Mobility and Stability in a Tai Vat Village (Laos)

Abstract

This article explores how Tai highlanders experience mobility. The Tai Vat living in Houaphan Province, Laos, first fled Vietnam at the end of the nineteenth century, and again during the First Indochina War. They presently engage in migrations to rural areas of the Mekong Plain as well as to Vientiane, the destination favoured by Tai youth. They relate their current mobilities to their past experiences, and also to issues of ‘development’. Though migrants are driven by a pioneer ethos, this does not preclude attachment to their village, as exemplified by the stability of the lak man, the ritual post at the centre of collective ritual activity. Local conceptions of mobility and stability are central to understanding these Tai highlanders’ sense of history and identity, as well as the interactions they have with the lowlands and the national space at large.

Keywords:

• Highland/Lowland Relations
• Oral History
• Mobility
• Migration
• Stability
• Tai

Acknowledgements

I especially want to thank Amphone Monephachanh and Sommay Singthong for their invaluable help during these last years.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

[1] Houay Yong is the home village of the Tai Vat settled in the lowland village of Thongnamy where I have carried out research since 2003 (Petit 2006, 2008). My knowledge of Houay Yong is based on my field research in Thongnamy, and on five short trips (one to three weeks) to Houay Yong and five week-long visits to the district of Yen Chau, Vietnam, during the period 2009–14.

[2] Scott (2009, 142–145) acknowledges that the displacement of highlanders sometimes led them to more hospitable polities, but this issue is much less developed in his book than the ‘exit option’.

[3] People who disrespect the lak man risk death. The post-revolutionary period was one of contempt for ritual activity. I was told that some men who urinated on the lak man out of bravado subsequently died. In 2010, according to the elder in charge of the lak man of Na Khou (a hamlet of Houay Yong), a man died after taking meat from the shrine.

[4] Archaimbault (2014, 198) also used the term lak man to describe the city pillar of Louang Phrabang; his translation of man is ‘solid, firm’.

[5] Thongsôm (an elder in Houay Yong) relates that long ago a woman was pregnant for twelve months—an extraordinary feat which announced that her child would be a king. The Vietnamese emperor, fearing such a rival, organised the assassination of the mother-to-be. However, Chieng Dong is considered to remain a place full of potentialities for the Tai Vat, as reported by both those living in Vietnam and in Laos.

[6] However personal such expressions might seem, they are also in line with popular songs about the homesickness of young rural migrants that are broadcast throughout the nation.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Belgian National Funds for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS) and conducted in collaboration with the Department of History and Anthropology of the National University of Laos.