Forager-Traders in South and Southeast Asia Long-Term Histories

• Main Authors: Morrison, Kathleen D, Junker, Laura L
• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 05-12-2002
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: History; Hunting and gathering societies; Southeast Asia; Southeast Asia
• ISBN: 9780521016360; 052181572X; 9780521815727; 0521016363
• DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511489631

In both South and Southeast Asia, many upland groups make a living - in whole or part - through gathering and hunting, producing not only subsistence goods but commodities destined for regional and even world markets. These forager-traders have had an ambiguous position in ethnographic analysis, variously represented as relics, degraded hunter-gatherers, or recent upstarts. Forager-Traders in South and Southeast Asia adopts a multidisciplinary approach to these groups, presenting a series of comparative case-studies that analyse the long-term histories of hunting, gathering, trading, power relations, and regional social and biological interactions in this critical region. This book is a fascinating and important addition to the current 'revisionist' debate, and a unique attempt to re-conceptualize our knowledge of forager-traders within the surrounding context of complex polities, populations and economies in South and Southeast Asia.