Hydroelectric development in “China’s backyard”? Modernity, market integration, and (im)mobilities in northwestern Laos

Abstract

The post-1975 Lao state has considered hydropower projects an important driver of economic development. One of these is the Nam Nua 1 (NNua1), a Chinese hydropower project in northwestern Laos under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Grounded in ethnographic data gathered between August 2018 and September 2019 in Banmai Resettlement—the NNua1’s largest relocation site—this study analyzes how new physical infrastructures and systems of distributing entitlements have shaped the villagers’ experiences of modernity, market integration, and (im)mobilities. While this study pursues a villager-centered approach to scrutinizing hydroelectric development in China’s backyard, it also transcends discussions whether the resettled want to politically connect to or disconnect from the Lao state.

Keywords:

• Hydropower development
• modernity
• market integration
• (im)mobilities
• Chinese project in Laos

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 I deliberately changed the names of the hydropower project, resettlement site, and all people I worked with in Laos to preserve their anonymity.

2 Here I conceptualized the Lao state as a network of heterogenous entities that are created, maintained, and transformed through various political and economic processes and sociocultural practices. Rather than examining it as an administrative body with clear-cut bureaucratic structures, I scrutinized not just the entities comprising the Lao state, but also the “effects” (Mitchell 1991, 94-95), material ramifications, and symbolic power of such entities. As a social anthropologist, I focused largely on how the Lao people I worked with viewed, experienced, and questioned these dimensions of the Lao state.

Additional information

Funding

The study’s fieldwork was generously supported by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.

Notes on contributors

Floramante S. J. Ponce

Floramante S.J. Ponce is a postdoctoral fellow at the Maison des Sciences Humaines de l’Université libre de Bruxelles (MSH-ULB). He has been a lecturer at the Martin Luther University’s Institute of Anthropology and Philosophy (Halle, Germany) and the PUP’s Sociology and Anthropology Department (Manila, Philippines). Ponce completed his PhD in Social Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Germany). His doctoral research focuses on how a Chinese BRI Project in Laos engenders experiences of modernity, market integration, and geographical, socioeconomic, and metaphorical (im)mobilities.