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ID: 173416

Good attachment in the Asian highlands: questioning notions of “loose women” and “autonomous communities” / Jonsson, Hjorleifur

Jonsson, Hjorleifur	Journal Article
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Summary/Abstract

As part of the national consolidation of Thailand in the early twentieth century, various hinterland populations were actively marginalized and dispossessed. Anthropology and other scholarship normalized this racialized dispossession through notions of highland people’s essential difference from lowland society. Two fantasies in particular cemented notions of highland otherness: ethnographic notions of autonomous and egalitarian ethnic communities, and heterosexual male notions of sexually loose and available non-Thai women. A comparative and regional approach to sexuality and politics suggests a very different reality. Across Southeast Asia, certain customs suggest a shared focus on the benefits of being well attached across differences, for women and for communities. Such customs have been obscured by anthropological and other convictions about culture and ethnicity. This case insists on the importance of customs that have encouraged good attachment and the negotiation of diversity, as common across Southeast Asia and as also shaped by the human bio-cultural evolutionary heritage.

Key Words

Politics ; Anthropology ; Evolution ; Sexuality ; History

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ID: 096475

Mimetic minorities: national identity and desire on Thailand's fringe / Jonsson, Hjorleifur

Jonsson, Hjorleifur	Journal Article
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Publication

2010.

Summary/Abstract

Representations of identity are always political acts, but their politics are unpredictable. Among ethnic minorities in northern Thailand, there is a striking difference between the absence of ethnic markers from a political confrontation and the profusion of ethnic markers at non-confrontational festivals. I situate the difference in engagements with a national contact zone where so-called Mountain Peoples are denied political agency. Minority assertions of ethnic distinction and national compatibility take various forms that resonate with mimesis. Thai notions of Mountain Peoples suggest equally mimetic aspects of self-making through denied similarities. Theoretical approaches to mimesis emphasize interaction and denied resemblance as much as representation. Performances and imagery involving minority identity and difference in northern Thailand contradict common expectations of a fundamental tension between rural and minority communities and the state, and highlight often-overlooked dimensions of identity-work.

Key Words

Minorities ; Thailand ; Mimesis ; State - Minority Relations ; Mien

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