Jinba Tenzin has been one of the more prominent critics of it. He makes the argument that it's more complicated than just "outsiders" and "china", but rather th

Jinba Tenzin has been one of the more prominent critics of it. He makes the argument that it's more complicated than just "outsiders" and "china", but rather that there's a whole range of overlapping, marginalized identities and strategic use of power-relations to evolve things according to various positions. His objection is basically that zomia homogenizes marginalized identities and doesn't fully capture their relationships with each other or with the state. The convergence zone paper is probably the one to read for this. Caroline Humphrey also gave a talk [1] that I've wanted to cite, but haven't found an excuse for. She's not against the idea, but she brings up a lot of issues with applying it to areas like like Tyva/Khövsgöl, as these were clearly state-spaces despite fitting all the other characteristics. She runs into basically the same criticism as Tenzin in that zomia doesn't encapsulate precisely what we intuitively understand as people about these marginal border spaces. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297392497_IS_ZOMIA_A_USEFUL_IDEA_FOR_INNER_ASIA_The_Lattimore_Lecture_2014_Ulaanbaatar_Mongolia https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297392497_IS_ZOMIA_...