Ethnographic exposures: Motivations for donations in the south of Laos (and beyond)

Abstract

In January 2009, I arranged the renovation of a school in my field site in the south of Laos with funds raised from donors in Australia. This project was initiated at the request of village leaders, and, initially, I saw it as a chance to acknowledge the generous assistance that residents had granted me during my fieldwork. However, the execution of the project was tense, particularly when it brought to the surface long‐running ambiguities arising from my adoption as a daughter into a particular Lao family. This adoption, like the school project itself, involved a series of donations that could be interpreted as either self‐serving or altruistic—or both. Antagonisms, repressed in donations intended to produce solidarity, make frequent return and imbue those donations with an ambiguous character. Thus, although such exchanges are essential to everyday life in the south of Laos (and to fieldwork), they are also precarious and can lead to conflict as easily as to peace. This ambivalence is especially pronounced in the cross‐cultural context of fieldwork, in which the ethnographer is invited to seek out relationships of solidarity and shared understanding but also confronts his or her own specificity. [Laos, the gift, ethnographic fieldwork, fantasy, exchange]

An Assessment of Wildlife Use by Northern Laos Nationals

“…This may be especially true in collectivist, i.e., group-oriented societies, which are argued to be predominant in East and Southeast Asia (e.g., [49]). Giving gifts maintains social relations, drives social relationships, and can increase one's social capital and/or social approval and by extension prestige [50]. This is exemplified by the giving of bear bile as a gift in Vietnam [29]; the gift of medicine holds powerful connotations of care and compassion [51], and with successful treatment of the receiver's ailment comes the obligation to return such care and compassion to the "original" giver.…”

Bureaucratic gifts: Religious conversion, change, and exchange in Israel

“…Conversion agents believe that by giving to FSU converts the opportunity of full inclusion within the Jewish fold, they also give the Jewish state an occasion to cultivate its morality. Whereas in varied instances documented in the anthropological literature, giving enables one to believe he or she constitutes a better self (e.g., becoming a good, compassionate Christian, an unselfish Buddhist, or a good ethnographer; see Elisha ; High ; O'Neill ; Simpson ), in this case study, giving enables one to believe that he or she helps create a better state.…”

“…After all, it is not a domain organized by the actual and tangible giving of things—a gift, a commodity, or money. Bodily giving (the “gifts of life” implicated in blood or organ donation), spiritual giving, charitable and philanthropic engagements, garage sales, friendship, and even fieldwork itself (Bornstein ; Coleman ; Elisha ; Herrmann ; High ; Mains ; O'Neill ; Reddy ; Simpson ; Weiss ) all seem to lend themselves much more directly and intuitively to anthropological questions about giving and gift relationships. Indeed, as Michael Harbsmeier notes (Algazi :17), such lines of inquiry have been applied to the study of religious conversion only infrequently or implicitly (see also Miyazaki ; Viswanathan :12).…”

“…Furthermore, because reciprocity is often a risky project, one that involves uncertainties, delays, and ambivalences between unequal parties (Algazi ), the theorization of religious conversion as exchange enables us to recognize the vulnerabilities of both entangled sides. Not unlike Laotian and Cambodian immigrants in the United States who settle debts with the dead (Langford ), the ethnographer who calculates how to perfectly give back to her informants (High ), or evangelicals who struggle to give unconditional, compassionate gifts (Elisha ), both sides of the Jewish Israeli conversion exchange relationship take some risks and must often confront the undetermined nature of their mutual entanglement.…”

Melancholia and anthropology

“…In my previous article in this journal (High 2010), I recounted how, despite ambivalences of my own, I had been adopted into a Lao family, largely because I shared so many meals with them. The kind of explicit linkage of nurturance and resulting obligation that I experienced was unfamiliar, and I wrote of how it made me feel uneasy: I feared I could never make adequate repayment for the family's generosity, both material and emotional.…”