Hjorleifur Jonsson – författare

Thailand's hill tribes have been the object of anthropological research, cultural tourism, and government intervention for a century, in large part because these groups are held to have preserved distinctive ethnic traditions despite their contacts with "modern" culture. Hjorleifur Jonsson rejects the conventional notion that the worlds of traditional peoples are being transformed or undone by the forces of modernity. Among the Mien people of northern Thailand he finds a complex highlander identity that has been shaped by a thousand years of interaction in a multiethnic contact zone. In Mien Relations, Jonsson suggests that as early as the thirteenth century, the growing influence of Chinese and Thai state authority had led to a peculiarly urban understanding of the hinterlands—the forests and the mountains—as an area beyond state control and the rhetoric of civilization. Mountain peoples became understood as a distinct social type, an idea elaborated by government classification systems in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their "discovery" by Western anthropologists is, he suggests, merely one more episode influencing Mien identity. Jonsson questions traditional ethnography's focus on fieldwork and personal observation—and its concomitant blindness to political manipulation and to historical formation. Throughout Mien Relations, he revisits long-neglected connections between China and Southeast Asia, combines ancient history and contemporary ethnography, engages with the serious politics of representation without abandoning the quest to write ethnographically about particular communities, and keeps state control in view without assuming its success or coherence.

Thailand's hill tribes have been the object of anthropological research, cultural tourism, and government intervention for a century, in large part because these groups are held to have preserved distinctive ethnic traditions despite their contacts with "modern" culture. Hjorleifur Jonsson rejects the conventional notion that the worlds of traditional peoples are being transformed or undone by the forces of modernity. Among the Mien people of northern Thailand he finds a complex highlander identity that has been shaped by a thousand years of interaction in a multiethnic contact zone. In Mien Relations, Jonsson suggests that as early as the thirteenth century, the growing influence of Chinese and Thai state authority had led to a peculiarly urban understanding of the hinterlands—the forests and the mountains—as an area beyond state control and the rhetoric of civilization. Mountain peoples became understood as a distinct social type, an idea elaborated by government classification systems in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their "discovery" by Western anthropologists is, he suggests, merely one more episode influencing Mien identity. Jonsson questions traditional ethnography's focus on fieldwork and personal observation—and its concomitant blindness to political manipulation and to historical formation. Throughout Mien Relations, he revisits long-neglected connections between China and Southeast Asia, combines ancient history and contemporary ethnography, engages with the serious politics of representation without abandoning the quest to write ethnographically about particular communities, and keeps state control in view without assuming its success or coherence.

Slow Anthropology considers the history of the Iu Mien, an upland Laotian minority caught in the disruptions of the Vietnam-American war. This study challenges the prevailing academic theory that groups living in the hinterlands of Southeast Asia have traditionally fled to the hills, seeking isolated independence and safety. As part of his challenge, Jonsson highlights the legacies of negotiating difference that have guided the Iu Mien in interactions with their neighbors. Jonsson engages with southern China and Southeast Asia in premodern times, relays individual reports from the war in Laos, describes contemporary village festivals in Thailand, and explores community and identity among Southeast Asian immigrants in the United States. His study questions Western academic narratives that oversimplify Asia's minorities in order to define and stabilize Western identities.Responding to James C. Scott's characterization of the Southeast Asian highlands as a zone of refuge sought by minorities fearing oppression from lowland states, Slow Anthropology argues that evidence of a highland "disconnect" was, in fact, symptomatic of recent social collapse. Voluntary segregation has not been a historically typical condition in Asia. The author demonstrates that negotiation among different groups has been vital to the region, as play and intersubjectivity have been for human evolution. Slow Anthropology advocates for studies that acknowledge the ways in which Southeast Asian minorities have adapted to change, appropriated ideas from their neighbors, and built their own complex identities.

Slow Anthropology considers the history of the Iu Mien, an upland Laotian minority caught in the disruptions of the Vietnam-American war. This study challenges the prevailing academic theory that groups living in the hinterlands of Southeast Asia have traditionally fled to the hills, seeking isolated independence and safety. As part of his challenge, Jonsson highlights the legacies of negotiating difference that have guided the Iu Mien in interactions with their neighbors. Jonsson engages with southern China and Southeast Asia in premodern times, relays individual reports from the war in Laos, describes contemporary village festivals in Thailand, and explores community and identity among Southeast Asian immigrants in the United States. His study questions Western academic narratives that oversimplify Asia's minorities in order to define and stabilize Western identities.Responding to James C. Scott's characterization of the Southeast Asian highlands as a zone of refuge sought by minorities fearing oppression from lowland states, Slow Anthropology argues that evidence of a highland "disconnect" was, in fact, symptomatic of recent social collapse. Voluntary segregation has not been a historically typical condition in Asia. The author demonstrates that negotiation among different groups has been vital to the region, as play and intersubjectivity have been for human evolution. Slow Anthropology advocates for studies that acknowledge the ways in which Southeast Asian minorities have adapted to change, appropriated ideas from their neighbors, and built their own complex identities.