Heritage and the Making of Political Legitimacy in Laos

Phill Wilcox is a Research Associate in the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University, Germany. Her book chapter ‘Contested Heritage in Luang Prabang’ was published as part of the Routledge Handbook of Urbanization in Southeast Asia in 2018.

List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements

1 Introduction – Heritage, State, and Politics
Being Revolutionary, Being Lao
Constructing the People’s Democratic Republic
Socialist Ideology – Capitalist Politics
Nation State Fragility
Cultural Intimacy of/in Laos
Heritage With an Agenda
Future Building in Laos
Rising China
The Book
Future Directions
References

2 Making the Past (Dis)appear: Heritage as Legitimacy in (Re)creating Luang Prabang
Luang Prabang and the Creation of Nostalgia
Dealing With ‘Difficult Pasts’ at the National Museum
Heritage and Almsgiving
‘We Don’t Talk About It Openly’: Timelessness and Silence
An Economy of Selective History
A Suitably Idealized Past
Conclusions: Heritages and Future Directions
References

3 Hmong (Forever) on the Margins: Crypto-Separatism and the Making of Ethnic Difference
Ethnicity in Laos
Dreams of Hmong Statehood and Zomia
‘We Are Hmong’
Difference as Belonging
Zomia as a Persistent Alternative
Conclusions: Reproducing Societal Inequality?
References

4 One World: One Dream: Voices of Pessimism, Strategies of Pragmatism and Facing the Rise of China
‘One World: One Dream’?
‘China Is Developed’
‘We Will No Longer Have Jobs’
Pessimism With Ambivalence: The New ‘Things of the House’
Final Thoughts – One Belt: Multiple Paths?
References

5 Conclusion – Long Live the Revolution?
Royal and Revolutionary Heritage
Essentializing the State
The Dynamics of Authoritarianism
Difficult Heritages
Difference as (Not) Belonging
On China and Changing Laos
Final Reflections
References

Bibliography
Index