Highland Asia as a field of anthropological study

Zomia, in the sense exulted by James C. Scott (2009) as an abode of purposeful political anarchy and anti-stateism, is not an emic conceptualization, not a particular place or an incantation of a collective identity referred to or professed by particular populations of humans. As a spatial and social reality, or as a word-concept, Zomia, then appears an exercise in scholarly magical realism (evidence is ‘thin’, ‘limited’, and ‘ambiguous’, as Victor Lieberman (2010: 339) puts it more discreetly). It is a form of geographical and historical imagination that nevertheless has begun to ‘escape’ the narrow corridors of the academy and into public discourse where it now lives a life of its own. It is an original imagination no doubt – an optic that stimulates fresh scholarship – but one simultaneously cannot escape that Zomia-disciples are letting their imagination run away with them.

Theory from the hills

Highlander suggests that geography, and especially, altitude matters. And indeed things look different depending on where you stand. Climb a mountain and the perspective changes as does the landscape itself; the flora, fauna, smells, the air and much more change. High altitude gives a sense of clarity, you can see further out in the distance, things otherwise hidden reveal itself and patterns, traces, paths emerge. It is perhaps no surprise that mountains are places of introspection and spiritual quests. Yet again how altitude matters in a more precise manner in the workings of society is harder to tell. James C. Scott famously argues that hills are difficult to govern and therefore allow for more egalitarian, democratic and non-state types of polities to flourish (2009). His take on “Zomia”, originally proposed by Willem van Schendel, has encouraged scholars to think regions, and geography more generally, outside the dominant framework of nation-states. For Scott, the hills carry a political vision of an anarchist or acephalous society. Indeed, we need to be reminded that another world is possible. Zomia is a powerful image for this.

On methodology

The anxieties to produce good research work is inherent in academia. Particularly, in the social sciences, research work that requires fieldwork and demands an encounter with the larger society that is outside one’s respective departments and the university produces various kinds of experiences and feelings. Among anthropologists, one can be lost in the field, fall in love, get frustrated, or go native. Yet, the tension between capturing what one witnesses during fieldwork and the producing a piece of work that contains a sharp theoretical analysis and an introspective narrative is often challenging. This essay is not a prescriptive note about methodology, but it is rather my attempt to reflect about doing fieldwork and the circumstances under which we carry out research work in Northeast India.

The Highlander

This is an introduction both of the first issue, and to The Highlander: Journal of Highland Asia itself, setting out the genealogy of ideas, debates and critiques, principally around the concept 'Zomia', that have fostered significant debate and provided the impetus for this project. It is also a call for contributions toward fostering discussion, from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, that elucidate the similarities and differences, generalities and particularities of the myriad histories, languages, cultures, politics, and religions of primarily ethnic minorities living in the upland terrains linking Nepal and the Tibetan plateau with Northeast India, the Pamirs, Western China, and the highland communities of Southeast Asia – a vast, congruous region sometimes referred to as ‘Zomia', or indeed 'Zomia+'

Towards a historical anthropology of Upland Laos

When travelling across Houaphan province in upland north-eastern Laos in 2010, I took with me a copy of James Scott’s (2009) Art of Not Being Governed. This thought-provoking book offered fresh perspectives to exploring this ‘Zomian’ landscape and its ethnolinguistically diverse population. Indeed a historical frontier zone of refuge and opportunity, Houaphan’s forested mountains always constituted an escape option for people facing (Siamese, Vietnamese, lowland Lao, or French colonial) imperial interventions (Boutin 1937; Tappe 2015). Even today, the different ethnic groups of Houaphan demonstrate a wide range of flexible livelihoods such as swidden cultivation that carried them through times of crisis and war at the margins of lowland state formations, often seeking creative ways to keep state authorities at bay.