“This compelling study – one of the best integrated volumes I have read – traces the precarious livelihoods of ethnic minority farmers producing spices under two related processes. The first is global commodity chains, which the chapters follow from node to node along long-standing relations of trust. The second is misguided state-driven interventions to limit farmers’ land and get them to produce monocrops. These combined processes threaten farmers in the borderlands between Vietnam and China, while international traders of these lucrative spices become rich.”