From Padi States to Commercial States. Reflections on Identity and the Social Construction Space in the Borderlands of Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar

“Zomia” is a term coined in 2002 to describe the broad swath of mountainous land in Southeast Asia that has always been beyond the reach of lowland governments despite their technical claims to control. This book expands the anthropological reach of that term, applying it to any deterritorialized people, from cast-out migrants to modern resisters—in the process finding new ways to understand the realities of peoples and ethnicities that refuse to become part of the modern state.