Sims, Kearrin (2023) Cross-border traders in northern Laos: mastering smallness, by Simon Rowedder. Asian Studies Review, 47 (3). pp. 634-635.

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Abstract

[Extract] Simon Rowedder’s Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos: Mastering Smallness draws on ethnographic research to examine Tai Lue cross-border trade across northern Thailand, northern Laos, and southern Yunnan (108). It sketches ‘small-scale traders’ everyday lived worlds of transnational connectivity in their own right’ (198).

Arguing that ethnicity is only one, strategically deployed aspect of traders’ identities that does not always determine ‘everyday economic practices’ (137), Rowedder develops a central analytical framework around the concept of smallness. He understands this as the ‘main device’ of ‘narrative identity’ that unites an ‘otherwise ethnically and socially highly diverse group’ (173). He also sees it as offering an ‘analytical entry point’ for revealing small-scale traders’ ‘unvoiced, and thus unheard and unread, transnational trading skills and their trajectories’ (192).

Item ID:	78677
Item Type:	Article (Book Review)
ISSN:	1467-8403
Keywords:	Laos
Copyright Information:	© 2023 Kearrin Sims.
Date Deposited:	26 May 2023 06:42
FoR Codes:	44 HUMAN SOCIETY > 4401 Anthropology > 440101 Anthropology of development @ 100%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1399 Other culture and society > 139999 Other culture and society not elsewhere classified @ 100%
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