8 - Conclusion

Summary

The Lao Front for National Construction' loss of influence within the regime is perhaps the most revealing symptom of the end of the socialist project. As the country progressively opens itself to the market economy and to regional and international tourism, anti-capitalist and anti-Western imperialist rhetoric is no longer appropriate for galvanizing the population behind the leadership. The discourse of struggle is being replaced by a discourse of lack. The regime now calls for modernity. The education of the masses echoes the impetus to attain economic competitiveness in the world economy. In other words, the question of identity and culture is closely tied to the issue of overcoming “backwardness”. On the other hand, members of ethnic minority groups, among those who were educated during the revolutionary period, show a desire to demonstrate individual agency. Through a divergent narrative of the national past or the assertion of an ethnicity that is not officially recognized, they in effect defy their nation-state' representation. The efforts of Sisouk, until recently a senior LFNC official, to create an official ethnic category, the Bru, outside the regime' enforced categorization — but within the nation-state' ethnic classification system - may epitomize this micro-level struggle for the legitimation of a self-defined identity, despite the low probability of his succeeding at the present time.

My specific intention in this research was to go beyond the apparent immutability of these two oppositional figures, the Majority and the ethnic minorities. In other words, I have tried to show that these two entities are dynamic. The Majority — or normality, to use the Foucaldian term — is not yet convincingly hegemonic, while the ethnic minorities — or deviant identity — cannot always be represented solely as the ethnic Other, either by the government or by academic researchers. There is no complete hegemony, as the newly reformulated nationalist discourse is itself unstable and still in the process of development. Neither is there an absence of autonomy on the part of those being represented. Simultaneously, they display openly a loyalty to the Party-State and feel they have the right to claim full membership of the nation.