Abstract
Grant Evans’ body of work on Laos consistently sought to understand how peasant society responded to political, social and economic change. As the Lao peasantry became ever more integrated both nationally and within the wider Southeast Asian region, and relations of market exchange came to dominate rural life, Evans maintained the need to reflect on Laos’ peasant roots to understand resulting pathways of agrarian change. This paper reconnects with this discussion in the contemporary Lao context, focusing on three dimensions of mobility: the widening spatial and sectoral ‘footprints’ of rural livelihoods; physical movement within and beyond rural settings in Laos; and reflections on issues of differentiation. We first track the political and policy changes that have most strongly influenced rural life since Evans’ early research on collectivisation, before exploring ways in which spatial integration, subsistence-to-commercial transition and migration have situated the remnants of Lao peasant society in a world of flows.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 160-180 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Australian Journal of Anthropology |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Aug 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The first author's fieldwork received financial assistance from the Graduate Research Support Scheme of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, and his contribution to this paper was supported by the Asia Research Institute. We also note the support provided by a Singapore Ministry of Education grant, ‘Asian Smallholders: Transformation and Persistence’ (MOE2015-T2-1-014), led by Eric Thompson.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Australian Anthropological Society
Keywords
- agrarian change
- collectivisation
- economic integration
- Laos
- peasants
- subsistence farming