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Contesting imagined communities: Politics of script and Tai cosmopolitanism in upland Vietnam

Based on ethnographic and historical research, this article characterizes the politics of Tai script as an instance of cosmopolitanism. The Tai, Vietnam’s third largest ethnic group, reside in the northwestern highlands. Because of their spatial formation in the past, the Tai have maintained their heterogeneous politics of space and identity even under the socialist and post-socialist regime. This study of Tai orthography politics indicates that political space constructed by literacy politics has long been contested. As opposed to the more commonly known littoral cosmopolitanism, this study of the Tai script expands the understanding of Southeast Asian cosmopolitanism from a mountain mainland’s perspective.