Cross-Border traders in Northern Laos : mastering smallness / Simon Rowedder.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rowedder, Simon, author.

Harris, Tina, author.

Series:

Asian borderlands.

Asian borderlands

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Borderlands--Economic aspects--China.

Borderlands.

Borderlands--Economic aspects--Laos.

Borderlands--Economic aspects--Thailand.

Laos--Commerce--China.

Laos.

Laos--Commerce--Thailand.

Laos--Boundaries.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (259 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 2022.

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. <i>Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos: Mastering Smallness</i> 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.

Contents:

"We are all Tai Lue"

"Normal fruits for Laos, premium fruits for China"

"Thailand: high quality; China: low price"

"I didn't learn any occupation, so I trade"

"No matter what, we'll find a way"

Conclusion : large insights from smallness.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 18 Nov 2022).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-003-69345-8

90-485-5440-3

9781003693451

OCLC:

1344535618