World Food Policy • Vol. 3, No. 2 / Vol. 4, No. 1 • Fall 2016 / Spring 2017
Land, State, and Society in Laos:
Ethnographies of Land Policies
Pierre Petit 1
Abstract
Land policies are a contentious topic in Laos. The banning of swid-
den agriculture in the 1990s prompted widespread resettlements,
while land allocation was implemented during the same period;
the following decade saw massive land grabs. Unfavorable to small
farmers, these processes transformed everyday social relations
with land, which used to be managed at the village level but pres-
ently fall more and more within the administration’s domain. How-
ever, State employees are not alone in using a new lexicon to refer
to land issues; those impacted by such measures are also adopting
it to protect themselves, sometimes with relative success. Gossip
and rumor can affect the authorities’ decisions. And land policies
can never be implemented without vernacularization, which ends
up constructing a practical order on land negotiated—in uneven
terms—by the local administration and the local actors. Ethno-
graphic case studies throughout Laos illustrate how the state has
become an inescapable mediator between people and land, trans-
forming the social fabric and reshaping people’s agency.
Keywords: Laos, Anthropology of the State, Micro-Politics, Land
Policies, Land Grabbing, Resettlement
Resumen
Las políticas de tierras son un tema controvertido en Laos. La pro-
hibición de la agricultura itinerante en los años 1990 resultó en
muchos movimientos de personas, mientras que la asignación de
tierras fue implementada durante el mismo periodo; la siguiente
década vio apropiaciones de tierra masivas. Al no ser favorables
para los pequeños granjeros, estos procesos transformaron relacio-
1
Pierre Petit is Senior Research Fellow at the Belgian National Funds for Scientific research (FNRS).
He is the director of the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains at the Université
libre de Bruxelles (ULB). He currently works on mobility, youth, and religion among the Tai Vat of
Houa Phan (Laos). [email protected]
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doi: 10.18278/wfp.3.2.4.1.5