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.

Keywords:

• Laos
• consensus
• experimentalism
• everyday politics and economy
• irrigation

Acknowledgments

This article is based partly on fieldwork that took place in 2002–03 while I was a PhD candidate at the Australian National University. I would like to thank the residents of Don Khiaw, who made me so welcome, and the faculty of the Anthropology program at ANU. The article has benefited from the lively exchange at the EUROSEAS 2010 conference where it was first presented, the encouraging support of Pierre Petit, and from the editors of Asian Studies Review and three anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. The name of the village and residents involved in the study have been altered to protect confidentiality.

2. The Asiatic Mode of Production has been influential in thinking about the state in Southeast Asia despite its obvious shortcomings (Reynolds, 2006, p. 36). See, for instance, Chattip (1984) and Condominas (1990, pp. 84–85). Breman (1980; 1988), however, has argued that it replays colonial fantasies of the isolated, unchanging, self-sufficient village, and does so by ignoring the evidence of a mobile, trading and dynamic rural populace. Geertz (1980) and Lansing (1991) have argued that complex irrigation does not require a centralised state and that power is more usefully thought of as arising from symbolic performance.

3. There is ample evidence from other ethnographic contexts of analogous political modalities; however, the concept of “experimental consensus” is my own. Tania Li has referred to “strategies” (1996) and “compromises” (2009) in rural Indonesia. Greenberg (2011) has discussed forms of “negotiating” in Serbia. Andrew Walker (1999) has employed my concept of experimental consensus to understand similar processes in rural Thailand. The examples of other work grappling with issues that have a resemblance to those dealt with here are truly legion, and a full survey is beyond the scope of this article. My aim here is to think through the example of irrigation in Laos and to develop from this an understanding of consensus politics that can be applied both in Laos and beyond.

4. This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in rural Laos completed initially for 16 months in 2002–03 with subsequent return visits of 2 weeks to 1 month conducted often since then. Other publications dealing with my experiences in the field and reflections on methodology can be found in High (2010; 2011).

5. The 85hp pump was installed by a private company with the use of village labour. One person per household dug the water distribution canals for 8 days, unpaid. The 85hp machine pumps water into one long, earthen canal with several minor canals branching off into fields, and one pipe bridge to allow the water to cross a gully. Water is channelled by opening or closing weirs in the large and smaller canals. The large pump partially irrigates the fields of 8 households.

6. Officials reported that households were selected based on criteria (i.e. those who put in a proposal for one, and whose land was deemed to be suitable for irrigation). Recipients included all of the 3 school teachers in the village, the former village chief, and 2 other families.

7. The concept of “Irrigation Management Transfer” and associated jargon (such as “Water Users’ Groups”) are part of a broader, global trend in development planning that promotes the creation of community groups to manage and maintain their own irrigation projects, rather than relying on the state. This drive has generated a healthy critical literature: Mosse (1997), writing of similar efforts in India, criticises the underlying Orientalist assumption that an indigenous, cooperative community pre-existed the project, waiting only to be recovered by the intervention of irrigation transfer workers. Rap (2005) points out that, rather than fostering local autonomy, Irrigation Management Transfer in practice creates a proliferation of “hydrocrats” and bureaucratic control over resources. Molle (2009) writes more generally of the move towards integrated river-basin planning management. These analyses are valuable and strong parallels are evident in the Lao case. Rather than rehearsing these arguments here, my interest is to investigate that gap between policy and practice.

8. I am grateful to a reviewer for Asian Studies Review for suggesting this additional example.