Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book utilizes informal, culturally grounded folk narratives to describe an ‘environmental ethic’ of cultural similarities between communities of Southeast Asia and Northeast India. It provides a platform for a new voice in the construction and reconstruction of Zhuang identity in the larger public sphere. The book describes how the digitisation of the folk, through animation in this case, brings it into the world of broadcast entertainment. It also describes a chronology of practice of oral knowledge systems. The book analyses how this particular form relates to the production and perpetuation of the identities of people, their place-making strategies, including sensitivity to issues of sustainability, and the power structures articulated within the community. It offers a way of looking at living experience and transformation it has undergone – both for people and communities.