The mountainous borderlands of socialist China, Vietnam, and Laos are home to some seventy million people, representing an astonishing array of ethnic diversity. How are these peoples fashioning livelihoods now that their homeland is open to economic investment and political change?

Moving Mountains presents the work of anthropologists, geographers, and political economists who have first-hand experience in the Southeast Asian Massif. Although scholars have typically represented highland people from this region as marginalized and powerless, these case studies – on groups such as the Drung in Yunnan, the Khmu in Laos, and the Hmong in Vietnam – argue that ethnic minorities draw on culture and ethnicity to indigenize modernity and maintain their livelihoods. This unprecedented glimpse into a poorly understood region shows that development initiatives must be built on strong knowledge of local cultures in order to have lasting effect.

Jean Michaud is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Université Laval. Tim Forsyth is a reader in environment and development at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Contributors: Steeve Daviau, Olivier Évrard, Tim Forsyth, Stéphane Gros, Terry McGee, John McKinnon, Marie Mellac, Jean Michaud, Janet C. Sturgeon, Margaret Byrne Swain, Claire Tugault-Lafleur, and Sarah Turner

… this book is much more than a collection of individually interesting case study chapters. There is an argument that weaves its way through the text. After an intriguing foreword from Terry McGee where he connects his interest in urban change with the book’s concern with highland change, there are eight core chapters bookended by a substantial introduction from the editors, editors, and a rather briefer conclusion. --- This expertly edited and unusually coherent collection of enlightening essays on livelihoods and cultural identities in the post-socialist situations of China, Vietnam and Laos, adds usefully to the emerging literature on the borderlands of what the editors call the “Southeast Asian Massif”...this well-edited book is an argument for and demonstration of the value of good ethnography in the developmental context and as such it deserves to be very widely read.