Morrison K.D., Junker L.L. Forager-Traders in South and Southeast Asia: Long-Term Histories

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. — 312 p.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 foragertraders 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 analyze 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 reconceptualize our knowledge of foragertraders within the context of complex polities, populations, and economies in South and Southeast Asia.Kathleen D. Morrison is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Fields of Victory: Vijayanagara and the Course of Intensification (1995, reprinted 2000) and the editor, together with S.E. Alcock, T.N. D’Altroy, and C.M. Sinopoli, of Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History (Cambridge, 2001).Laura L. Junker is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Raiding, Trading and Feasting: The Political Economy of Philippine Chiefdoms (1999).