“We used to have lice … ” interethnic imagery in post-war upland Laos

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper discusses interethnic dynamics in a multi-ethnic Khmu and Akha village in the uplands of Phongsali Province, far-north Laos. It offers an intimate vignette on how local Khmu people’s patronizing disposition towards their Akha neighbors – and Sino-Tibetan highlanders more broadly – has been shaped by Laos’ recent history of war, revolution, and development. In particular, it shows how essentializing images of Akha as backward bumpkins in need of civilizing tutelage have provided local Khmu with a foil and platform for their pursuit of a culturally specific sense of modernity. In so doing, this paper refocuses the analysis of interethnic relations in Laos away from state-centered, lowland-upland, majority-minority frameworks, and towards localized, micro-regional and, most significantly, intra-upland dynamics. Concomitant to this refocus, this paper offers novel insights into the localized impact of Laos’ watershed civil war and its lingering aftermath. It also speaks to broader issues, including the applicability of the scholarly trope of “internal Orientalism” across scales, as well as the ethics and politics of researching inter-ethnic relations in a society still marked by the trauma of war.