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overlap in the content in many chapters.  For example, in Part Two, the life and work of Patani’s 



ulama, Shaykh Dawd Al-Fatani, is discussed in both Azra and Numan’s chapters.  Even though 

both chapters have a slightly different framework, they reach similar conclusions about the role of 



ulama and their network.  In Part Four, Walker and Mansurnoor both focus on the historiographies

of Patani by Patani nationalists and offer similar remarks on Patani’s changing national identity 

from secular to Islamic and Middle East-oriented.  Yet, only their terminology differs: Walker uses 

the term “Islamo-Malay Patanian nation” (p. 185), while Mansurnoor uses “Patani Jawi nation”

(p. 276).  The unevenness of topics is also noticeable.  Stories about the rise and fall of Patani and 

its female rulers written in Hikayat Patani are repeatedly discussed in many chapters, while the 

history of Patani in the crucial period of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are discussed

in only two chapters in Part Two.

Overall, this book is a valuable collection that deepens and broadens the existing knowledge 

and public consciousness of the history of southern Thailand.  Ethno-religious conflict between 

Thai Buddhists and Malay Muslims still continues, as does historical writing.  However, as Jory

notes, history does not necessarily have to determine Patani’s destiny.  At the same time, history 

should not be hijacked by any one group to serve its political or religious objectives.

Piyada Chonlaworn

 ปิยดา ชลวร

CSEAS

References

Laffan, Michael F.  2003.  Islamic Nationhood and Colonial Indonesia: The Umma below the Winds.   London: 

Routledge.

Montesano, Michael J.; and Jory, Patrick, eds.  2008.  Thai South and Malay North: Ethnic Interactions 



on a Plural Peninsula.  Singapore: NUS Press.

The Lahu Minority in Southwest China: 

A Response to Ethnic Marginalization on the Frontier

J

IANXIONG



 M

A

Oxon: Routledge, 2013, xvii+254 p.



Ever since economic liberalization in the 1980s, modernization and policies that deal with ethnic 

minorities have become important issues in the study of present day China.  Since the establish-

ment of the Chinese Communist Party, ethnic diversity in Southwest China has been a major

component in ethnic policy, and therefore ethnic issues in this area have drawn much academic 

interest.  Most of the existing studies about minority groups in Southwest China focus on state 



Book Reviews

630

construction of ethnic categories, representations of identity, and the politics of cultural discourses

on ethnicity (e.g. Schein 2000; Harrell 1995), while only a few works have provided detailed anthro-

pological data about what happens in the everyday lives of the people.  This book focuses on the 

daily experiences of ethnic minorities to highlight the pressures they face as they deal with the 

challenges brought about by modernization and marketization.  In doing so, it aims to explain the 

social and cultural mechanisms of ethnic marginalization in China, a result of the long-term pres-

sure brought to bear on minorities by mainstream Han societies.  With ample data from long-term 

fieldwork among the Lahu people, Ma Jianxiong vividly describes and analyzes Lahu lives on the 

frontier that have hitherto been inaccessible.

The book consists of eight chapters, including an introduction and concluding remarks.  Cover-

ing a wide range of topics and contents, it discusses the relationships between ethnic minorities 

and the Han majority and their identity formation.

In the introduction, Ma briefly explains the identity-building process of the Lahu.  He argues 

that Lahu identity is constantly generated through their relationship with the state or the Han 

majority.  Along with contact with Han migrants in the eighteenth century, Mahayana Buddhism 

was introduced to the Lahu area and combined with the worldview of the Lahu and subsequently 

became the “E sha Buddha religious movement.”  This movement was seen as a form of resistance 

to the state and was destroyed by the Qing army.  Chapter two follows the history of changing 

ethnic relationships between the Han and the Lahu since the 1920s when Han migrants first came 

to his field site.  Through policies such as the creation of People’s Communes and the Cultural 

Revolution itself, the Lahu belief system was repeatedly undermined.  Subsequently, after the

revival of the market economy in the 1980s, Han cadres and businessmen “hijacked” representa-

tives of the Lahu.

Chapter three discusses the supernatural world and belief system of the Lahu.  With ample 

citation from mythological tales and case studies, the author shows the cyclical nature of the 

cosmic view of the Lahu, and the traffic between the world of the dead and world of the living.  

There are various actors that mediate between the two worlds, such as dead parents, numerous 

spirits and carnivorous spirits.  Everyday life is full of tension because of these actors, and the 

author claims that their rituals are “self-negation rituals” (p. 96) because issues that arise with such

actors are considered a result of their own personal wrongdoings.  As such, these rituals are a 

cultural response to long-term external pressure.

Chapter four deals with the Lahu kinship system.  From detailed case studies of division of 

land upon marriage, Ma meticulously illustrates the bilateral and non-hierarchical kinship system.  

He states that because the kinship system lacks an internal mechanism of collective cohesion, the 

Lahu needed political and religious authority from outside their community such as that provided 

by E sha Buddha to forge unity against historical Qing state power.  This authority has now disap-

peared and is exacerbated by an absence of representatives among the Lahu, becoming more 




Book Reviews

631

problematic since 1958 when all religious activities were banned.

Chapter six merits being dealt with before five and seven which are both closely related.  It 

deals with poverty reduction and education and concerns itself with a government project for

frontier people and its effects on their daily lives.  Since local government revenue in Lan County 

can only cover a small portion of the county expenses, various kinds of funding from higher-level 

governments have become a fundamental resource for maintaining the administrative system.

Villagers are forced to cooperate with cadres or teachers and to prepare for endless inspections.  

These projects and education become, as Ma puts it, a demonstration of a kind of ethnic dichotomy 

between “the advanced Han” and “the backward Lahu.”

Chapters five and seven deal with the Lahu people’s responses to pressure and marginalization 

by the Han.  Chapter five, “To Become Wives of the Han,” is about women’s escape from their 

homeland or even at times Lahu identity.  Since the 1980s, the ratio imbalance between the sexes 

at birth has continued in rural China and therefore many Lahu women have married Han men 

outside Yunnan through brokering networks.  This is because these brokers, and even local Han 

cadres, repeatedly emphasized the discourse of “leaving is better,” thereby reinforcing the dichot-

omy between the “advanced Han” and “backward Lahu.”  Chapter seven focuses on the responses 

to this situation among young Lahu men.  Alongside women’s departures, young Lahu men face 

difficulties in finding spouses and hence they “escape” to the world of the dead.  This is the reason 

for the high rate of suicide among Lahu people in Lan County.  Ma points out that the suicides and 

departures resulted from pressure in their daily lives and “the pain of being Lahu.”  Ma concludes 

with a discussion of how the dual discourse of the Han and the Lahu is strengthened through daily 

tensions.

This book is based on fieldwork of more than 15 years.  It is indeed rare for researchers to 

conduct such long-term research in Yunnan’s borderlands, so the data and insights are valuable in 

themselves.  Because of his bottom-up perspective, we can learn about the experiences of the Lahu 

and observe the changes that the Lahu value system has undergone over the years.  Monographs 

on the Lahu in China are far fewer compared to those on the Lahu in Thailand, so this book is an 

important scholarly resource.  The detailed descriptions are very engaging and Ma’s conscious 

efforts to incorporate historical considerations render his contribution even more valuable.  Much 

of the current discussions about ethnic minorities in China have concentrated on ethnic formation 

after the communist party.  This book persuasively shows how Lahu ethnic identity took shape 

through their encounters with the Han.  This is in sharp contrast to another ethnographic work on 

the Chinese Lahu, Du Shanshan’s Chopsticks Only Work in Pairs, which is about Lahu gender unity 

and egalitarianism (2003).  She vividly discusses the notion of gender but pays little attention to 

historical aspects of identity formation.  Ma’s book supplements Du Shanshan’s work by citing

many valuable sources.

Although the book is a valuable contribution, some points should be raised for further discus-




Book Reviews

632

sion.  First of all, I would like to draw attention to literature on the Lahu in Thailand, most of which 

is not currently available in English.  Ma emphasizes the contrasting conditions in China and 

Thailand: E sha belief is well practiced in Thailand and social problems are seldom found.  However, 

Nishimoto Yoichi (2000) has shown that a narrative of inferiority exists as well among Christian 

Lahu in Thailand who have been marginalized through complex border politics.  Furthermore,

Kataoka Tatsuki’s (2007) discussion of Christianity among the Lahu highlights the characteristics 

of Lahu religion, centering on the coexistence of monotheism and animism, and the history of 

several charismatic religious movements.  These were not always one-way processes, but rather 

a religious vacillation between monotheism and animism.  By taking these studies into consider-

ation, Ma’s research can be placed in the continuum of such dynamic religious movements.  As an 

aspiring researcher of Lahu people, I hope that there will be more communication across language 

barriers among Lahu scholars in the near future.

The second point concerns the description of the marginalization process.  In spite of a wide 

variety of data, all the chapter conclusions culminate in “marginalization by the Han,” as if it were 

a pre-established fact.  In fact, some of the practices described may not necessarily be interpreted 

as marginalization.  For example, Ma interprets the practices related to the ne spirits as a “self-

negation ritual” resulting from marginalization.  His reasoning is that the ritual appeared in Ban 

village only after the loss of their charismatic “E sha Buddha” and since then they believed their 

sickness or misfortune was due to their own wrongdoings, as a result of which their dead parents 

let ne spirits bite their children as punishment.  Are “self-negation” and “marginalization” the only 

interpretations possible?  One can argue, for example, that the phenomenon can be understood as 

a way of thinking about reasons for misfortune.  Even if E sha Buddha were not destroyed by the 

state, personal misfortune can be explained as a result of one’s own wrongdoings such as impiety 

towards E sha Buddha.  While this is a way of explaining misfortune by personal “wrongdoings,” 

it does not have to be seen as “self-negation.”  Certainly the Lahu are a marginalized ethnic group 

in China, but the author seems to be too hasty in overemphasizing their marginalization as an 

explanatory factor.

Finally, I would like to question the way the author repeatedly emphasizes the difference 

between “native Lahu” and “Lahu-minded Han.”  It is not clear what is Lahu-ness or Han-ness.  

The relationship between culture and ethnicity has been much discussed in mainland Southeast 

Asia (Moerman 1965; Keyes 1992), and scholarship has repeatedly questioned the assumptions of 

ethnic essentialism.  Since the arrival of the Han, there have been many inter-ethnic marriages 

between the Lahu and the Han in Lan County over 200 years, and the differences between the 

Lahu and the Han are, in many situations, blurred.  In my own field site, many Lahu farmers said 

that in ancient times they had been Han and migrated from the North, but now they have become 

Lahu through inter-marriage, changing customs and practices.  Would such villagers be categorized

as “Lahu-minded Han” or “Lahu of Han origin”?  Ma emphasizes the contrast between two ethnic-




Book Reviews

633

ities so as to illustrate the marginalization by one over another, but at the cost of neglecting the 

dynamic relationships that obtain between the two.  Of course there is oppression and marginaliza-

tion.  But in everyday life the Lahu and the Han are inevitably related and have to interact with 

each other.  In some situations the narrative of differences would have to be seen as strategies in 

themselves.  Had Ma been able to illustrate the ties and interaction between them alongside the 

differences, without reducing these ties to the issue of “marginalization,” the wealth of field data 

could have been used even more persuasively.

Although I have pointed out some issues in the author’s interpretation of his data, I certainly 

agree that there are many tensions and problems in the local politics of many minority areas in 

modern day China.  This book employs a bottom-up perspective to issue an important warning 

against serious future ethnic destruction.  At the same time, it shows how ethnic identity is con-

stituted through historical processes.  The Lahu Minority in Southwest China is an important 

contribution towards the understanding of the complex politics of ethnic formation in southwest 

China.

Horie Mio 堀江未央



Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University

References

Du, Shanshan.  2003.  Chopsticks Only Work in Pairs: Gender Unity and Gender Equality among the Lahu 



of Southwest China.  Columbia University Press.

Harrell, Stevan, ed.  1995.  Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers.  Seattle and London: Uni-

versity of Washington Press.

Kataoka Tatsuki 片岡 樹.  2007.  Tai Sanchi Isshin Kyoto no Minzokushi: Kirisuto Kyoto Rafu no Kokka,



Minzoku, Bunkaタイ山地一神教徒の民族誌――キリスト教徒ラフの国家・民族・文化 [An

ethnography of monotheists in the hills of Thailand: The state, ethnicity, and culture of Christian 

Lahu].  Tokyo: Fukyosha.

Keyes, Charles F.  1992.  Who Are the Lue Revisited? Ethnic Identity in Laos, Thailand and China.  

 Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for International Studies, Working 

Paper.


Moerman, Michael.  1965.  Ethnic Identification in a Complex Civilization: Who Are the Lue? 

American

Anthropologist 67(5): 1215–1230

t

Nishimoto, Yoichi.  2000.  Lahu Narratives of Inferiority: Christianity and Minority in Ethnic Power Rela-



tions.  Chiang Rai: Center for Inter-Ethnic Studies, Rajabhat Institute Chiang Rai.

Schein, Louisa.  2000.  Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China’s Cultural Politics.  Durham, 



NC and London: Duke University Press.

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