Frontier livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands
"This coauthored ethnography bridges the traditional divide between studies of China and peninsular Southeast Asia by examining the agency, dynamics, and resilience of livelihoods adopted by ethnic minority Hmong communities in Vietnam and China's Yunnan Province, both within each country and across the border. It contests the prevalence of country-based studies of such populations and promotes a transnational approach. The product of wide-ranging research over many years, this study is particularly valuable because it covers the reactions to state modernization projects (and the global market forces that have accompanied them) among the same ethnic group in two national jurisdictions which, despite their common Marxist-Leninist political systems and neoliberalizing economies, have pursued somewhat different policies with respect to "development" in minority communities along the border. The work contributes to a growing body of literature on cross-border dynamics for ethnic minorities along the borderlands between China and its neighbors, and more broadly within mainland Southeast Asia"--