Description
Book SynopsisNorthern 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 ContentsAcknowledgements
Notes on Language and Transliteration
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 - “We are all Tai Lue”: International Trade Fairs as Local Ethnic Affairs
CHAPTER 2 - “Normal fruits for Laos, premium fruits for China”: Transnational Flows of National Differences
CHAPTER 3 - “Thailand: high quality; China: low price”: “Banal Cosmopolitanism” in Local Marketplaces
CHAPTER 4 - “I didn’t learn any occupation, so I trade”: Narratives of Insignificance
CHAPTER 5 - “No matter what, we’ll find a way”: Uncertain (Chinese?) Futures
CONCLUSION - Large Insights from
Smallness Complete Bibliography
