Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. The Production of Border Landscapes -- 2. The Production of Marginal Peoples and Landscapes: Resource Access on the Periphery -- 3. The Production of Borders: Sites for the Accumulation and Distribution of Resources -- 4. Small Border Chiefs and Resource Control, 1910 to 1997 -- 5. Premodern Border Landscapes Under Border Principalities -- 6. Landscape Plasticity versus Landscapes of Productivity and Rule: Akha Livelihoods under Nation-States -- Conclusion -- Appendix 1: Trees and Shrubs of Mengsong, China -- Appendix 2: Trees and Shrubs of Akhapu, Thailand -- Notes -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index.

In 2003, the poverty alleviation bureau in Xishuangbanna, China, introduced tea and rubber as cash crops to raise the incomes of ethnic-minority farmers who were thought to be backward and unfamiliar with markets. Using Marx's commodity fetish and Polly Hill's critique of "cash crops", this paper analyses the cultural politics of ethnicity for Akha and Dai farmers in relation to tea and rubber. When the prefecture government introduces "cash crops", the state retains its authority as the dispenser of knowledge, crops and modernity. When tea and rubber become commodities, however, some of the symbolic value of the commodity seems to stick to farmers, making rubber farmers "modern" and tea farmers "ethnic" in new ways. Through rising incomes and enhanced identities, Akha and Dai farmers unsettle stereotypes of themselves as "backward". As a result of income levels matching those of urban middle-class residents, rubber farmers even challenge the prevalent social hierarchy. (JCCA/GIGA)

AbstractFirst authorised in 1987, local village elections in China have been much studied by China scholars to assess the emergence of democracy in the People's Republic. Elected village committees were to manage 'local affairs', including village lands, as a step towards local self-governance. In place of democracy, this article highlights access and control over natural resources in relation to a local village election first held in Mengsong village, Yunnan, in 2000. A comparison of resource access in 1997 and 2002 shows that over this period, Mengsong villagers lost access to forests, agricultural lands, pastures and mineral resources—'local affairs' that an elected committee might have managed. National and local events from 1998 to 2002 signalled a recalibration of people of high and low 'quality' (suzhi) in China, with Mengsong shifting cultivators emerging as 'low quality' people who threatened China's environment and economic development. These changes in status signified a dramatic shift in who was qualified to manage resources, run local affairs and contribute to China as it entered the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001. The discourse of 'quality' resulted in Akha farmers being blamed, and blaming themselves, for their own poverty and resource loss, deflecting attention from the political economic processes that caused their dispossession. Far from the emergence of democracy, the local village election in Mengsong entailed increased state control over people and resources, as China geared up for environmental protection and engagement with the global economy.

Although the word indigenous is prohibited in China, indigenous knowledge was adopted by a Chinese NGO in Kunming in 1995 to focus on minority farmers' land uses that protect biodiversity. The author's research on Akha farmers in southern Yunnan traced Akha land use from 1950 to 2006, assessing the effects of changing political economies, especially the 1980s switch to a neoliberal path, on Akha land management. Akha practices that maintained biodiversity persisted through collectivization (1958–82) and economic reforms (1982–1997), but have almost disappeared since the 1998 state policies reclaiming villagers' forests and sloping agricultural lands. Aspects of neoliberalism that combined crisis environmentalism with state development plans have removed Akha land uses that protected biodiversity more effectively than socialist collectivism did. Links between indigenous knowledge and biodiversity are called into question as Akha farmers plant monoculture cash crops on remaining lands.

AbstractThis article traces border practices along boundaries that China and Thailand share with Burma. It portrays a spectrum of small border polities, from principalities on the fringes of Southeast Asian kingdoms, through Nationalist troops in Burma following their defeat in China, to 'drug lords' and 'rebel armies'. The focus here is on Akha village heads who have worked their connections in multiple directions, including into Burma, to position themselves as patrons controlling local resource access. With state appointment as border guardians, village heads become chiefs of new kinds of small border entities, protecting the border for the homeland while enabling certain illicit information, people, and goods to cross. In regions with a history of complex patronage relations, state efforts to control peripheral people, resources, and territories have in fact produced small border chiefs, with practices similar to those of frontier princes in the past.

AbstractHaila questions the dominant 'story' that 'imperfections' in Chinese urban land markets can only be resolved through state sanctioned private property rights. She interrogates the meaning of concepts such as 'market' or 'property', wary of the 'ontological fallacy' in which concepts are confused for real objects. Drawing from Mitchell (1991), we seek to take this farther, by tracing how a distinction between property as representation and as reality is produced, and seeking to evaluate the effects this divide has on social practice. Rather than treating property in the Chinese context as an abstraction, we urge scholars to be alive to its empirically and ethically diverse manifestations.Résumé Haila conteste le 'récit' dominant selon lequel les 'imperfections' des marchés fonciers urbains chinois ne peuvent se résoudre que par des droits de propriété privée cautionnés par l'État. Elle interroge la signification de concepts tels que 'le marché' ou 'la propriété', se méfiant de 'l'illusion ontologique' où l'on confond concepts et objets réels. Partant des travaux de Mitchell (1991), nous prolongeons cette idée en décrivant la distinction qui s'établit entre la propriété comme représentation et la propriété comme réalité; sont aussi évalués les effets de cette différenciation sur la pratique sociale. Au lieu de traiter la propriété dans le cadre chinois comme une abstraction, nous invitons les chercheurs à prendre conscience de la diversité de ses manifestations tant sur le plan empirique que sur le plan éthique.