Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos : : Mastering Smallness / / Tina Harris, Simon Rowedder.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Amsterdam University Press Complete eBook-Package 2022
• VerfasserIn: Rowedder, Simon,; Harris, Tina,
• MitwirkendeR: Schendel, Willem,
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam : : Amsterdam University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Asian Borderlands ; 16
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (262 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

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