Holly High

The implications of aspirations: reconsidering resettlement in Laos

Numerous scholarly publications and unpublished development reports have debated the merits of “resettlement” in Laos: the movement of predominantly rural people closer to government services or to new lowland fields. Advocates have argued that settlers benefit from closer incorporation with the state and markets; critics have countered that resettlement actually exacerbates poverty. Using two case studies of resettlement villages in Laos this study illustrates significantly differing experiences, but notes that the experiences also coalesce on key points. Resettlement taps into deeply held aspirations for poverty reduction and modernity among Lao rural residents. Settlers expectations were jarred, however, as they met with inadequate government services and lowered incomes. This tension between expectation and actualization cannot be encompassed simply in terms of the states domination of the people. Rather, settlers employed an experimental and aspiration- oriented mode of engaging with the project and, through it, the state. Settlers judged the lack of government services and charity to be the causes of the horrific conditions of resettlement villages, rather than resettlement itself. By highlighting the role of local aspirations, notions of modernity, and the experimental ethic, this examination of resettlement in Laos casts new light on how rural residents and officials achieve the “experimental consensus” on which these projects run.

INTERNAL RESETTLEMENT IN LAOS

In this response to an article by Holly High, “The Implications of Aspirations: Reconsidering Resettlement in Laos,” published in Critical Asian Studies in December 2008 (vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 531–50), the authors do not dispute the notion that many people in Laos have aspirations for modernity and development. However, they are at odds with High in two key ways. First, she only presents a selective reading of authors who have written critically about highland to lowland resettlement in Laos, thus misrepresenting some of their ideas. Second, the empirical evidence High provides is insufficient or inappropriate to support her argument that people who are being resettled from the uplands to the lowlands in Laos are supportive of these state-sponsored schemes because they fit with their aspirations for modernity. The authors are concerned that Highs article may inadvertently serve to justify the views of those who advocate and fund centrally planned resettlement of ethnic minorities in Laos and who believe that non-participatory and top-down resettlement is acceptable if increased funding is available and better planning is conducted, even when those targeted for relocation would rather not move.

Laos: Crisis and Resource Contestation

Laos in 2009 must be understood in terms of the broader context of ongoing crises that affected not only Laos, but also the region and indeed the globe. These include, primarily, the global financial crisis, the environmental crisis, and the food crisis, as well as Typhoon Ketsana and international outcry over the treatment of Hmong asylum seekers. While many of these critical situations have been developing for some time now, their cascading coalescence in 2009 gave this year a particular poignancy. They highlighted through stress and pressure not only Laos’s deep engagements in regional and global dependencies, but also fractures and weaknesses in the Lao political, economic, and social setting. In particular, they highlighted the potentials but also dangers associated with resource exploitation. While resource exploitation is now Laos’s main strategy for achieving development goals, the process is marked by unusually public conflict over associated rights and responsibilities. While this is unlikely to significantly undermine existing political arrangements, it is demonstrating the contradictions of political authority in contemporary Laos.

Introduction: The Study of the State in Laos

A Tigo mobile phone billboard in the capital of Xékong Province, photographed in 2009 (Figure 1), shows a young man on a bright blue skateboard. In the background are three other skateboards in red, yellow and green. In the foreground is a mobile phone camera, capturing the scene. The slogan reads, “Adding colour brings it to life! Open our world up wide”. It is tempting to think about this billboard in terms of a post-socialist Laos entering the era of globalisation with bravado: it features symbols of generic modern identities and internationally recognisable forms of consumption. Yet not far from this billboard in the same town, on the same day, was another Tigo-sponsored billboard (Figure 2). This one shows a young president Kaysone Phomvihane raising his fist. In the background is the red flag of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party bearing the hammer and sickle, with Lenin’s face emerging from a burst of rays. The slogan reads: “Lao People’s Democratic Republic: Peace Independence Democracy Unity Prosperity. Long live the glorious and dignified Lao People’s Revolutionary Party!” What is Tigo telling us here? Are these two billboards, placed in such proximity to one another, sending us mixed messages? Our sense is that, to the contrary, the message is quite clear: whatever “opening up” to the world is evident in Laos, whatever influence globalisation and capitalist investment might have, the role of the Party and army remains strong, and is even “glorious”. Such symbolisation of state is not limited to urban centres. Figure 3 shows a lak man (village post) in a Tai Wat village in the north of Houaphan Province: it is a wooden carving of a lingam that had recently been reinforced with cement to make it more long lasting, “like the Lao temples”. Asked why smaller posts surround the central lak man, the village chief explained that these were related to the central post in the same way auxiliary village-level administrative organisations are related to the village chief, the primary state agent at the village level. Nearby in a patch of forest is

Ritualising residency : Territory cults and a sense of place in Southern Lao PDR

Territory cults in southern Lao PDR exemplify the importance of ritual for the production of locality in an era of mobility. Here, the idea of village expressed in ritual incorporates scattered members who have ties of history and affection to village households—a view of residency that is extra-verted, inclusive and traverses space.

Experimental Consensus: Negotiating with the Irrigating State in the South of Laos

Abstract It is common to view Laos as a political culture prone to “consensus”, yet it is also true that policy is constantly changing there, often radically. If everyone is always “in consensus”, what can explain this change? I suggest that the answer is found in the particular kind of consensus at play: it is informed by a wider “experimentarian” ethic evident in rural Laos, where ideas (including the latest policies) are put to the test through practical implementation. The results of these experiments are used to validate policy change and reversal. This allows rural residents a degree of manoeuvrability in their engagements with the state that is striking given the “authoritarian” status of the current regime. It can explain and is used to justify, for instance, the oft-observed gap between policy and actual practice. This room for manoeuvre comes at the price of “playing the game”, at least for a while, of the latest policy fad, sometimes with disastrous consequences for rural livelihoods. I use the example of an irrigation project that was implemented in the south of Laos from 1999–2002 to examine “experimental consensus” at work as policy was received, engaged and eventually relinquished.

Anthropology and anarchy: Romance, horror or science fiction?

This article introduces the special issue by considering some of the relations between anthropology and anarchy, real and potential. Anarchy, I suggest, is a word already burdened with strong (and often divergent) emotional overtones: it is invested with both romance and horror. These overtones point to related ideas about human nature as either social and peaceable or antagonistic and competitive. But are these parables about human nature just science fiction, political claims dressed up in the garb of neutral observations of actually existing humanity? Time and again, the questions raised by anarchy point to anthropology for their resolution, particularly to the ethnographic record and the conclusions that might be drawn from its analysis. Yet the ethnographic record yields no easy resolution to these questions, in part, I argue, because of this prior overburdening which becomes particularly acute when the ethnographic subjects are already politically marginalized. In this introduction, I take a different tack, attempting to approach anarchy as banal and everyday, as one kind of social relation among others, and as thus amenable itself to ethnographic observation not only ‘out there’ and ‘back then’ but here and now.