Mountainous livelihood in northern Laos: Historical transition and current situation of a Swidden Village

Abstract

Rapid changes in recent years are built upon historical changes in local livelihoods. In order to understand the current state of livelihoods, it is necessary to elucidate the livelihoods that have been changing gradually as well as to explore the rapid changes in the past 10 years. In this paper, we take up a swidden village, Kachet village, in northern Laos as our focus and seek to place the villagers’ current livelihoods in their historical context by tracing the evolution of livelihoods in the past 30 years. While parts of swidden agriculture have changed technologically in Kachet village, its traditional methods are still fundamentally maintained today. Compared to technological change, material culture in the village has greatly changed in these 30 years. The changes in Kachet village can be divided into three stages: before 1975, from 1975 to 2000, and after 2000. In the first stage, the village was isolated from the market, and the people maintained a self-sufficient lifestyle. In the second stage, commercially valuable forest products became diversified as a result of Chinese immigration. In the third stage, cultivation of commercial crops became large-scale, and market-oriented economic reforms advanced greatly. Generally, market economy is promoting changes in the particular purposes of how land is used, such as for forestation and the introduction of commercial crops. Required is the implementation of measures for utilizing lands so that diverse livelihood activities can continue in the midst of advancing market-oriented reforms.