Full Description
This is a book about social differentiation and distinction in one of the ethnically and politically most complex regions of the world, dealing with crucial issues in currently renewed debates on cultural pluralism, nationalism, irredentism and ethnic dispersal. The themes are given a regional and historical focus by treating peoples within the Tai-speaking regions of mainland South East Asia, namely the two basically Tai states, Thailand and Laos, and Tai areas in Burma, China, Vietnam and Malaysia. The book examines representations of non-Tai peoples by various Tai, and representations of Tai by others, and the related experiences of each as they have interacted with different Tai political spaces. The historical scope includes contemporary policy debates on 'nationalities; of 'minorities; policy in the light of earlier colonial and pre-colonial situations.
Contents
Preface PART I Inter-Ethnic Relations in Tai Political Domains 1. Introduction to Civility and Savagery PART II Internal Histories and Comparisons Introduction 2. The Others Within: Travel and Ethno-Spatial Differentiation of Siamese Subjects 1885-1910 3. The Differential Integration of Hill People into the Thai State 4. Ritual Relations and Identity: Hmong and Others 5. The Politics of Cosmology: An Introduction to Millenarianism and Ethnicity among Highland Minorities of Northern Thailand 6. Akha Internal History: Marginalization and the Ethnic Alliance System PART III Thai-Malay Borderlands Introduction 7. The Historical Development of Thai-Speaking Muslim Communities in Southern Thailand and Northern Malaysia 8. Emergence and Transformation of Peripheral Ethnicity: Sam Sam on the Thai-Malaysian Border PART IV Laos: A Poly-Ethnic State Introduction 9. A Princess in a People's Republic: A New Phase in the Construction of the Lao Nation 10. Nationalities Policy in Modern Laos 11. Tribal Politics in Laos 12. Tai-Ization: Ethnic Change in Northern Indo-China PART V Lanna and Neighbours Introduction 13. Autochthony and the Inthakhin Cult of Chiang Mai 14. Tai Lue of Sipsongpanna and Miiang Nan in the Nineteenth-Century 15. Ethnic Heterogeneity and Elephants in Nineteenth-Century Lanna Statecraft PART VI Postscript 16. A New Stage in Tai Regional Studies: The Challenge of Local Histories
