ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I juxtapose two events, the photo-documentation of traditional tribal culture and a sub-district level fun-fair in the same village, to field questions about the identity of the people I did research with. Both events concern the upland ethnic minorities in this area (Mien and Hmong ‘hill tribes’), and point to various issues of representation. Both representations concern the current context of state penetration and national integration in the hinterlands, and a reworking of culture and identity. I relate these to a national and middle-class discourse on culture in the countryside, to ways in which upland leaders construct their domains and prominence by drawing on the state, and to issues of how people, including farmers, make social entities through the projection of social visions, against the background of anthropologists finding ethnic groups.
