Ref ID:	25641
Ref Type:	Book Section in a Series
Authors:	Baird, Ian G.
Title:	The case of the Brao: revisiting physical borders, ethnic identities and spatial and social organisation in the hinterlands of Southern Laos and Northeastern Cambodia
Date:	2008
Source:	Recherches nouvelles sur le Laos
Publisher:	Paris
Edition:	18
Notes:	Alternate title: New research on Laos
Abstract:	The ethnic Broa people of Southern Laos and Northeastern Cambodia have a particular concept of spatial organisation that they call "huntre". This defines a certain type of socio-political and cultural organisation associated with certain beliefs and livelihood requirements, and which requires a particular kind of spatial organisation, including the creation of physical borders between social groups that define village territories. The spatial organisation of the Brao is different from the mandala system that dominated lowland hierarchal principalities and kingdoms in pre-colonial mainland Southeast Asia, and it also differs from how the French and British envisioned social and spatial organisation at the end of the 19th century. It may well be that egalitarian societies like the Bao, with a lack of hierarchy beyond the village level, relied more on territorial spatial organisation to ensure social order than the Lao, Siamese and the Khmer.
Date Created:	9/30/2008
Editors:	Goudineau, Yves Lorrillard, Michel
Volume:	18
Page Start:	595
Page End:	620
Series Title:	Études thématiques