Author: Unesco Publisher: UNESCO ISBN: Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 300
Book Description
It is thought that Laos is home to no fewer than forty-seven ethnic groups. The Lao, who live in the plains, form half the country's population thereby constituting the country's predominant culture. Laos is also home, however, to many mountain minorities that live with their own languages, beliefs and aesthetic traditions. A large number of these local cultures, some of them of great antiquity, have managed to survive in spite of the ups and downs of regional history. None the less, this exceptional cultural diversity, which forms part of the rich national heritage of Laos, is currently under threat--in particular the intangible heritage of the oral, gestural, musical and ritual kind that relies entirely on memory.
Author: Vatthana Pholsena Publisher: Flipside Digital Content Company Inc. ISBN: 9814515388 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 198
Book Description
More than a quarter of century after the end of the war in 1975, the Lao leadership is still in search for a compelling nationalist narration. Its politics of culture and representation appear to be caught between the rhetoric of preservation and the desire for modernity. Meanwhile, originating from the periphery where ethnic minorities had hitherto been symbolically, politically and administratively confined, the participation of some of their members in the Indochina Wars (1945-75) exposed these individuals to socialization and politicization processes.This rigorously researched and cogently argued book is a fine-grained analysis of substantial ethnographic material, showing the politics of identity, the geographies of memory and the power of narratives of some members of ethnic minority groups who fought during the Vietnam War in the Lao People's Liberation Army and/or were educated within the revolutionary administration. No study has ever been conducted on the latter's views on the national(ist) project of the late socialist era. Their own perceptions of their membership of the nation have been overlooked.Post-War Laos is a set to be a landmark study, and an original contribution which refines established theories of nationalism, such as Anderson's 'imagined community', by addressing a common weakness: namely, their tendency to deny agency to individuals, who in fact interpret their relationship to, and place within, the nation in a variety of ways that may change according to time and circumstance.
Author: Vanina Bouté Publisher: NUS Press ISBN: 981472226X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 473
Book Description
Changes in the character of the political regime in Laos after 2000, a massive influx of foreign investment, and disruptions to rural life arising from improved communications and new forms of mobility within and across the borders have produced a major transformation. Alongside these changes, a group of young scholars carried out studies that document the rise of a new social, cultural and economic order. The contributions to this volume draw on original fieldwork materials and unpublished sources, and provide fresh analyses of topics ranging from the structures of power to the politics of territoriality and new forms of sociability in emerging urban spaces.
Author: Mette Halskov Hansen Publisher: University of Washington Press ISBN: 0295978090 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 270
Book Description
This comparative study of the Naxi and Tai minority groups in Southwestern China examines the implementation and reception of state minority education policy. Hansen (Center for Development and the Environment, U. of Oslo) argues that state policy is not uniformly successful among all minorities, no
Author: Grant Evans Publisher: ISBN: 9789748709048 Category : Ethnicity Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Laos stands at the center of mainland Southeast Asia, sharing borders with all the main states in the region including China, so that when one touches on Laos, one touches the heart of the region. This study of culture and society in Laos inevitably leads into broader issues associated with all the surrounding societies and cultures concerning their origins and contemporary developments. Essays focus on the creation of the idea of Laos and its culture, whether it be through literature, tourism, or the activities of nationalists, thereby contributing to more general debates on the nature of Southeast Asian nationalism. They look at questions of minorities in Laos and issues of ethnic change. And they look at Laos in its regional context, and at Lao businessmen in their new global context. Grant Evans is reader in anthropology at the University of Hong Kong.
Author: Holly High Publisher: University of Hawaii Press ISBN: 0824886658 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 265
Book Description
In Projectland, anthropologist Holly High combines an engaging first-person narrative of her fieldwork with a political ethnography of Laos, more than forty years after the establishment of the Lao PDR and more than seven decades since socialist ideologues first “liberated” parts of upland country. In a remote village of Kandon, High finds that although socialism has declined significantly as an economic model, it is ascendant and thriving in the culture of politics and the politics of culture. Kandon is remarkable by any account. The villagers are ethnic Kantu (Katu), an ethnicity associated by early ethnographers above all with human sacrifice. They had repelled French control, and as the war went on, the revolutionary forces of Sekong were headquartered in Kandon territories. In 1996, Kandon village moved and resettled in a plateau area. “New Kandon” has become Sekong Province’s first certified “Culture Village,” the nation’s very first “Open Defecation Free and Model Health Village,” and the president of Laos personally granted the village a Labor Flag and Medal. High provides a unique and timely assessment of the Lao Party-state’s resettlement politics, and she recounts with skillful nuance the stories that are often cast into shadows by the usual focus on New Kandon as a success. Her book follows the lives of a small group of villagers who returned to the old village in the mountains, effectively defying policy but, in their words, obeying the presence that animates the land there. Revealing her sensibility with tremendous composure, High tells the experiences of women who, bound by steep bride-prices to often violent marriages, have tasted little of the socialist project of equality, unity, and independence. These women spoke to the author of “necessities” as a limit to their own lives. In a context where the state has defined the legitimate forms of success and agency, “necessity” emerged as a means of framing one’s life as nonconforming but also nonagentive.
Author: Daniel Philpott Publisher: Law and Christianity ISBN: 1108425305 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 537
Book Description
The first systematic global study of how Christians respond to persecution, presenting new research by leading scholars of global Christianity.
Author: Louisa Schein Publisher: Duke University Press ISBN: 9780822324447 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 388
Book Description
Gender, ethnicity, and nation in China, as seen through an ethnography of the changing cultural production of the Miao, a minority population.
Author: Joseph Jermiah Zasloff Publisher: Lexington, Mass : Lexington Books ISBN: Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 200
Book Description
The report analyzes the Laotian revolutionary movement commonly known as the Pathet Lao--its leaders, commanding party (People's Party of Laos), the Lao Patriotic Front, its political and administrative organization, and its military forces. The document also presents biographical information on 12 'founding fathers' who are probably among the leading policymakers, and discusses their characteristics. Leadership continuity is remarkable, having lasted through 20 years of intermittent war and coalition with no evidence of major purges or defections. Eight appendixes include biographies, policy statements, a list of fronts, and brief profiles of 53 informants.
Author: Stephen Mansfield Publisher: ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 128
Book Description
Despite their highly distinctive cultures and ethnic diversity, very little is known about Laos's hill tribes. In this book, Stephen Mansfield offers an in-depth examination of these little-studied tribes and their fragile micro-cultures.
Author: Unesco
Author: Vatthana Pholsena
Author: Vanina Bouté
Author: Mette Halskov Hansen
Author: Grant Evans
Author: Holly High
Author: Daniel Philpott
Author: Louisa Schein
Author: Joseph Jermiah Zasloff
Author: Stephen Mansfield