Introduction

On both sides of the Sino-Vietnamese borderline, across a frontier region that incorporates upland northern Vietnam and southeast Yunnan, rural livelihoods are being tested, negotiated, and transformed in response to an inflow of industrialized agricultural methods and far-reaching commodity markets. Commercial intensification, resource- extraction projects, market liberalization, and new infrastructure and communications technologies are all playing key roles in diversifying the life projects of local, rural inhabitants. Since the start of reforms in the late 1970s in China and mid-1980s in Vietnam loosened the grip of these communist states over their flagging economies, this frontier region has witnessed collective property regimes being reorganized into private land-use rights, the strong promotion of cash cropping, and shifting cultivators being encouraged to become permanent, settled farmers.

As an important conceptual marker, the term ‘frontier’ often denotes landscapes used for extracting natural resources, politically marginalized locales, or sites where minority ‘other’ populations dwell, in addition to other interpretations. The term therefore seems apt to describe these borderlands, although it is important to note that ‘borderlands’ and ‘frontiers’ are not always one and the same. Historically, the frontier concept had two divergent definitions. Frederick Jackson Turner, writing in 1894 about the colonial conquest of the United States of America, (in)famously defined the frontier as ‘the meeting point between savagery and civilization’ (1894: 200). He drew a distinction between US and European versions of the frontier, suggesting that in contrast to the US version, the European frontier consists of ‘a fortified boundary line running through dense populations.’