From June Teufel Dreyer:<\/p>\n
When I went to the supermarket yesterday for my weekly sashimi fix, I noticed that the preparer seemed to have cloned herself.\u00a0 It was her brother (the preparers wear caps concealing their hair and the two looked virtually identical). Sister was instructing brother on exactly how I like the sashimi in a language that sounded unfamiliar. Ever curious,\u00a0 I had to ask.\u00a0 \u201cZo,\u201d she replied \u201cZ, O.\u201d\u00a0 I looked it up this morning, discovered that these Chin<\/a> tribes are related to the Naga<\/a> who, with the Mizo<\/a>, were part of a longstanding effort by the Chinese to torment the Indian government.<\/p>\n Sometime when there aren\u2019t other customers waiting\u2014this may never happen—I\u2019ll ask how she and her brother got to Miami and my neighborhood Publix store.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yes, there really are a people called \"Zo<\/a>\".\u00a0 They are a sizable congeries of Tibeto-Burman peoples scattered across the northeastern states of India, northwestern Myanmar (Burma), and the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh.\u00a0 They are also called Kuki, Chin, Lushai, and most prominently Zomi (\"highlanders\").<\/p>\n Hearing the latter name rings a bell for me, since it reminds me of the geographical term \"Zomia\", coined by the University of Amsterdam\u00a0 historian Willem van Schendel on the basis of the ethnonym.\u00a0 By this term, van Schendel intended \"the huge mass of mainland Southeast Asia that has historically been beyond the control of governments based in the population centers of the lowlands\".\u00a0 (Source<\/a>)<\/p>\n The term \"Zomia\" was later taken up by Yale political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott<\/a> who developed:<\/p>\n the concept of Zomia in his 2009 book The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia<\/a><\/i> to argue that the continuity of the ethnic cultures living there provides a counter-narrative to the traditional story about modernity<\/a>: namely, that once people are exposed to the conveniences of modern technology and the modern state, they will assimilate<\/a>. Rather, the tribes<\/a> in Zomia are conscious refugees<\/a> from state rule and state-centered economies.<\/p>\n