Civility and savagery

"This is a book about the changing historical discourses of social differentiation and distinction. It challenges many conventional ideas about 'ethnicity', and foregrounds indigenous ethnographies and historiographies. It examines issues that are crucial in currently renewed debates on cultural nationalism, irredentism, ethnic dispersal and social pluralism. It pioneers new approaches to comparative regional studies by focusing on the numerous and socially complex Tai states of East Asia, which were spread over areas of contemporary Burma, China, Malaysia and Vietnam as well as Laos and Thailand, and which are beginning to rediscover ancient affinities."--BOOK JACKET.