Content area
Full Text
Abstract
This article argues that throughout Hmong history, Hmong agriculture and the associated economic system have been determining forces affecting and giving rise to many social customs and religious beliefs. The paper provides numerous historical and contemporary examples of how Hmong agriculture practices in Asia have shaped important aspects of Hmong culture and religious beliefs.
Introduction
In Marx's view, the means of subsistence of a group of people constitute the form through which they express their way of life; and what they are depends on the material conditions determining "what they produce and how they produce" (Marx, 1965: 121, original emphasis). This has been interpreted as meaning that for Marx, the economy determines the structures and contents of the institutions of society, but Engels has argued that other elements are no less influential on the process of social evolution even if economic conditions play the major part in the last instance (Engels, 1970: 76 -77). This theme has been explored further in regard to modes of production in pre-capitalist societies by Amin (1976), Godelier (1977), Gunn (1990), Meillassoux et al. (1981), Hindess and Hirst (1975) and Terray (1972), among others. Binney (1968: 549), for example, states that with the White Hmong he studied in Thailand, "the social system is largely dependent on the continuation of the economic system."
Although Marxist economic determinism may not be a valid theoretical explanation of social organization for all human societies, an attempt will be made here to see if it is applicable to the Hmong. I will examine the way in which Hmong people living in villages in the highlands of China, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Burma usually make a living as subsistence farmers and how this relates to their social institutions in order to see how much agriculture affects the making of Hmong traditions. I will attempt to reconstruct Hmong agriculture through historical sources to find the extent to which the economy influences, or is influenced by, other spheres of living. While some may say that "you are what you produce", the Hmong may be better characterized as "you are today what you used to produce in the past" as a group, especially after their recent dispersion in culturally different and economically complex Western societies.
In...