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After dispossession: Shifting livelihoods and lives since the advent of a rubber plantation in southern Laos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2021

Tomoko Nakata
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Abstract

The 2005 launch of a large-scale rubber plantation in Bachiang district, one of several in southern Laos, caused serious discontent among the local villagers whose traditional farming and foraging lands were seized and leased to a rubber company. This and other similar rubber developments based on land concessions in the south have drawn criticism from various quarters, including scholars and nongovernmental organisations. This study highlights how the locals’ views, livelihoods and lifestyles have been changing since the plantation was established, especially since rubber tapping began, and focuses on desires that may have directed their actions. Through an ethnographic approach tracing these changes over time, this study demonstrates that differentiation and diversification within the village have become increasingly apparent owing to both the recent shift to plantation work and other impacts and changes brought about by wider society.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 492 - 514
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Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2021

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References

1 In the 2010s, this trend declined owing to various factors, including the fall in latex prices and the government's review of the land concession policy. Weiyi Shi reported the situation of Luang Namtha in 2015, seven years after her original report on the province. Shi, ‘Field notes: Rubber boom in Luang Namtha: Seven years later’, (UCSD), https://data.thailand.opendevelopmentmekong.net/library_record/7-rubber (accessed 8 Aug. 2021).

2 On the Lao government's promotion of rubber, see Laungaramsri, Pinkaew, ‘Frontier capitalism and the expansion of rubber plantations in southern Laos’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 43, 3 (2012): 463–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Portilla, Gilda Senties, ‘Land concessions and rural youth of rubber plantations in southern Laos’, Journal of Peasant Studies 44, 6 (2017): 1255–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baird, Ian, ‘Turning land into capital, turning people into labour: Primitive accumulation and the arrival of large-scale economic land concessions in the Lao People's Democratic Republic’, New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry 5, 1 (2011): 10–26Google Scholar; Kenney-Lazar, Miles, ‘Plantation rubber, land grabbing and social-property trans-formation in southern Laos’, Journal of Peasant Studies 39, 3–4 (2012): 1017–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Antonella Diana, ‘“The Chinese know the way”: Rubber and modernity along the China-Laos Border’, paper presented at international conference on Critical Transitions in the Mekong Region, 29–31 Jan. 2007, Chiang Mai.

3 Miles Kenney-Lazar, ‘Assessment of governance mechanisms, livelihood outcomes and incentive instruments for green rubber in the Lao PDR’, Working Paper no. 206, Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, 2016; Laungaramsri, ‘Frontier capitalism’.

4 Baird, ‘Turning land into capital’; Kenney-Lazar, ‘Plantation rubber’.

5 In 2006, K village was merged with two neighbouring villages, probably following the state's policy of village consolidation. In this article, I examine K village alone, as the inhabitants have maintained a distinct identity. For more details on the village consolidation policy, see Baird, Ian and Shoemaker, Bruce, ‘Unsettling experience: Internal resettlement and international aid agencies in Laos’, Development and Change 38, 5 (2007): 865–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See Ducourtieux, Olivier, ‘Is the diversity of shifting cultivation held in high enough esteem?’, Moussons 9–10 (2006): 61–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 One US dollar was worth 8,300 kip in 1999. It fluctuated to around 8,000 kip in 2012–18.

8 Tomoko Nakata, Minamilaosu-sonrakushakai-no-minzokushi: Minzokukonjyujyokyoka-no-rentai-to-toso [Ethnography of a village society in southern Laos: Solidarity and struggles in a multi-ethnic environment] (Tokyo: Akashi-shoten, 2004).

9 Baird, Ian, ‘Land, rubber and people: Rapid agrarian changes and responses in southern Laos’, Journal of Lao Studies 1, 1 (2010): 1–47Google Scholar.

10 Ortner, Sherry, ‘Resistance and the problem of ethnographic refusal’, Comparative Study of Society and History 37, 1 (1995): 190CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Karl Marx, Shihon-ron [Capital 1] (Tokyo: Iwanami-shoten, 1969); David Harvey, The new imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

12 Laungaramsri, ‘Frontier capitalism’, p. 470: Baird, ‘Turning land into capital’; Kenney-Lazar, ‘Plantation rubber’.

13 Derek Hall, Philip Hirsch and Tania Murray Li, Powers of exclusion: Land dilemmas in Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011).

14 Kenney-Lazar, ‘Assessment of governance mechanisms’; Karen McAllister, ‘Rubber, rights and resistance: The evolution of local struggles against a Chinese rubber concession in Northern Laos’, Journal of Peasant Studies 42, 3–4 (2015): 817–37.

15 François Obein, ‘Industrial rubber plantation of the Viet-Lao Rubber Company, Bachiang district, Champasak province: Assessment of the environmental and social impacts created by the VLRC Industrial Rubber Plantation and proposed environmental and social plans’ (Vientiane: Agence Française de Developpement, 2007).

16 James Chamberlain, ‘Participatory Poverty Assessment II (2006) Lao People's Democratic Republic’ (Vientiane: National Statistics Center; Asian Development Bank, 2007), p. 44.

17 Baird, ‘Land, rubber and people’, pp. 14, 23.

18 Ibid.

19 Baird, ‘Turning land into capital’.

20 Kenney-Lazar, ‘Plantation rubber, land grabbing’.

21 Cecilie Friis, Anette Reenberg, Andreas Heinimann and Oliver Schönweger, ‘Changing local land systems: Implications of a Chinese rubber plantation in Nambak District, Lao PDR’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 37, 1 (2016): 25–42.

22 Ian G. Baird and Jefferson Fox, ‘How land concessions affect places elsewhere: Telecoupling, political ecology, and large-scale plantations in southern Laos and northeastern Cambodia’, Land 4 (2015): 436–53.

23 Ian G. Baird, William Noseworthy, Nghiem Phuong Tuyen, Le Thu Ha and Jefferson Fox, ‘Land grabs and labour: Vietnamese workers on rubber plantations in southern Lao’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 40, 1 (2018): 1–21.

24 McAllister, ‘Rubber, rights and resistance’.

25 Ian G. Baird, ‘Resistance and contingent contestations to large-scale land concessions in southern Laos and northeastern Cambodia’, Land 6, 16 (2017): 1–19.

26 Kenney-Lazar, ‘Plantation rubber’.

27 Portilla, ‘Land concessions and rural youth’.

28 Laungaramsri, ‘Frontier capitalism’.

29 Transcription of Lao words follows in principle Kerr's, Allen D. Lao-English dictionary (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1972)Google Scholar, with some simplification and modification.

30 High, Holly, Fields of desire: Poverty and policy in Laos (Singapore: NUS Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Ibid., p. 11.

32 Ibid., p. 14.

33 Li, Tania Murray, Land's end: Capitalist relations on an indigenous frontier (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

34 Laungaramsri, ‘Frontier capitalism’; Baird, ‘Land, rubber and people’, and ‘Turning land into capital’; Obein, ‘Industrial rubber plantation’.

35 However, from the second year of the project, the company began to buy from the villagers’ land outside the concession area to plant rubber, coffee, and cashew. Some villagers received several million kip or more by selling their lands.

36 The wage for weeding exceeded 100,000 kip a hectare, although it varied based on the density of weeds on the plots. In addition to weeding, they also fertilised the rubber trees.

37 The practice of using others’ land for one year is quite common in this area. The owner of a plot of land, often a city dweller, allows a villager to clear it and then plant rice or other crops for free. This is considered by the locals to be a win-win arrangement, as the owner can have the plot cleared for free and the villager can obtain a harvest by using the plot for free.

38 Allotting rubber plots to each household was based on the ‘2+3’ policy, in which investors must provide funding, technical training, and access to the market, while villagers provide land and labour. This system was promoted by the Lao government (Vientiane Times, 29 June 2007). The change mentioned above implies a switch to the ‘1+4’ policy, in which villagers contribute only land. The reason for this change was not given to the villagers.

39 The difficulties that the locals experienced were also reported in Baird, ‘Land, rubber and people’.

40 Even in this period, only a few villagers sought jobs in other regions. Only a few boys and girls left the village, but many of them returned home anywhere from within a few weeks to several months later, preferring to work nearby rather than leaving to work in other regions.

41 The households that I could not interview are indicated as ‘Unknown’ in tables 1 and 5.

42 The employment contract for each tapper, specifying their working conditions and signed by them, was not given to the tapper. Rather, it was stored in the company. As many of the tappers cannot read or write, they are not interested in having a copy, either.

43 The regulation changed after that. According to an interview with an employee, tappers are not entitled to take any days off, but may be absent after giving their supervisor notification of such absence.

44 In Dec. 2012, it was 4,400 kip per kilogram, which dropped to 3,400 kip in Dec. 2013, but increased to 4,000 kip in 2014, while the rubber price in the Singapore Market, for example, continued to drop from 153.19 US cents per pound in 2012 to 88.75 in 2014. ‘Sekaikeizai-no-netacho’ [Note of items on world economics], https://ecodb.net/pcp/imf_usd_prubb.html (last accessed 20 May 2020). Dak Lak Rubber employees explained that the company decides the buying price of latex after taking into account several factors, including the quality, amount, and market price.

45 The decline in rubber prices could be a reason why the company stopped providing these incentives.

46 McAllister, ‘Rubber, rights and resistance’; Baird, ‘Resistance and contingent contestations’.

47 Dak Lak Rubber divided the tappers into several sections (kong hoi), assigning a Vietnamese chief for each. Each section was to be managed by one or two supervisors. In the beginning, the company selected supervisors not only among the Vietnamese but also among the Lao tappers. However, a few years later the Vietnamese replaced all the Lao supervisors. For more detail on the impacts of the Vietnamese employees on the working conditions of the Lao tappers, see Baird et al. ‘Land grabs and labour’.

48 Scott, James C., Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

49 He is currently the chief of the consolidated village that K village belongs to.

50 As the price of rubber had largely fallen in the global market in around 2012, many Lao tappers who had been working in Thailand returned to Laos owing to the sharp decline in wages. They were employed by Dak Lak Rubber. Vietnamese tappers had been arriving, often without a legal status. For more details on the problem of Vietnamese immigrant workers, see Baird et al., ‘Land grabs and labour’; Baird and Fox, ‘How land concessions affect places elsewhere’.

51 This dam project was cancelled later.

52 Given the economic expansion in Laos over these years, the villagers may have received some benefits from it, even without plantation labour. Apart from the hypothesis, their cash income comprised mainly wages from plantation labour.

53 Baird, ‘Land, rubber, and people’, p. 15.

54 Lending and borrowing money used to be very frequently observed between a Lao group supervisor and tappers. Some tappers also lent money as it probably represented a lucrative business opportunity. However, two of them stopped lending money after they each had tens of millions of kip stolen from their houses.

55 Baird, ‘Land, rubber and people’.

56 High, Fields of desire, p. 13.

57 Ibid.

58 Li, Land's end, pp. 3–4.