Abstract not available

This thesis is about the heritage in Vientiane. In an attempt to go beyond a more traditional descriptive approach, the study aims at bringing forward a discussion about the definition, or rather the multiplicity of definitions, of the concept of heritage as such. The unavoidabe tension emanating from a modern western frame of thought being applied to the geographical and cultural setting of the study provides an opportunity to develop a criticism of some of the assumptions underlying our current definitions of heritage. For this particular study, heritage is defined as to include stories, places and things. It is a heritage that is complex and ambiguous, because the stories are parallel, the definitions and perceptions of place are manifold and contested, and the things and their meaning appear altered, depending on what approach to materiality is used. The objective is not to propose how to identify and manage such a complex heritage. Rather, it is about what causes this complexity and ambiguity and what is in between the stories, places and things. In addition, the study aims to critically deconstruct the contemporary heritage discourse, which privileges material authenticity, form and fabric and the idea that heritage values are universal and should be preserved for the future and preferably forever. In Laos, Buddhism dominates as religious practice. In this context, the notion of material impermanence also governs the perception of reality. Approaches to materiality in Buddhism are related to the general ideas that things are important from a contemporary perspective and primarily as containers for spiritual values, that the spiritual values carry the connection to the past, and that heritage is primarily spiritual in nature and has little to do with physical structure and form. By exploring the concepts of restoration, destruction and consumption in such a perspective, we understand that preservation and restoration are active processes of materialisation. We also understand that destruction and consumption are necessary for the appreciation of certain heritage expressions, and that heritage is being constantly created. With this understanding, this book is an argument for challenging contemporary western heritage discourse and question its fundamental ideology of preservationism.

This thesis is a study of three global issues – development cooperation, education and gender - and their transformation to local circumstances in Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR), a landlocked country in Southeast Asia. Combining post-colonial and post-structural perspectives, it sets out to understand how discourses of education and gender in Laos intersect with discourses of education and gender within development cooperation represented by organisations such as the World Bank and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). Through field observations, analysis of national and donor policies on education and gender, and interviews with Lao educationalists, this thesis offers an analysis that shows the complexities arising at the intersection where the first-world-north meets the local in the context of development cooperation. Foucault’s notion of the production and reproduction of discourses through different power-knowledge relations is used to show that the meanings accorded to education and gender within development cooperation, indeed are historically, culturally and contextually constructed. Within development cooperation policy, first-world-north discourses appear to have a hegemonic status in defining education and gender. Thus ‘Education for All’ and ‘Gender Mainstreaming’ become privileged discourses that also take root in Lao national policy-making. Development cooperation further brings with it discourses defining the cooperation itself. Partnership is one such privileged donor discourse. These policy discourses are however interpreted by Lao educationalists that are not influenced by policy alone; rather, contextual discourses also affect how policies are understood and negotiated. It is when these discourses intersect that structures of power and preferential rights of interpretation become visible. The analysis points to how the perspectives of international development cooperation organisations representing the first-world-north are in positions to set the agenda for development cooperation within policy. This position of power can, from a post-colonial perspective, be traced back to how former colonial structures created a privileged position for first-world-north knowledge that still prevails. This is to some extent acknowledged by development cooperation organisations through the emphasis on partnership. However, in the local context, partnership is not experienced as a discourse which has the effects of redistributing power. Partnership is rather transformed into a discourse of superiority and subordination where development cooperation organisations monitor and evaluate and local actors adjust and implement. Lao education officials however express alternative interpretations of partnership that are based on face-to-face collaboration and collective effort. These strategies have closer links to local practices and also reflect contextual discourse-power-knowledge relations which the education officials are well aware of. These strategies of negotiation also extend to the issues of education and gender. Discourses of ‘Education for All’ and ‘Gender Mainstreaming’ are acknowledged among the education officials as policy goals which to some extent also extend into practice. These discourses are however renegotiated to accommodate local circumstances. ‘Education for All’ is thus replaced by the ‘5-pointed star’ which serves as an operationalisation of the concept of ‘learner-centred education’. ‘Gender Mainstreaming’ has to co-exist with local discourses that on the one hand build on patriarchal organisations of society and on the other hand build on local strategies for access which weaken patriarchal structures. The analysis ultimately stresses the importance of incorporating local, contextual knowledge in educational development cooperation processes, both among international and national stakeholders. This process can be supported by a willingness to deconstruct taken-for-granted understandings and value systems; and in doing so, recognising the normative aspects operating both in the areas of education and gender.

Cand. Polit thesis. / Format: PDF. Includes bibliographical references.

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

This thesis explores how Katuic-speaking indigenous groups in the Central Annamitic Cordillera of Vietnam and Laos understand their environment – hills, streams and forest. Katuic eco-cosmology assumes that the natural landscape is imbued with spirit agents, with whom people must continuously communicate lest misfortune will strike and their livelihoods fail. The thesis posits the hypothesis that these spirit beliefs, and a variety of taboo notions accompanying them, can be interpreted as expressions of a complex socio-environmental adaptation. Today, the indigenous groups in the study region are confronted with a massive development- and modernisation push on two fronts – that of the global development industry on the one hand, and the implementation of national development policies and programs as part of the high-modernist state project in communist Vietnam and Laos, on the other. A second objective of the thesis, then, is to examine the effects of this multi-layered and multi-scaled confrontation on indigenous cosmology, livelihood and landscape. It is argued, this confrontation at the development frontier can be conceived of as an interface between different ontologies or reality posits – one animist, articulated in a relational stance towards the landscape; the other, a naturalist or rationalist ontology, expressed as an objectivist stance towards nature and embodied in the high-modernist development schemes and programs unfolding in the region with the aim of re-engineering its indigenous societies and exploiting its natural resources.      Large parts of the Central Annamites were severely impacted by the Vietnam War; uncounted numbers of minority people were killed, or had their villages destroyed or relocated while defoliants, bombs, and forest fires ravaged the landscape. In the decades that followed the war, the entire social and natural landscape has been reshaped by national development policies and the modernist visions that underpin them. The thesis attempts to understand this physical and cultural transformation of the landscape, focusing particularly on the gradual breakdown of the complex indigenous socio-religious institutions that appear to have played an important functional role in maintaining the pre-war structure of the landscape. The thesis is based primarily on fieldwork carried out between 2004 and 2009 in the provinces of Quảng Nam and Thừa Thiên–Huế in Vietnam and Sekong in Laos.

No description available.

Diss. Umeå : Umeå universitet, 2007. / Pp. 203-213: Bibliography.