Frontier Livelihoods is an informative and readable account of the economic behaviour of the Hmong population of the Sino-Viet borderlands. Discussing five forms of economic activity (maize or rice farming, water buffalo breeding and trading, alcohol brewing, cardamom cultivation, and weaving) it argues that the Hmong creatively adapt practices promoted by the state to suit their needs. The authors take an “actor-oriented” approach that foregrounds the decisions and strategies of individuals and families. They emphasize the complexity of Hmong livelihood strategies, which combine strategic adoption, creative adaptation and covert resistance.
The authors focus more of their attention on Vietnam than on China, and identify a disjuncture between Hmong experiences in the two countries. They attribute this to three main causes. In China, there has been more penetration of Han (Chinese) settlers in Hmong areas. State economic intervention has been more aggressive and effective. Finally, the Chinese state's “modernization” campaigns and the devastations of the ten-year Cultural Revolution have advanced “Hanization” (p. 62). Moreover, large-scale industrialization of weaving and distilling has already occurred in China. For instance, factory-made clothes printed with traditional Hmong patterns are cheaper and easier than making or buying homespun hemp clothing, and therefore have found a ready market on both sides of the border. Likewise, large-scale production of alcohol in China has made home-brewing all but obsolete there.
Hmong communities have strategically adopted the cash cropping schemes promoted by Chinese and Vietnamese government programs. Hmong farmers fear, for example, that adopting government-distributed hybrid seeds to the exclusion of other forms of farming would create dependency on the government. Farmers respond by planting several different crops, or bypassing government dispensaries in favour of private dealers in order to suit their own planting schedule. In general, the authors observed the flexible adoption of some cash cropping or government-promoted economic development schemes, alongside preservation of more traditional forms of livelihood.
There is increasing demand for highland products, both by Kinh (Vietnamese) and international tourists who are attracted to the perceived authenticity of Hmong-produced alcohol and crafts. Hmong producers, whether of cardamom, textiles or alcohol, occupy the bottom of the commodity chain, and reap smaller profits from their products than do Kinh wholesalers. Kinh intermediaries have structural advantages in the form of social, financial and physical capital. Despite these clear disadvantages, the authors use Hmong cross-border trade in buffalo, alcohol and textiles, a trade that relies on kin relationships and clandestine crossing points, to argue that the Kinh are excluded from some forms of Hmong economic activity. Indeed, they argue that many Hmong pursuits are “strategically small-scale” (p. 147).
While factory-produced goods have become prevalent in China, Hmong in Vietnam continue to prefer to trade locally within the community or with kin in China (as in the case of water buffalo). Dissent is subtle, manifesting itself in the persistence of language, traditional clothing and ritual practices, as well as foot-dragging in adopting state directives. In each chapter the authors show that the Hmong of the Sino-Viet highlands have developed diverse and resilient livelihood portfolios that can withstand dips in market prices, poor harvests, changes in government policy, and other pressures.
The authors ground their investigations in historical context, helpfully noting the impact of collectivization and market liberalization. Their presentation of earlier history, however, is less precise. For example, the authors mistakenly contend that the Vietnamese imperial state “did not really make use of or colonize this remote space [of the northwest mountain peripheries]” (p. 29). They wrongly suggest that Kinh migration to the northern Vietnamese uplands only began after French colonization (p. 62). The contention that “the idea that Vietnam is “lagging behind” has been a popular one in China for centuries” (p. 152) cannot be supported, and in fact projects a modernization theory mindset onto the Chinese past.
A strength of this book is the authors' insistence that Hmong society must be understood translocally and transnationally. To that end, they conducted fieldwork in China and Vietnam, while citing work on Hmong communities in Thailand, Laos and, to a lesser extent, in the global diaspora. The authors make extensive reference to published works, including their own large corpus of articles and books. Yet while they define their own positionality in terms of gender, age and nationality at the outset, the authors do not make clear their language abilities or when they are relying on translators. In addition to informants and government officials, the authors particularly thank 15 ethnic minority or “non-state” research assistants, listing their first names (p. xi). Nonetheless, the contribution of these assistants, and in which instances they served as interpreters, is unclear.
Despite these oversights, Frontier Livelihoods gives a succinct and useful overview of the history of the Hmong and a fascinating snapshot of their daily lives.
