As a cultural anthropologist, my beginning framework is the cultural meaning of space in Akha society at the time of fieldwork (Chapter 3). Akha concepts of space differ from western concepts in that spatial directions have a different cultural significance and space has a dynamic nature: gỳlàn, the life force, flows through it and has a direction. To oppose this direction is to go against the life force. This life force – of crops, people and animals –, and the continuity of their lines, are of central concern to the Akha. The means to tap into that life force has been passed down to the Akha by their ancestors, and they do not need outside intermediaries. The Akha qualitative notion of space and the directional flow of potency associated with it gives meaning to multiple arenas of Akha life: from the small yet significant distinction between two different types of tea that contrastively mark the world of the inside as separate from the world of the outside and, at the same time, produce that separation, to the large scale spatial practices that create the boundaries of an Akha polity in opposition to lowland states that are dangerous and draining. Spatial practices are embodied knowledge, a powerful nondiscursive (and thus not fully conscious) mechanism for reinforcing a positive valuation of Akha identity (and its access to the life force through the ancestors), and for providing both a cognitive model and a visceral response for dealing with outsiders.

After discussing some theoretical issues to take into account when exploring spatial practices in Chapter 1, I turned in Chapter 2 to a look at the historical and political-economic circumstances in which an integrative complex of Akha spatial practices developed. This placed Akha meaning systems within a broader framework of regional meaning systems and political economy which was also historical.

Chapter 4 discussed how Akha concepts of space, when put into practice, were used to construct an autonomous Akha polity: the village that resisted incorporation in a supra-local polity. Chapter 5 looked at these same concepts and similar practices at the level of the household that both accedes to incorporation into a village and at other moments resists that incorporation. Thus, spatial practices can indicate contradictions and tensions within Akha society as well and cannot be reduced to state resistance alone.