Hjorleifur Jonsson
Associate Professor
Ph.D., Sociocultural Anthropology, Cornell University
SHESC Themes: Culture, Heritage and Identity; Global Dynamics and Regional Interactions
Field Specializations: Ethnicity, Political Culture and Cultural Politics, Identity, Spectacle, History, Sports, Cultural Anthropology
Regional Foci: Asia, North America (USA)
Contact: Hjorleifur Jonsson, MC 203P
Research:
Hjorleifur Jonsson has focused his research on the fringes of the state, particularly among hinterland farming populations in mainland Southeast Asia. His work has concerned the dynamics of identity, cultural practice and social life at the intersections of minority communities and state structures. The focus of his work has ranged among regional history and contemporary identity work and political protest. Most of his research has been among Mien people in Thailand (since 1990), but he has also done research in Cambodia and Vietnam, and recently started work among Mien in the US who are refugees from Laos.
Jonsson's current work concerns contemporary identity work that has multiple and complex relations to history and repeatedly jumps scales among the local, the national and the transnational—through festivals, sports, publications, interactive and other media, travel, music, religious practice and livelihood.
Along with writing articles and a book, Jonsson has done a video documentary on a festival of sports and culture that brought together representatives of Mien from all over Thailand (see Mien Sports & Heritage Film link above). Other work has concerned images of ethnic difference in Vietnam, in museums and propaganda posters and the like, questions of ethnic labeling, health projects and the notion of health behavior in Cambodia, and trends in Thai-language depictions of ethnic minority highland peoples.
Select Publications:
Jonsson, H. (2005). Mien relations: Mountain people and the state control in Thailand. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Jonsson, H. (2004). Mien alter-natives in Thai modernity. Anthropological Quarterly, 77(3), 675-706.
Jonsson, H. (2003). Mien through sports and culture. Ethnos, 68(3), 317-40.
Jonsson, H. (2002). Other attractions in Vietnam. Asian Ethnicity, 3(2), 233-248.