Cross‐border rubber cultivation between C hina and L aos

Regionalization by A kha and T ai rubber farmers

Bibliographic Data

ID20153909
AuthorsJanet C Sturgeon (Geography Department Simon Fraser University Burnaby British Columbia Canada, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume34
Issue1
Pages70-85
Publication date2013-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSingapore Journal of Tropical Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0129-7619 • E-ISSN: 1467-9493
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/sjtg.12014
OpenAlexW1564078155
LanguageEN
Citations received32
References cited21

This paper is a multi‐sited ethnography of cross‐border rubber cultivation between C hina and L aos. Smallholder minority rubber farmers from X ishuangbanna ( C hina) have forged successful informal share‐cropping arrangements to grow rubber trees on the land of relatives and friends in neighbouring L aos. By becoming rich and entrepreneurial rural citizens, A kha and T ai farmers have also, in their own eyes, raised their own ‘quality’ ( suzhi ) and see themselves as ‘modern’. By examining various meanings of ‘modern’ in C hina, and contrasting the rubber farmers' experience with J acob E yferth's notion of rural ‘deskilling’, this paper shows how through learning to plant, cultivate and tap rubber, these farmers have taken on the discipline and technical knowledge of ‘modern’ workers and become ‘skilled’. By rising in ‘quality’, minority farmers on C hina's periphery challenge the entrenched binaries of urban/rural, modern/backward, prosperous/poor and Han/minority nationality. X ishuangbanna minority farmers acknowledge that they are also ‘backward’ in the C hinese social hierarchy, but their extension of rubber cultivation to kin and others in L aos has confirmed their modernity as dispensers of development, technical know‐how and ‘superior’ C hinese culture to Lao farmers who are ‘backward and poor’. In contrast to large state rubber farms that have failed to establish rubber plantations in northern L aos, minority farmers have created regionalization

Biology · Natural rubber · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Cell Biology · Chemistry · Molecular Biology · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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