Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- The Contributors
- 1 Contested Resource Frontiers in Mainland Southeast Asia: An Introduction
- 2 Ontological Politics of the Resource Frontier: A Hydrosocial Analysis of the Mekong River in Northern Thailand
- 3 Reassembling Frontiers for Middle-Income Peasants: Rubber Expansion and Livelihood Ecosystem Transformation in a Northeast Thai Village
- 4 “Only the Best Fruits for China!”: Local Productions of a ‘Fruit Frontier’ in the Borderlands of China, Laos and Thailand
- 5 Commodity Frontiers in Motion: Tracing the Maize Boom across the Lao-Vietnamese Borderlands
- 6 New Frontier Spaces: Complex Entanglements and Power Relations (Re)shaping Land Governance in Laos
- 7 Moving Away from the Margins? How a Chinese Hydropower Project Made a Lao Community Modern and Comfortable
- 8 Frontier Capitalism in Colonial and Contemporary Laos: The Case of Tin Mining
- 9 Chinese Investments and Resource Frontiers in Cambodia: Systemic Transformation
- 10 The Open Issues: Cases between Chinese Investment Companies and Local People in Myanmar
- 11 Internationalization of RMB and Tin Ore Trade in China-Myanmar Frontier Governance: Views from Yunnan Province
- Index
7 - Moving Away from the Margins? How a Chinese Hydropower Project Made a Lao Community Modern and Comfortable
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 June 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- The Contributors
- 1 Contested Resource Frontiers in Mainland Southeast Asia: An Introduction
- 2 Ontological Politics of the Resource Frontier: A Hydrosocial Analysis of the Mekong River in Northern Thailand
- 3 Reassembling Frontiers for Middle-Income Peasants: Rubber Expansion and Livelihood Ecosystem Transformation in a Northeast Thai Village
- 4 “Only the Best Fruits for China!”: Local Productions of a ‘Fruit Frontier’ in the Borderlands of China, Laos and Thailand
- 5 Commodity Frontiers in Motion: Tracing the Maize Boom across the Lao-Vietnamese Borderlands
- 6 New Frontier Spaces: Complex Entanglements and Power Relations (Re)shaping Land Governance in Laos
- 7 Moving Away from the Margins? How a Chinese Hydropower Project Made a Lao Community Modern and Comfortable
- 8 Frontier Capitalism in Colonial and Contemporary Laos: The Case of Tin Mining
- 9 Chinese Investments and Resource Frontiers in Cambodia: Systemic Transformation
- 10 The Open Issues: Cases between Chinese Investment Companies and Local People in Myanmar
- 11 Internationalization of RMB and Tin Ore Trade in China-Myanmar Frontier Governance: Views from Yunnan Province
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
In December 2018, some days after interviewing Pho (“Father”) Tha, he invited me, my research partner, and Pho Keo (his friend) for a lunch and drinking session at his home. Pho Keo and Pho Tha are both Theravada Lao Buddhists in their fifties. Comparing their socioeconomic status, Pho Keo was comparatively prosperous because he was a successful businessman in their old village; he also managed to send all his children to college. After the relocation, Pho Keo has been running some lucrative businesses powered by electricity and receiving financial support from his unmarried children. Now Pho Keo and Pho Tha are no longer neighbours as they live in the new settlement's different zones.
Chon (my nickname in Laos), you should study not just electricity, but also the other new things here. We have now roads going to bigger markets and hospitals, schools and a big health centre nearer to us; the Internet. The government and the company already provided for our needs here. We’re now “modern” (thansamai); it's more comfortable (sabay kouaa) here than before,” Pho Keo told us, with conviction.
“Comfortable (Sabay)? Perhaps for you, but not for me, siao (buddy),” Pho Tha responded, and then he took a swig of his beer. As the old man resumed lamenting:
“How can I feel comfortable like you if I don't have money to buy a sack of rice and medicine? I have no work here; I lost my gardens; I couldn't catch fish here because the river has a low water level. I couldn't do swidden because I haven't received the promised land from the company … The forest is also far from here. You ni you lala!! [Literally: Here just living; it means “doing nothing”] … How can I feel comfortable like you if I’m always worried about my son illegally working in Thailand to provide for our needs? … Perhaps we’re both modern now because we have electricity and roads here, but still, we’re different because you’re comfortable here; I am not.”
Then Pho Tha excused himself for a while to go to the toilet. “He's already drunk; he already talked a lot,” Pho Keo told me. After that, he proposed a toast to me.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Extracting DevelopmentContested Resource Frontiers in Mainland Southeast Asia, pp. 143 - 171Publisher: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak InstitutePrint publication year: 2022