Challenging the Limits: Indigenous Peoples of the Mekong Region

Paperback, 379 pages, 6x9, English by Prasit Leepreecha, Don McCaskill, and Kwanchewan Buadaeng ISBN: 978-974-8418-20-9 Product Description Except on tourist brochures, the indigenous peoples of Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and southern China (Yunnan) are the least visible, and most excluded, of citizens. All these countries have used similar strategies to classify, include, or exclude minority peoples from the project of nationalism. Understanding the cultural and economic trajectories of key minorities such as the Dai, Hmong, Lahu, Akha, and Karen is critical to apprehending the construction, workings, and future of each of these nation-states, indeed of the Mekong region as a whole.  Conversely, as vividly demonstrated here, the minority peoples - many spanning more than one country - have adapted and accommodated to, or actively resisted, majority culture and state policy alike. There continues to be undeniable impoverishment, cultural loss, and "social suffering" in some communit