In this talk, anthropologist Hjorleifur Jonsson asks how ethnic minorities navigate being in a zone claimed by three states: Thailand, Laos and China. Using ethnographic and archival evidence, Jonsson challenges the appealing but simple argument that upland Southeast Asia is a "zone of refuge" from the inequity and oppression of lowland states. By contrast, Jonsson considers traditions of civil pluralism and the peaceful negotiation of diversity in the region that have been informed by Emperor Ping’s Charter. Although of questionable veracity, the charter situates the Yao people in China's south as separate from Chinese society and confined to the forested wilderness. It also states that border transgressions are subject to unique fines: a jar of mosquito relish along with a measure of unjointed bamboo and other unusual items. Jonsson asks how these historical traditions facilitate complex and flexible relations between state and non-state authorities.
Hjorleifur Jonsson has focused his research on hinterland farming populations in mainland Southeast Asia. His work has concerned the dynamics of identity, cultural practice and social life at the intersections of minority communities and state structures. The focus of his work has ranged among regional history and contemporary identity work and political protest. Most of his research has been among Mien people in Thailand (since 1990), but he has also done research in Cambodia and Vietnam, and (since 2005) among Iu Mien in the US who are refugee immigrants from Laos. Jonsson's current work concerns contemporary identity work that has multiple and complex relations to history and repeatedly jumps scales among the local, the national and the transnational—through festivals, sports, publications, interactive and other media, travel, music, religious practice and livelihood.