Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Laos

1. Introduction

Simon Creak, Holly High and Oliver Tappe

PART I: The Basics

2. The Past

Simon Creak and Ryan Wolfson-Ford

3. Places

Philip Hirsch

4. The People

Vatthana Pholsena

5. The Party: Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP)

Norihiko Yamada

PART II: The Populace

6. Interethnic Relations

Nathan Badenoch

7. Language in Laos

N. J. Enfield and Charles H. P. Zuckerman

8. Social Relations

Rosalie Stolz

9. Lao Religious Culture

John Clifford Holt

10. The Model in Arts and Crafts

Marie-Pierre Lissoir

11. Food and Nutrition

Penny Van Esterik and Holly High

PART III: Political Economy

12. Decision Making

Holly High, Souphinh Vongphachanh, Vilaythieng Sisouvong and Souliyong Thammavongsa

13. The Economy of Laos

Sithanonxay Suvannaphakdy

14. Livelihoods in Laos

Vanina Bouté

15. Development and Legitimacy

Supitcha Punya

16. Military

Aurel Croissant and Carmen Wintergerst

17. Constitutional and Legal Reforms

Kazuo Fukuda

PART IV: Resources

18. Land

Miles Kenney-Lazar

19. Forests and Forestry

Hilary Smith and Somvang Phimmavong

20. Water and Hydropower

Diana Suhardiman

21. Cash Crops

Juliet Lu and Cecilie Friis

PART V: International

22. Lao Foreign Policy

Soulatha Sayalath

23. International Development Cooperation

Andrea Haefner

24. Foreign Trade and Investment

Buavanh Vilavong and Souknilanh Keola

25. Regional Connectivity

Ruth Banomyong

26. The “Special” Laos–Vietnam Relationship

Martin Rathie and Oliver Tappe

27. Diaspora

Ian Baird

PART VI: Challenges

28. Poverty

Jonathan Rigg

29. Gender

Manynooch Faming and Roy Huijsmans

30. Laos’s Persistent Health Challenges

Kathryn Sweet

31. Environmental Sustainability

Clemens M. Grünbühel and Oulavanh Sinsamphanh

32. Climate Change

Phill Wilcox and Oulavanh Sinsamphanh

33. Media in Laos

Paul-David Lutz

Biography

Simon Creak is a historian of Laos and Southeast Asia and Associate Professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research focuses on the history and politics of nationalism, regionalism, socialism, sport and Cold War Asia. Besides his research on Laos, Simon has published widely on sport, nationalism and regional diplomacy in Southeast Asia. He is author of Embodied Nation: Sport, Masculinity, and the Making of Modern Laos (2015), co-author of the Historical Dictionary of Laos, Fourth Edition (2023) and is currently writing a cultural and political history of the Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games), the region’s premier sports event, since the 1950s.

Holly High is an anthropologist, does fieldwork in Laos and uses ethnographic methods and anthropological analysis to understand human experience. She was trained at Australian National University, and has held postdoctoral positions or fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, Sydney and Deakin Universities. Holly has written about anthropological approaches to debt, power and desire; psychoanalytic theory and anthropology; Lao policy (including cultural, poverty, health and agricultural policies) in relation to lived experience in that country; everyday politics in Laos; and religion in Laos. Currently, Holly is investigating transformations in pregnancy, birth and early childhood in Laos.

Oliver Tappe is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Cologne. His work is located at the interstices between social anthropology and history, with a particular focus on mainland Southeast Asia. In his most recently concluded research project (at the University of Heidelberg, funded by the German Research Foundation), Oliver investigated labour relations, livelihood transformations and sociocultural change in the tin mining area of Khammouane province (central Laos). In his current project—in cooperation with Vanina Bouté (EHESS Paris)—he shifts his focus towards longstanding Chinese communities in northern Laos, their local cultural practices, social networks and perceptions of the new Laos-China dynamics. Tappe has published on different issues such as Lao PDR historiography, socio-political dynamics in the Laos-Vietnam borderlands, historical patterns of labour mobility, and local ethnohistory.