It was not the Government that did it: it was us! Water Supply in Kandon as an Example of Living Lao Socialism

Abstract

The core argument of this paper is that English-language scholarly understandings of socialism in Laos have been hampered by implicit ethnocentrism and denial of coevalness. Lingering but pervasive legacies of the Cold War include an equation of ‘true’ socialism with models of socialism that were practised in Europe, and a triumphalist tone that equates socialism with the past, the fake and the crumbling, even when it is (as with Laos) so evidently a tangible part of the lived present and the imagined future. Better understanding of socialism in Laos requires the kind of work that was done by an earlier generation of scholars on power in Southeast Asia, where concepts were translated across difference by rooting them in local terminology, contextualisations and usage. Following this inspiration, I approach socialism in Laos through the example of how the problem of water supply was addressed in a resettled, ethnic Kantu village in Sekong Province, Lao PDR. Why was the village resettled? Why was water a problem? What strategies did people use to obtain safe water? Answering these questions reveals some of what socialism means in lives as lived in this self-identified socialist state.