Centering the Margin Agency and Narrative in Southeast Asian Borderlands [Paperback]

In a completely new approach to borders and border crossing, this volume suggests a re-conceptualization of the nation in Southeast Asia. Choosing an actor approach, the individual chapters in this volume capture the narratives of minorities, migrants and refugees who inhabit and cross borders as part of their everyday life. They show that people are not only constrained by borders; the crossing of borders also opens up new options of agency. Making active use of these, border-crossing actors construct their own live projects on the border in multiple ways against the original intention of the nation-state. Based on their intimate knowledge of the interaction of communities, anthropologists from Europe, the USA, Japan and Southeast Asia provide a vivid picture of the effects of state policies at the borders on these communities.

Alexander Horstmannteaches Social Anthropology of Southeast Asia at the University of Münster and is a Fellow of the Study Group Islamic Culture – Modern Society at the Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut), Essen. Among his major publications includeClass Culture and Space: The Construction and Shaping of Communal Space in South Thailand, Transaction, 2002.

Preface
Figures and Tables

Introduction: Centering the Margin in Southeast Asia
Alexander HorstmannandReed L. Wadley

CENTERING THE MARGIN I: CENTER AND PERIPHERY IN SOUTHEAST ASIAN BORDERLANDS

Chapter 1.Once were Burmese Shans: Reinventing Ethnic Identity in Northwestern Thailand
Niti Pawakapan

Chapter 2.Would-Be Centers: The Texture of Historical Discourse in Makassar
William Cummings

Chapter 3.Political Periphery, Cosmological Center: The Reproduction of Rmeet Sociocosmic Order and the LaosThailand BlCË