Mien Relations: Mountain People and State Control in Thailand

By Hjorleifur Jonsson

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 multi-ethnic contact zone.

About the Author

Hjorleifur Jonsson is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Arizona State University.