Panel

Panel title: The banalities and intimacies of power in Laos: New perspectives on state and society
Download abstracts
Panel conveners and addresses:
Pierre Petit (Universite̾̾ Libre de Bruxelles e-mail: Pipetit@ulb.ac.be)
Holly High (The University of Sydney e-mail: Holly.High@usyd.edu.au)

The aim of this panel is to deepen our understanding of the Lao state through a renewal of analytical standpoints and topics. Scholars emphasize that Laos’ very existence stems from historical contingencies (as for any country, we should add). Its evolutions have been analyzed mostly through political and institutional lenses, or via notions of a national culture. This has fostered a widespread view of the state as ‘apart from’ the population and run by a small elite imposing its views on society. Some authors have stressed the pragmatic character of the regime, others its authoritarianism, but few have attempted a study of the state through its banality and its routines, its tiny administrative procedures, everyday interactions between citizens and civil servants, urban legends, accusations of corruption, jokes and plays on words, or the boring rhetoric of village authorities. While these may seem trivial, they are central for an analysis of the state as a social and cultural construct. The question is not to shift the approach from above to below, but rather from outside to inside, without excluding the elites and without crediting them with a mysterious exteriority to Lao society.

Such an approach seeks to disentangle some paradoxes observable in Lao society. We think here of the recurring critiques of the state, so common in informal conversations, that coexist with no less sincere patriotic statements and a committed defense of national institutions. We think too of the so formal regulations that are enforced in so oddly casual ways; of the ambiguous relations the Lao have with their Thai and Vietnamese neighbors, or rather with the values they epitomize; of the official discourse on the multi-ethnic nation that contrasts with the actual interethnic relations; and so on. An analysis of clientelism, regionalism and corrupt practices will also help us in this endeavor, however sensitive these topics may be in Laos. While banned by the regime, these are nevertheless pervasive, and Lao people enjoy revealing, under the seal of trust and secrecy, tales of such instances, networks, and clienteles. Rather than falling back on normative approaches, we aim rather to investigate how these practices are embedded in social contexts; how they knit together multilayered networks and unveil the morality of an occult economy. We think also of the development industry and its community of experts, who must in turn collaborate with local technocrats schooled in the projects and the principles of new governance, and the transformations this has entailed.

We call for empirical, thick and contextual studies of the everyday discourses and practices of the state in Laos. Refusing reductionist analyses, this panel calls for papers that engage with innovative topics, methodological pluralism and epistemological reflexivity in addressing the complex and continuous invention of the Lao state through the lens of its tiniest details.