| Description |
1 online resource (259 pages ): illustrations, maps |
| Series |
Asian Borderlands ; 16 |
|
Asian borderlands ; 16.
|
| 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 |
| Summary |
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 |
| Analysis |
Asian Studies |
|
AS |
|
Anthropology |
|
ANTHRO |
|
East Asia and North East Asia |
|
EA & NE ASIA |
|
Economics and Finance |
|
ECON & FIN |
|
South East Asia |
|
SEASIA |
|
Yunnan, Laos, Thailand, cross-border trade, smallness |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
In English |
|
Description based on print version record |
| Subject |
Society and culture: general.
|
|
International trade.
|
|
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Small Business.
|
|
Boundaries
|
|
Commerce
|
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Social and cultural anthropology.
|
|
International business.
|
|
Small businesses and self-employment.
|
| SUBJECT |
Laos -- Commerce -- China
|
|
Laos -- Commerce -- Thailand
|
|
Laos -- Boundaries
|
| Subject |
China
|
|
Laos
|
|
Thailand
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9789048554409 |
|
9048554403 |
|
