Bureaucratic migrants and the potential of prosperity in upland Laos

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

Volumn 42, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 211-231

  Singh, Sarinda ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BUREAUCRACY; MIGRATION; POLITICAL POWER; RURAL POPULATION; SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT; UPLAND REGION;

LAOS; NAKAI PLATEAU;

EID: 79959306163     PISSN: 00224634     EISSN: 14740680     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022463411000026     Document Type: Article

References (87)

1. Hjorleifur Jonsson, 'Yao minority identity and the location of difference in the South China borderlands', Ethnos, 65, 1 (2000): 76.
2. See also Charles F. Keyes, The golden peninsula: Culture and adaptation in mainland Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1995);
3. And Andrew Turton, Civility and savagery: Social identity in Tai states (Richmond: Curzon Press, 2000).
4. For example, Wolfram H. Dressler and Sarah Turner, 'The persistence of social differentiation in the Philippine uplands', Journal of Development Studies, 44, 10 (2008): 1450-73;
5. and Tania M. Li, 'Engaging simplifications: Community-based resource management, market processes and state agendas in upland Southeast Asia', World Development, 30, 2 (2002): 265-83. (Pubitemid 34207103)
6. For example, Jonsson, 'Yao minority identity';
7. Sarinda Singh, Natural potency and political power: Forests and state authority in contemporary Laos (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, in press);
8. Kenneth Sillander, 'Local integration and coastal connections in interior Kalimantan: The case of the nalin taun ritual among the Bentian', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies [hereafter, JSEAS], 37, 2 (2006): 315-34;
9. Janet C. Sturgeon, 'Border practices, boundaries, and the control of resource access: A case from China, Thailand and Burma', Development and Change, 35, 3 (2004): 463-84; (Pubitemid 39047877)
10. Deborah Tooker, 'Putting the mandala in its place: A practice-based approach to the spatialization of power on the Southeast Asian "periphery" - The case of the Akha', Journal of Asian Studies, 55, 2 (1996): 323-58; (Pubitemid 126820338)
11. and Andrew Walker, The legend of the golden boat: Regulation, trade and traders in the borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Burma (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1999).
12. Hjorleifur Jonsson, 'Review of "Civility and savagery: Social identity in Tai states'", JSEAS, 32, 3 (2001): 466.
13. Tooker, 'Putting the mandala in its place'; Edmund R Leach, Political systems of highland Burma: A study of Kachin social structure (London: Athlone Press, 1970).
14. But see, Vatthana Pholsena, Post-war Laos: The politics of culture, history and identity (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2006).
15. Civilizing the margins: Southeast Asian government policies for the development of minorities, ed. Christopher R Duncan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 4-5.
16. Deborah Tooker, 'Modular modern: Shifting forms of collective identity among the Akha of northern Thailand', Anthropological Quarterly, 77, 2 (2004): 261.
17. See also, Paul T. Cohen, 'Resettlement, opium and labour dependence: Akha-Tai relations in northern Laos', Development and Change, 31,1 (2000): 179-200; (Pubitemid 30119408)
18. Jean Michaud, 'Handling mountain minorities in China, Vietnam and Laos: From history to current concerns', Asian Ethnicity, 10, 1 (2009): 25-49;
19. and James C. Scott, The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University, 2009).
20. Akhil Gupta, 'Blurred boundaries: The discourse of corruption, the culture of politics, and the imagined state', American Ethnologist, 22, 2 (1995): 375-402;
21. Michael Herzfeld, Cultural intimacy: Social poetics in the nation-state, 2nd edn. (New York: Routledge, 2005);
22. David Koh, 'Negotiating the socialist state in Vietnam through local administrators: The case of karaoke shops', Sojourn, 16, 2 (2001): 279-305;
23. Pholsena, Post-war Laos.
24. For example, Andrew Hardy, 'Strategies of migration to upland areas in contemporary Vietnam', Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 41, 1 (2000): 23-34; (Pubitemid 30416654)
25. Li, 'Engaging simplifications', p. 268;
26. and Michaud, 'Handling mountain minorities', p. 27.
27. On mobility in Laos, see Asian Development Bank, Broken lives: Trafficking in human beings in Lao People's Democratic Republic (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Asian Development Bank, 2009);
28. Ian G. Baird and Bruce Shoemaker, 'Unsettling experiences: Internal resettlement and international aid agencies in Laos', Development and Change, 38, 5 (2007): 865-88; (Pubitemid 350147665)
29. Cohen, 'Resettlement, opium and labour dependence';
30. Olivier Evrard and Yves Goudineau, 'Planned resettlement, unexpected migrations and cultural trauma in Laos', Development and Change, 35, 5 (2004): 937-62; (Pubitemid 40098908)
31. Sverre Molland, 'Human trafficking and poverty reduction: Two sides of the same coin?', Juth Pakai (New Thought): Perspectives on Lao Development, 4 (2005): 27-37;
32. Jonathan Rigg, 'Moving lives: Migration and livelihoods in the Lao PDR', Population, Space and Place, 13, 3 (2007): 163-78; (Pubitemid 46779428)
33. and Jonathan Rigg, Living with transition in Laos: Living with change in Southeast Asia (London: Routledge Curzon, 2005);
34. and Walker, The legend of the golden boat.
35. See also, GOL, 'National growth and poverty eradication strategy (NGPES)' (Vientiane: GOL, 2003), pp. 4-5, http://www.undplao.org/newsroom/publication/ Ngpes/Lao%20PDR%20-%20NGPES%20-% 20Main%20Document.pdf (last accessed on 16 Mar. 2011);
36. and GOL, 'Forestry strategy to the year 2020 (FS 2020) of the Lao PDR' (Vientiane: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, GOL, 2005), foreword, http://dof.maf.gov.la/docs/FS2020.pdf (last accessed on 16 Mar. 2011).
37. Hans-Dieter Evers, 'The bureaucratization of Southeast Asia', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 29, 4 (1987): 666-85.
38. Peter Calvert, 'Internal colonisation, development and environment', Third World Quarterly, 22, 1 (2001): 51-63; (Pubitemid 32258649)
39. see also Scott, The art of not being governed.
40. Peter Vandergeest and Nancy L. Peluso, 'Territorialization and state power in Thailand', Theory and Society, 24, 3 (1995): 385-426.
41. Territorialisation conveys less negative connotations than notions of internal colonisation; Li, 'Engaging simplifications', p. 277.
42. Michael Goldman, Imperial nature: The World Bank and struggles for social justice in the age of globalization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005);
43. but also see Sarinda Singh, 'World Bank-directed development?: Negotiating participation in the Nam Theun 2 hydropower project in Laos', Development and Change, 40, 3 (2009): 487-507.
44. Mimi Sheller and John Urry, 'The new mobilities paradigm', Environment and Planning A, 38, 2 (2006): 208.
45. See Gupta, 'Blurred boundaries'.
46. For example, United Nations Public Administration Network [hereafter UNPAN], 'Lao People's Democratic Republic public administration country profile' (Vientiane: UNPAN, 2005), http:// unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/ documents/un/unpan023237.pdf (last accessed on 16 Mar. 2011);
47. Martin Stuart-Fox, Politics and reform in the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Political economy of development working paper no. 1, p. 11 (Williamsburg: The College of William and Mary, 2004).
48. Sarinda Singh, 'Living within the state: A dormitory community in central Laos', in Tai lands and Thailand: Community and state in Southeast Asia, ed. Andrew Walker (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), 2009), pp. 141-65.
49. Grant Evans, A short history of Laos: The land in between (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2002).
50. Singh, Natural potency and political power. For northern Laos, see, for example, Walker, The legend of the golden boat.
51. Martin Stuart-Fox, 'The political culture of corruption in the Lao PDR', Asian Studies Review, 30, 1 (2006), 61.
52. Bertil Lintner, 'Laos: At the crossroads', Southeast Asian Affairs, 2008 (2008): 179.
53. Singh, 'Living within the state'.
54. Evers, 'Bureaucratization of Southeast Asia', p. 682.
55. See also, Koh, 'Negotiating the socialist state in Vietnam'.
56. GOL, 'Forestry strategy to the year 2020', p. 67.
57. Joel M. Halpern, Government, politics, and social structure in Laos: A study of tradition and innovation, Monograph Series No. 4 (New Haven: Southeast Asia Studies, Yale University, 1964), p. 82.
58. Evans, A short history of Laos, p. 179.
59. Halpern, 'Government, politics, and social structure in Laos', p. 41.
60. Ronald B. St John, 'The political economy of Laos: Poor state or poor policy?', Asian Affairs, 37, 2 (2006): 175-90;
61. GOL, 'National growth and poverty eradication strategy', p. 47.
62. Halpern, 'Government, politics, and social structure in Laos', pp. 36, 71.
63. Elsewhere, I consider poverty alleviation and social equality as 'myths of governance' that dominate official rhetoric, but are contradicted by daily life in the forestry dormitory; Singh, 'Living within the state', pp. 149-58.
64. Rigg, 'Moving lives', p. 165. A couple of officials also noted that those with money and connections are able to avoid such requirements.
65. Molland, 'Human trafficking and poverty reduction', pp. 29, 36, 33.
66. UNPAN, 'Lao People's Democratic Republic public administration country profile', p. 5.
67. Mary B. Mills, 'Migrant labor takes a holiday: Reworking modernity and marginality in contemporary Thailand', Critique of Anthropology, 19, 1 (1999): 31-51.
68. See also, Singh, Natural potency and political power.
69. Peter A. Jackson, 'The Thai regime of images', Sojourn, 19, 2 (2004): 181.
70. See Anonymous, 'Lessons learned from the district upland development and conservation project, Lao PDR' (Vientiane: World Bank, 2003).
71. James C. Scott, Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
72. See Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella, 'Migration, money and masculinity in Kerala', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.), 6, 1 (2000): 117-33.
73. Craig J. Reynolds, 'Power', in Critical terms for the study of Buddhism, ed. Donald S. Lopez Jr. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 216-17.
74. Tooker, 'Putting the mandala in its place', pp. 342-3.
75. See also Andrew Walker, 'Matrilineal spirits, descent and territorial power in northern Thailand', in Australian Journal of Anthropology, 17, 2 (2006): 198.
76. Tooker, 'Putting the mandala in its place', pp. 332, 327-8.
77. See also, Keyes, The golden peninsula, pp. 41-2, 66.
78. Thongchai Winichakul, 'The quest for "siwilai": A geographical discourse of civilizational thinking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Siam', Journal of Asian Studies, 59, 3 (2000): 531.
79. See, for example, Pholsena, Post-war Laos; and Stuart-Fox, 'Politics and reform'.
80. Political legitimacy in Southeast Asia: The quest for moral authority, ed. Muthiah Alagappa (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).
81. Singh, Natural potency and political power.
82. For example, Keith Barney, 'Laos and the making of a " relational" resource frontier', Geographical Journal, 175, 2 (2009): 146-59;
83. and Hjorleifur Jonsson, 'Forest products and peoples: Upland groups, Thai polities, and regional space', Sojourn, 13, 1 (1998): 1-37.
84. PM rallies defence of protected forests', Vientiane Times, 2 Mar. 2007.
85. Singh, Natural potency and political power.
86. Sheller and Urry, 'The new mobilities paradigm', p. 211.
87. See also Singh, 'Living within the state'.