Ethnic Performance and the State in Laos

The Boun Greh Annual Festival of the Khmou

Bibliographic Data

ID12349886
AuthorsPierre Petit (Université Libre de Bruxelles, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume37
Issue4
Pages471-490
Publication date2013-09-11
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAsian Studies Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1035-7823 • E-ISSN: 1467-8403
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10357823.2013.794189
OpenAlexW2055954424
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited14

Following the 1975 revolution, the Laotian statesmen adopted a modernising discourse that targeted “backward” traditions as undesirable. But since the 1990s, authorities have mitigated this standpoint, distinguishing “good” from “bad” traditions according to their compatibility with the program of national development, and professing their will to (re)instate the former as suitable expressions of culture in a multi-ethnic nation. This is manifest everywhere from the National Constitution to TV shows and ethnic catalogues. This paper analyses the implementation of these principles through the case of the boun greh New Year festival, an invented ethnic tradition of the Khmou, the largest ethnic minority in Laos. The article demonstrates that this implementation has consequentially implied the adoption of a grammar of national ethnicity; that this official framework paradoxically allows the Khmou to articulate demands for better recognition of their group; and that this process does not mute expressions of “cultural intimacy” at variance with this matrix. The official frame of ethnicity has been eventually adopted by the Khmou, but this state effect has multiplied the layers of expressed ethnicity: it cannot be equated with a unilateral regimentation that would deprive the Khmou of their agency

Agency (philosophy · Constitution · Ethnic group · Immigration · Nationality · Political science · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science · Cambodian History and Society · Gender Studies · Law · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies