Thailand's hill tribes have been the object of anthropological research, cultural tourism, and government intervention for a century, in large part because these groups are held to have preserved distinctive ethnic traditions despite their contacts with "modern" culture. Hjorleifur Jonsson rejects the conventional notion that the worlds of traditional peoples are being transformed or undone by the forces of modernity. Among the Mien people of northern Thailand he finds a complex highlander identity that has been shaped by a thousand years of interaction in a multiethnic contact zone. In Mien Relations, Jonsson suggests that as early as the thirteenth century, the growing influence of Chinese and Thai state authority had led to a peculiarly urban understanding of the hinterlands—the forests and the mountains—as an area beyond state control and the rhetoric of civilization. Mountain peoples became understood as a distinct social type, an idea elaborated by government classification systems in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their "discovery" by Western anthropologists is, he suggests, merely one more episode influencing Mien identity. Jonsson questions traditional ethnography's focus on fieldwork and personal observation—and its concomitant blindness to political manipulation and to historical formation. Throughout Mien Relations, he revisits long-neglected connections between China and Southeast Asia, combines ancient history and contemporary ethnography, engages with the serious politics of representation without abandoning the quest to write ethnographically about particular communities, and keeps state control in view without assuming its success or coherence.

This book addresses the cross-cultural variations in the conceptions of face and facework from a multidisciplinary communication perspective. Facework represents one of the most important theoretical concepts available to us in contemporary communication literature as it encompasses a dynamic network of cross-cultural, social cognitive, affective, interpersonal, interactional, and identity issues. The book serves a dual purpose: to raise issues and to extend some of the current ideas in face and facework research in the cross-cultural and interpersonal communication settings, and to illuminate some specific directions for future research into the face and facework management process. Face and facework are presented in conjunction with phenomena such as politeness, request interaction, embarrassment, conflict, business negotiation, and international diplomacy.

Refugees experience some of the most visible manifestations of human rights abuses in the world today--and raise difficult issues for researchers and policy makers alike. This book investigates a broad range of complexities that arise as ethnographers work with refugee populations from different geographic areas in research, policy formation, and legal and social assistance. But the issues raised here have application to ethical concerns in ethnographic research and practice beyond refugees. The contributors draw on their intensive fieldwork to explore issues surrounding power and disempowerment between researcher and subject; dilemmas over the protection of research informants; and the rights and actions of refugees in representing themselves and their cultures in advocacy and policy arenas. The wealth of important insights in this book sharpen our understanding of the problems faced in any cross-cultural research and intervention. These explorations revitalize, in vivid detail drawn from case studies, recent theoretical debates on anthropology and ethnographic research, while suggesting new, empowering approaches to applied work and ethnographic study.

This lively survey of the peoples, cultures, and societies of Southeast Asia introduces a region of tremendous geographic, linguistic, historical, and religious diversity. Encompassing both mainland and island countries, these engaging essays describe personhood and identity, family and household organization, nation-states, religion, popular culture and the arts, the legacies of war and recovery, globalization, and the environment. Throughout, the focus is on the daily lives and experiences of ordinary people. Most of the essays are original to this volume, while a few are widely taught classics. All were chosen for their timeliness and interest, and are ideally suited for the classroom.

In Letters without Capitals: Texts and Practices in Kim Mun (Yao) Culture, Jacob Cawthorne demonstrates how the Chinese script is not only central to Kim Mun (Yao) cultural and religious practices, but also that it is an active vehicle for Kim Mun self-expression and community representation.

This reappraisal of Political Systems of Highland Burma, the seminal work by E.R. Leach, presents much new material on the highlands of Southeast Asia and its borders from writers with long-term research experience in these areas. The Introduction establishes in detail both the theoretical and regional ethnographic significance of Leach’s work and the chapters to follow. Part One discusses issues relating to Leach’s fieldwork, including the background to his research and issues arising from his fieldwork practice. Part Two presents a variety of engagements with Leach’s theoretical approach, particularly his ideas of socio-political oscillation. This theory is considered in relation to the historical experience of culture contact in Assam and Laos, particularly between Tai and non-Tai groups. Part Three considers once more Leach’s ideas with respect to communities that are, or could be considered, Kachin sub-groups in Burma, Tibet and Yunnan, this time focusing on interpretations of exchange and the notion of ritual language. A discussion of approaches towards the study of transethnicity concludes the work. The book is a significant contribution to the development of a new regional anthropology of Southeast Asia, incorporating material from areas that were, until recently, closed to researchers.