| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The ethnic minorities of Southeast Asia's uplands, including those of
Vietnam, tend to be portrayed as excluded from national society and locked into
poverty, environmental degradation and positions of subjugation. Recent debates
about Southeast Asian uplands-lowlands relations have questioned this discourse by
highlighting the diversity of experiences, the agency of ethnic minority groups, and
uplanders' strategies of state evasion. This article finds that the integration of the
uplands into the Vietnamese polity should be understood as an ongoing struggle
between nation-building and state expansion characterised by grand visions on the
one hand, and incomplete policy implementation and uplanders' ambiguous stance
towards integration on the other.
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