Enduring Authoritarianism: Middle East Lessons for Comparative Theory
Author(s)
Posusney, Marsha Pripstein
Abstract
The article analyzes ethnic classifications in contemporary Laos, starting with a brief review of previous policies. I first look at the ideologies that have influenced the Lao ethnic classification, namely those of the former Soviet Union, China, & Vietnam. Through an analysis of the construction of the latest official census (Aug 2000), I suggest a close relationship between ethnic categorization & the government’s nationalist discourse, still strongly influenced by guidelines on the concept of the nation disseminated by Kaysone Phomvihane – the first President of the Lao PDR, now deceased but celebrated at present in Laos as the inspirational figure of the regime. My intention is thus to demonstrate how one technology of power in particular – the Lao population census based on ethnic criteria – attempts to map the nation’s “invisible” ethnicity through a dual process, namely the objectification of the Other ethnic groups’ arbitrarily defined cultural features on the one hand, & the erasure of the dominant ethnic group’s ethnicity (the ethnicity of the ethnic Lao) on the other. But this technology of power is limited, as the names & the lists of ethnic groups have remained subject to alteration every few years. Twenty years after Kaysone Phomvihane urged for a change in ethnic terminology & classification, the regime has yet to legitimize definitively the total number of ethnic groups in the Lao.
