两千多年前，司马迁已发现西南地区存在着夜郎、滇等大大小小的地方性政权，同时还分布着众多无君长统属的人群。作者在过去的著作中，以贵州西北部地区为例，探讨了有着自身地方性政权传统的人群，逐渐融入中国大一统王朝国家的历史进程。本书主要通过6个人物的故事讲述了“彝族”精英是如何争取本族的独立族属地位的，原来他们一直被称为“倮”，从身份与记忆的层面，探讨这一进程对近代西南地区的影响，从而在学理上为中国多民族国家的现实性与合理性进行说明，并揭示西方学者的一些偏激观点在学理上所存在的问题。

"In terms of its richness of data, this is one of the best ethnographies I have read about any locale anywhere. It is also exemplary in its novel and creative synthesis of literary analysis and more conventional social science-oriented anthropology. . . . The book has a consistent focus, both disturbing and riveting, on the ways that pain, loss, and social upheaval are woven into people's attempts to reconstitute new lives over some fifty years of rapid social change."—P. Steven Sangren, author of Chinese Sociologics



"Mueggler writes with uncommon grace, elegance, and charm. . . . Readers will come away from this book with lasting memories of various aspects of these peoples’ lives—death, hunger, fear, sex, humor—and with an understanding of their all-too-powerful humanity as well as their genius for adapting their lives to the often-changing demands of the communist state."

Robert B. Edgerton, author of Death or Glory



"A rare work that really gives us a new way of thinking about what modernity (or one version of it, anyway) means to people who have had it thrust upon them involuntarily."

Kenneth Pomeranz, author of The Great Divergence