Religion, Economy and Gender in the Upper Mekong Region

This joint, multidisciplinary project brings together European and Asian specialists to offer an ethnographic and historical account of the interplay between religious, economic, and gender discourses and practices among minority populations in the Upper Mekong region. Pushed by large-scale investment in infrastructure by the Chinese government, these borderlands are currently experiencing unprecedented economic development. The main goal of this research project is to understand how this development is transforming the societies of ethnic minority groups, and in particular local gender relations and the position of women within them. The project hypothesizes that through these changes unexpected vernacular ways of engagement with modernity on the part of minority populations are appearing. But how? To understand how local and gendered economic relations evolve in the midst of fundamental, fast-paced economic and political change, the project proposes an innovative combination of historical and anthropological methods. Anthropological research will be based on extensive participant observation with target groups such as peasants, monastics, and women entrepreneurs, in rural and urban areas of the Upper Mekong region. In addition to this exploration of the contemporary, through the study of local sources and oral history the project will look at the transformation of minority institutions and cultural practices in the region since 1950. This will offer a necessary historical perspective of the transition from a recent past when these areas were under the control of one-party regimes and state-regulated economies, to a context of market-led and fast-paced development among traditionally marginalized groups. Finally, to identify common trends as well as divergences, the project will compare patterns of change among different ethnic populations in diverse locations of this dynamic and multi-ethnic region. By bringing to light the intimate links between different spheres of social practice usually understood as separate, this project will offer fundamental insights on diverse topics such as the transformation of agrarian economies, shifting notions and practices of masculinity and femininity, and gendered patterns of mobility in an area undergoing profound transformation. The innovative and multi-disciplinary research aims at filling the gap in studies determined by large-scale political, economic and strategic concerns through grounded textual and ethnographic perspectives, highlighting the continuities and transformations in vernacular economic and gender regimes as lived and experienced by women and men in the Upper Mekong region.