Catastrophic and slow violence: thinking about the impacts of the Xe Pian Xe Namnoy dam in southern Laos

ABSTRACT

On 23 July 2018, up to five million cubic meters of water plummeted from the reservoir of the Xe Pian Xe Namnoy dam, causing the biggest catastrophic event ever to occur in Laos related to a hydropower dam. But even before the dam broke it was already causing considerable social and environmental impacts, ones that constitute slow violence. Catastrophic and slow violence are, however, not simply separate entities. Rather, catastrophic violence can variously shift into becoming slow violence. This indicates the importance of temporality, and the need to be increasingly vigilant in addressing problems associated with certain types of projects.

KEYWORDS:

• Hydropower dam
• Laos
• slow violence
• catastrophic violence

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Chris Sneddon and Samer Alatout for giving me the opportunity to test out some of the ideas included in this paper during talks organized, first, at the Department of Geography at Dartmouth University in September 2018, and second for the Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies at UW-Madison in February 2019. Thanks also for comments provided on an earlier version of this paper by Bruce Shoemaker, and for the useful comments provided by three anonymous referees as part of JPS’s peer-review process. Christopher Jerald Archuleta from the Cartography Lab in the Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison helped prepare the map.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Lao language interview of village headman of affected village in Sanamxay District, Attapeu Province by Saykoson Unicef, Facebook, 26 July 2018.

2 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/catastrophe, accessed 27 November 2019.

3 I refer to them as Indigenous Peoples, since they are a colonized group of first peoples, even though the Lao PDR does not recognize the existence of Indigenous Peoples within Laos (Baird 2015).

4 Man, Attapeu pers. comm., 25 May 2019.

5 Ounkeo Souksavanh, pers. comm., April 2019.

6 Man, Hatnyao Camp,, pers. comm., 25 May 2019.

7 Woman, Hatnyao Camp, pers. comm., 25 May 2019.

8 Man, Hat Nyao Camp, pers. comm.,, 7 July 2019.

9 Man, Donebok Camp, pers. comm., 26 May 2019.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ian G. Baird

Ian G. Baird is a full professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is also the Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UW-Madison. Most of his research is focused on Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. He has published widely, and his most recent book is titled, Rise of the Brao: Ethnic Minorities in Northeastern Cambodia during Vietnamese Occupation (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020).