland Southeast Asia, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1990; Craig J. Reynolds, ed., National identity and its defenders: Thailand, 1939–1989, Clayton, Victoria: Monash University, Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, 1991; Philip Hirsh, ed., Seeing forest for trees: environment and environmentalism in Thailand, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1997; Mikael Gravers, Nationalism as political paranoia in Burma: an essay on the historical practice of power, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999 (1st edn 1993), pp. 99–111; Jean Michaud, ‘The montagnards and the state in northern Vietnam from 1802 to 1975: a historical overview’, Ethnohistory, 47, 2, 2000, pp. 335–67; idem, ‘Handling mountain minorities in China, Vietnam and Laos: from history to current concerns’, Asian Ethnicity, 10, 1, 2009, pp. 25–49; James C. Scott, The art of not being governed: an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.

2 A notable exception is the recent book by Hjorleifur Jónsson, Mien relations, mountain people and state control in Thailand, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005, pp. 44–98.

3 Scott, Art, pp. 20, 327.

4 See for instance Alan Winnington, Slaves of the cool mountains, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1959.

5 According to the accounts of M. Symes (1800), J. Low (1835), and F. Mason (1843) quoted by Anders B. Jørgensen, ‘Karen natural resources management and relations to state polity’, in Ing-Britt Trankell and Laura Summers, eds., Facets of power and its limitations: political culture in Southeast Asia, Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology 24, Uppsala: Department of Cultural Anthropology, Uppsala University, 1998, p. 215.

6 Scott, Art, p. 4.

7 Etienne Balibar, Nous citoyens d’Europe? Les frontières, l’État, le peuple, Paris: La Découverte, 2001, pp. 15–16.

8 Scott, Art, p. 16.

9 Ibid., p. xii.

10 Jean Michaud, Turbulent times and enduring peoples, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press; idem, ‘Incidental’ ethnographers, Leiden: Brill, 2007.

11 Scott, Art, p. xii.

12 Through, for example, the organization of a Zomia international conference, part of the Asian Studies annual meeting in Atlanta, USA, 3–6 April 2008.

13 Willem van Schendel, ‘Geographies of knowing, geographies of ignorance: jumping scale in Southeast Asia’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20, 6, 2002, pp. 649–50.

14 Jan Petrus Josselin de Jong, ‘The Malay archipelago as a field of ethnological studies’, in Patrick Edward Josselin de Jong, ed., Structural anthropology in the Netherlands, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977, pp. 167–8.

15 Scott, Art, pp. 74–5.

16 The expression used by Scott: ibid., p. 7.

17 The average population density in Southeast Asia was 5.5 persons per square kilometre in 1600. See Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680, vol. 1, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988, p. 15.

18 A metaphor initially used by Paul Mus in Vietnam: sociologie d’une guerre, Paris: Le Seuil, 1952.

19 See Anthony Smith, The ethnic revival, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 63.

20 Sai Samong Mangrai, The Padaeng Chronicle and the Jengtung State Chronicle translated, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1981, p. 230.

21 For the Chin see Lian Hmung Sakhong, In search of Chin identity, NIAS Monography 91, Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2002.

22 Anthony Smith, ed., Nationalist movements, London: MacMillan, 1976, pp. 9–10.

23 See Frederic K. Lehman, ‘Kayah society as a function of the Shan–Burma–Karen context’, in. J. H. Steward, ed., Contemporary change in traditional societies, vol. 1, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1967, pp. 1–104; Charles F. Keyes, ed., Ethnic adaptation and identity: the Karen on the Thai frontier with Burma, Philadelphia, PA: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1979.

24 Jørgensen, ‘Karen natural resources’, p. 215.

25 Jonathan Falla, True love and Bartholomew: rebels on the Burmese border, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 142.

26 Ibid., pp. 14, 220–1.

27 Andrew Walker, ‘The Lahu of the Yunnan–Indochina borderlands: an introduction’, Folk, 16–17, 1975, p. 333.

28 Jørgensen, ‘Karen natural resources’, p. 226.

29 Alfred W. McCoy, with Cathleen B. Read, and Leonard P. Adams III, The politics of heroin in Southeast Asia, New York: Harper & Row, 1972, pp. 90–148.

30 Scott, Art, p. 87.

31 Victor Lieberman, Strange parallels: Southeast Asia in global context. Vol. 1: integration on the mainland, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 271–3. See also the various contributions to Georges Condominas, ed., Formes extrêmes de dépendance: contributions à l’étude de l’esclavage en Asie du Sud-est, Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1998.

32 Scott, Art, p. 6.

33 On the Hmong of Laos see McCoy, Politics, pp. 81–7; on the White Tai of Vietnam, see Michaud, ‘Montagnards’, p. 67.

34 Smith, Ethnic revival, p. 132.

35 David Feingold, ‘Opium and politics in Laos’, in Nina S. Adams and Alfred McCoy, eds., Laos: war and revolution, New York: Harper, 1970, p. 335.

36 See Bertrand de Hartingh, ‘Indépendance et dépendance, puissance et impuissance vietnamienne: le cas de la République démocratique du Viet Nam, décembre 1953–janvier 1957’, PhD thesis, Université Paris I, Panthéon–Sorbonne, 1996, p. 415; see also McCoy, Politics, pp. 78–87, 104–8.

37 Michael Vickery, Cambodia 1975–1982, Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, 1984.

38 Nicholas Tapp, Sovereignty and rebellion: the White Hmong of northern Thailand, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 78.

39 For a good illustration of this trend, see Michaud, Turbulent Times and Enduring Peoples, 2000, p. 70.

40 Pamela Kyle Crossley, Helen Siu, and Donald Sutton, eds., Empires at the margin: culture, ethnicity and frontiers in early modern China, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006. See especially in that volume the contributions of John E. Herman, David Faure, Donald Sutton, Helen Siu, and Lui Zhiwei. Scott, Art, p. 78.

41 Tom Nairn, ‘The curse of rurality: limits of modernization theory’, in John A. Hall, ed., The state of the nation: Ernest Gellner and the theory of nationalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 109.

42 Vickery, Cambodia, pp. 288–9.

43 See Paul Cohen, ‘A Buddha kingdom in the Golden Triangle: Buddhist revivalism and the charismatic monk Khruba Bunchum’, Australian Journal of Anthropology, 11, 2, 2000, pp. 141–54; idem, ‘Buddhism unshackled: the Yuan “holy man” tradition and the nation-state in the Tai world’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 32, 2, 2001, pp. 227–47; Guillaume Rozenberg, Renoncement et puissance: la quête de la sainteté dans la Birmanie contemporaine, Geneva: Olizane, 2005.

44 See Theodore Mayer, ‘Thailand’s new Buddhist movements in historical and political context’, in Bryan Hunsaker, et al., Loggers, monks, students, and entrepreneurs: four essays on Thailand, Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996, pp. 57–62.

45 See Richard O’Connor, ‘Agricultural change and ethnic succession in Southeast Asian states: a case for regional anthropology’, Journal of Asian Studies, 54, 1995, p. 986.

46 For an illustration of this heterodoxy, see Bernard Formoso, ‘Le bouddhisme en trompe-l’œil des Lahu Shi du Yunnan’, Journal Asiatique, 288, 1, 2000, pp. 205–38.

47 Rune Tjelland, ‘Environmentalism as resistance in northeast Thailand: the activist perspective’, in Trankell and Summers, Facets of power, pp. 253–66; Abigael Pesses, ‘Les Karen: horizons d’une population frontière: mise en scène de l’indigénisme et écologie en Thaïlande’, PhD thesis, Université Paris X, Nanterre, 2004.

48 Anne C. Kammerer, ‘Territorial imperatives: Akha ethnic identity and Thailand’s national integration’, in Remo Guidieri, Francesco Pellizzi, and Stanley J. Tambiah, eds., Ethnicities and nations, Houston, TX: Rothko Chapel, 1988, p. 279.

49 Clève Emourgeon, personal communication.

50 Scott, Art, pp. 241–3.

51 Ibid., p. 268.

52 See, for instance, Anne Spangemacher in the case of the Bulang of Yunnan, ‘Les anciens maîtres du Bulangshan’, PhD thesis, Université Paris X, Nanterre, 1999; see also Bernard Formoso concerning The Lahu Shi of Yunnan, ‘Bouddhisme’; and Anthony R. Walker, Merit and the millennium: routine and crisis in the ritual lives of Lahu people, New Delhi: Hindoustan Publishing, 2003. On the Pwo Karen of Kanchanaburi (Thailand), see Bernard Moizo, ‘Le dieu de la terre et de l’eau et le messianisme en milieu pwo karen’, in B. Formoso, ed., Dieux du sol en Asie, special issue, Etudes Rurales, 143–44, 1998, pp. 67–80, or Jørgensen, ‘Karen natural resources’, pp. 213–38.

53 Formoso, ‘Bouddhisme’.

54 Tapp, Sovereignty, pp. 136–43.

55 Formoso, ‘Bouddhisme’, pp. 212–13.

56 Jørgensen, ‘Karen natural resources’, pp. 223–4.

57 François Moppert, ‘La révolte des Bolovens (1901–1936)’, in Pierre Brocheux, ed., L’Asie du sud-est: révoltes, réformes, révolutions, Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1981, p. 47.

58 Bernard Formoso, ‘Ethnicity and shared meanings: a case study of the “orphaned bones” ritual in mainland China and overseas’, American Anthropologist, 111, 4, 2009, pp. 492–503.

59 See Valentin Volosinov, Marxism and the philosophy of language, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973; Chris Barker, Cultural studies: theory and practice, London: Sage Publications, 2000.

60 Volosinov, Marxism, p. 23.

61 Paul Gilroy, The black Atlantic: modernity and double consciousness, London: Verso, 1993, p. 4.

62 See Bernard Formoso, ‘Des sacs chargés de mémoire: du jeu des tambours à la résistance silencieuse des Wa de Xuelin (Yunnan)’, L’Homme, 160, 2001, pp. 41–66.

63 Benedict Anderson, Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, London: Verso Books, 1983, p. 15.

64 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

65 For instance, Nicholas Tapp has shown that the Hmong of Thailand built themselves as a society through particular rituals, and an imaginary world that referred more or less directly to a mythified Chinese civilization of the past: The Hmong of China: context, agency and the imaginary, Sinica Leidensia 51, Leiden: Brill, 2001.

66 See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Mille plateaux, Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1980, pp. 31–2.

67 Appadurai, Modernity, p. 19.

68 Ibid., p. 182, emphasis in original.

69 As noted by Samuddavanija Chai-Anan, ‘Bypassing the state in Asia’, New Perspectives Quarterly, 12, 1, 1995.

70 In the 1930s, Karl Gustav Izikowitz was among the first ethnographers to observe significant migrations of montagnards from Laos to Siam in quest of job opportunities: see his Lamet: hill peasants in French Indochina, Göteborg: Ethnografiska Museet, 1951.

71 See Appadurai, Modernity, p. 35.

72 Charles McKhann, ‘Tourisme de masse et identité sur les marches sino-tibétaines: réflexions d’un observateur’, Anthropologie et Sociétés, 25, 2, 2001, pp. 39–41.