1st Edition
Chinese Development in Late-Socialist Laos Negotiating Debt and Desire
PART I: The inevitability and allure of development
1 Development as (a) given
2 “Development is roads” – infrastructures, desires, and debts
PART II: Land and (im)mobility
3 Development means change: ambivalent – and inevitable – encounters with China
4 Express train to the good life: all aboard the Laos‑China Railway
PART III: Aspiring (with) China
5 Making aspirations move: future building in a changing Laos
6 “They cannot buy the land, but they will own the land”: coming to terms with China in Laos
PART IV: Conclusion
7 Conclusion: future building: possibility, pragmatism, and price
Biography
Phill Wilcox is Research Associate in Social Anthropology at the Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, Germany.
“Ostensibly, this is a book about Laos and China. But it is more than this. Phill Wilcox has written a book about the idea of development, and how it has colonised the space of Laos, the minds of its inhabitants, and the actions of its government. She does this from the ground up, as she puts it, and with China as the key agent of contemporary change. Importantly, Wilcox addresses the question of what the rise of China in the world means for low-income countries like Laos, and she does this with verve. This book represents an engaging and important addition to the literature.”
Jonathan Rigg FBA, Professor of Human Geography, University of Bristol, UK
