Natural Potency and Political Power: Forests and State Authority in Contemporary Laos. Sarinda Singh.

Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2012. x and 185 pp., maps, photos, notes, index. $45.00 cloth (ISBN 978-0-8248-3571-2).

Singh unearths fertile ground within the realm of a well-trodden topic: state power and its relationship to forests, conservation, and poverty. Delivering a thoughtful and innovative take on power through its conceptualization as a manifestation of potential and potency, the author depicts the precarious legitimacy of state control over forest resources. The application of potential in the context of two geopolitically important sites, Vientiane and Nakai, connects beliefs pertaining to state power to the forest's natural potency and conveys aspirations for social change.

Achieving a notable level of depth and nuance considering the work's length, Singh delivers an insightful analysis of the social and political forces that shape worldviews of forests and wildlife in contemporary Laos. Grounding her research in what Tsing (2005) describes as “patchwork ethnography,” the author builds her theoretical framework around a basic premise: The Laos government exerts authority over forest resources, yet under control of the state, these resources are diminishing. Importantly, in the villages where effects of depleted and restricted access to forests are especially pronounced, local residents reap few, if any benefits from state-sanctioned forestry activities. From this postulation, Singh reconstrues power dynamics between rural Lao people with the state and with wildlife as a reflection of perceived potential.

Natural Potency and Political Power contains seven chapters (including a concluding chapter) that concisely outline the major conservation issues and their linkages to state authority and social inequities. Chapter 1 presents the text's theoretical framework; Singh roots her examination of state authority in the work of Evans (1998), where postsocialist states utilize and restrain ritual and symbolic structures. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the history of conservation discourse and environmental policy in Laos, challenging conventional understandings of Laotian attitudes relevant to forests by highlighting the socio-political tensions between order and disorder, or forests and wildlife and settled, agricultural areas adjacent to political centers of power.

The greatest achievement of Singh's research is her synthesis of wildlife consumption as social expression in chapter 3. Approaching wildlife as political symbols, the chapter explores how social identity and cultural binaries (rural–urban, Lao–foreigner) are reflected through normative values about wildlife consumption. Taking the concept a step further, chapter 4, “Ecopolitical Elephants,” problematizes elephants as national symbols in its analysis of their royalist and Buddhist associations that complicate the socialist Lao state's deployment of elephant symbolism, as well as their cultural connotations for Lao people.

Chapter 5 brings to the fore competing forest narratives in Lao: abundance versus decline. The section focuses on the latter as a threat to state authority due to expectations that the decline in forest resources should be accompanied by growing prosperity in rural regions. The author then details the state practices that strive to deflect attention away from its mismanagement of forest resources in response to the persistent poverty contradicting discourse that frames national development as an antipoverty initiative.

Chapter 6 analyzes the Lao state's discursive strategies to conceal forest decline and maintain legitimacy of its authority. This discussion implicates the Lao government not only in its exploitation of national resources, but in the livelihood experiences that result from the realization of forest discourse used to hide the weaknesses of state governance.

According to the arguments presented, conservation nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) feature prominently as actors shaping beliefs and values pertaining to forests, wildlife, and even cultural identity. Surprisingly, however, the text does not further engage with NGOs working in Laos or examine their navigation of the government's deceptive practices and inequitable policy outcomes in NGO efforts to redistribute control of and benefits from forestry projects to rural residents.

This book would benefit from a more robust methods section, not necessarily for the purpose of validation, but rather to clarify the questions driving Singh's research endeavors and to contextualize the topic at hand within her own experience working as an AusAID-funded volunteer in Laos. Although readers might catch occasional glimpses of Singh's positionality among the people she interviews, the book needs a more in-depth discussion of her ethnographic process. Further, although using transcription of Lao words and phrases elucidates culturally specific concepts absent from the English lexicon, the author's tendency to juxtapose direct English translations with Lao transcriptions is excessive. It distracts the reader from following the more substantive features of her argument.

Overall, by rooting her analysis in the perspectives of residents and officials in rural Laos, Singh breaks new ground critical to understanding socioenvironmental issues in Southeast Asia. Bringing to light a range of ideas from Vientiane and Nakai residents about conservation, development, and wildlife, Natural Potency and Political Power illuminates the dynamism of power relations between state and rural laity. Singh's work makes important theoretical contributions to scholarship in multiple disciplines, but the ethnography's conceptualization of potential, natural potency and its sociopolitical implications also has considerable practical value for conservation practitioners working in Southeast Asia.