Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos : : Mastering Smallness / / Tina Harris, Simon Rowedder.
Northern Laos has become a prominent spot in large-scale, top-down mappings and studies of neoliberal globalisation and infrastructural development linking Thailand and China, and markets further beyond. Yet in the common narrative, in which Laos appears as a weak victim helplessly exposed to its la...
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Superior document: | Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Amsterdam University Press Complete eBook-Package 2022 |
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Place / Publishing House: | Amsterdam : : Amsterdam University Press, , [2022] ©2022 |
Year of Publication: | 2022 |
Language: | English |
Series: | Asian Borderlands ;
16 |
Online Access: | |
Physical Description: | 1 online resource (262 p.) |
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Other title: | Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- List of Maps and Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on Language and Transliteration -- Introduction -- 1 “We Are All Tai Lue” -- 2 “Normal Fruits for Laos, Premium Fruits for China” -- 3 “Thailand: High Quality; China: Low Price” -- 4 “I Didn’t Learn Any Occupation, so I Trade” -- 5 “No Matter What, We’ll Find a Way” -- Conclusion: Large Insights from Smallness -- Bibliography -- Index -- Asian Borderlands |
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Summary: | Northern Laos has become a prominent spot in large-scale, top-down mappings and studies of neoliberal globalisation and infrastructural development linking Thailand and China, and markets further beyond. Yet in the common narrative, in which Laos appears as a weak victim helplessly exposed to its larger neighbours, attention is seldom paid to local voices. This book fills this gap. Building on long-term multi-sited fieldwork, it accompanies northern Lao cross-border traders closely in their transnational worlds of mobilities, social relations, economic experimentation and aspiration. Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos: Mastering Smallness demonstrates that these traders’ indispensable but often invisible role in the everyday workings of the China-Laos-Thailand borderland economy relies on their rhetoric and practices of ‘smallness’—of framing their transnational trade activities in a self-deprecating manner and stressing their economic inferiority. Decoding their discursive surface of insignificance, this ethnography of ‘smallness’ foregrounds remarkable transnational social and economic skills that are mostly invisible in Sino-Southeast Asian borderland scholarship. |
Format: | Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web. |
ISBN: | 9789048554409 9783110767094 9783110767001 9783110992823 9783110993899 9783110994810 9783110992922 |
DOI: | 10.1515/9789048554409?locatt=mode:legacy |
Access: | restricted access |
Hierarchical level: | Monograph |
Statement of Responsibility: | Tina Harris, Simon Rowedder. |