Introduction: The Study of the State in Laos

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Notes

1. This special issue benefited from a Philippe Wiener-Anspach Foundation grant that allowed Holly High, at the time Research Fellow at Cambridge University (Clare Hall), to spend a short period at the Université libre de Bruxelles. The editors warmly thank the Foundation for this valuable assistance.

2. Tigo, one of the main telecommunication companies in Laos at the time, has been renamed Beeline since its acquisition by another company.

3. 2009 was the 60^th anniversary of the founding of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Army, and such billboards were common that year.

4. This apparent inconsistency is reminiscent of the old debates on “sacral kingship” as an institution bringing fertility to the country (on a symbolic level), and at the same time as a curse, for its incumbent’s power will eventually wane and threaten the kingdom’s well-being (de Heusch, 2009).

5. His reluctance to consider some local polities as “states” was not new: Condominas (1990 [1976], p. 40), for example, made a clear distinction between the polities in the more open spaces of river valleys, such as the Middle Mekong, which he viewed as centralised “states” looking to the exemplary “hydraulic city” of the Khmer; and those in the mountains that were not states, but feudal societies.

6. Wolters himself, however, appeared to have understood the mandala as much more continuous with the modern state (Reynolds, 2008).

7. By contrast, Walker (1999), in his study of trade on the Upper Mekong, has shown how smuggling is in fact facilitated by the regulatory schemes of Laos and neighbouring countries; his story is one of intertwinement.