Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015. xii, 223 pp. (Illustrations, maps.) US$50.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-295-99466-6.
Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands, is a compelling, interdisciplinary examination of the livelihood decisions of the Hmong in the mountainous regions along the Sino-Vietnamese border. Methodologically, the study draws from geography, history, and anthropology, with a significant reliance on interviews and participant observation, in order to provide nuanced answers to its guiding question of how the Hmong “make and negotiate their livelihood decisions” (4).
The Hmong population is estimated to be approximately 4 million, yet is spread across at least five different Asian countries, with the largest populations found in southern China and northern Vietnam. The Hmong communities in both countries share several important characteristics, such as their marginality; their official status as a minority group; their residence in mountainous regions on the peripheries of the two nations; and their embrace of an economic system in which they “are mainly rural, semi-subsistence farmers practicing a mixture of permanent and temporary agriculture, with production centered on household needs” (22). The combination of these characteristics is vital because it has historically marked them as a group that national governments seek to “develop,” particularly through modernization and integration into the market economy.
The volume’s broader theoretical goal is to demonstrate that the successful study of livelihood choices requires attention to culturally informed local agency, especially as this applies to the choices that people make to accept, ignore, modify, or resist the policies or agendas being imposed upon them by others who are more powerful. In order to demonstrate their theoretical arguments, the authors provide four primary cases that illustrate the cautious and complex manner in which the Hmong engage with the development projects designed and implemented by the Vietnamese and Chinese governments and the recent push toward the market economy: buffalo (chapter 4), alcohol (chapter 5), cardamom (chapter 6), and textiles (chapter 7). All four of these cases involve items that were historically part of the Hmong economy. Buffalo were important farm animals as well as symbols of wealth; locally produced alcohol was central in various ceremonial and social contexts; cardamom grew naturally in the region and was used medicinally; and locally woven and embroidered textiles were markers of Hmong identity as well as funerary clothing. One strength of the authors’ approach in all of these chapters is that they treat these items with cultural and historical sensitivity, especially the fact that in recent decades, with the transition to market economies in Vietnam and China, all have become commodities that have created new possibilities for cash income, but that at the same time bring new risks.
It is on the issue of managing risk that the volume makes some of its most interesting contributions. The authors demonstrate that the Hmong are neither tradition-bound nor “inept at trading and lack[ing] economic entrepreneurship” as often depicted in China and Vietnam (147), but instead are ready to embark upon what the authors fittingly describe as “measured engagements” (169) with new opportunities. Two representative examples of this are the utilization of new, hybrid rice forms and the commodification of Hmong textiles. Both the Chinese and Vietnamese governments have aggressively advocated hybrid seeds because of their higher yields. Hmong farmers in Vietnam recognize that while the so-called “Chinese rice” (53) can have advantages, it can also bring with it a variety of problems related to the timing of seed availability, input costs, labour and draft animal supply, and an unappealing taste. Thus, instead of either fully embracing or rejecting hybrid seeds, many farmers have taken a more cautious approach in which traditional rice varieties, though particularly sticky rice, are grown for personal or ceremonial use (53), while hybrid rice is used in alcohol production (89). Regarding Hmong textiles, which are distinctively patterned and produced by women, a vibrant market has emerged, especially for tourists. Hmong women have become actively engaged in this trade, which as the authors point out has created a new source of cash for them (132), but have done so in a careful manner. They have cleverly used it as an opportunity to repurpose used clothing they no longer need, but have not abandoned agriculture completely (133), and in instances when dealing with non-Hmong strangers, have preferred to rely on either kin or other Hmong to receive a fair price (136–137). The Hmong do not, as the authors argue, unrestrainedly seek to maximize profits, but instead, “using culturally rooted judgments, they resist becoming involved in the market beyond what seems relevant to them” (169).
Another virtue of the analyses is their careful articulation of the commodity chains associated with these products, some of which extend not just to lowland Chinese or Vietnamese society, but to other Southeast Asian nations and even the Hmong diaspora, which provides a fascinating vision of the global market forces that now affect Hmong communities. Unfortunately in all of the cases examined the Hmong are “economically subordinate” (145) and receive the smallest profits of the various parties involved in these trades. Still, as the authors convincingly demonstrate, the Hmong are open to innovation in their livelihood choices and employ a “productive bricolage” (62) of the new and old in order to survive in challenging circumstances. Instead of being passive recipients of development policies or modernizing directives, the Hmong employ their culturally informed agency to carefully negotiate their relationship to market integration and construct their own combinatory “indigenized” modernity (9). This highly readable and empirically rich study will be of interest to scholars of highland Southeast Asia and China as well as to anthropologists, geographers, and those who seek to understand how societies in peripheral regions negotiate development, modernization, and existence on the margins of a powerful nation-state.
Shaun Kingsley Malarney
International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan
pp. 192-194