Understanding the State Through Its Borderlands: An Anthropological Study of Hani/Akha Rubber Cultivation

This book traces the history of rubber cultivation in the region, charting the movement and settlement of rubber growers. It analyzes how rubber cultivation has changed land use, social structures, and traditional culture, as well as the strategies people have adopted to adjust socially and culturally. Through the rubber-growing activities and daily lives of the Hani Akha people, it explores their understanding, interpretation, and imagination of the nation-state, and their practices of integrating into the nation. It examines the role and impact of the state in the development of ethnic minorities, how ethnic groups imagine both an ethnic community and a national community, and how they understand the relationships between borders and the state, and between ethnicity and the state, ultimately shedding light on the nature of the state.