Imagining the borderlands: Contending stories of a resource frontier in Muang Sing

Abstract

Muang Sing in Luang Namtha province, an administrative district of northern Laos bordering Myanmar and China, has been portrayed by the Lao government and international development agencies as a 'poor' rural region in need of development. To developers, Muang Sing's remoteness from major towns and the livelihoods of ethnic people such as the Akha in the uplands based on swidden agriculture and opium production characterized 'poverty'. To address this rural poverty, state and development agencies devised land use zoning that would demarcate and regulate various land uses in line with a rural development plan for the district. This vision for regulated development began to go awry, however, as farmers and traders in Muang Sing launched their own rapid social and economic changes. In contrast to the official image of a backward rural district in need of outside assistance, this paper portrays farmers and local entrepreneurs of the Muang Sing borderlands as actively transforming their lives and agricultural landscapes. This paper challenges the official version of a remote, poor district untouched by regional trade through a focus on narratives of local people. Ethnographic research reveals the dynamic micro-processes of agrarian transformation during recent decades to highlight the centrality of borderland people in reworking their lives and agricultural landscapes through cross-border relationships in China.

On the System. Boundary Choices, Implications, and Solutions in Telecoupling Land Use Change Research

“…Indeed, without embedding these 'external' actors in our 'banana land system', we would not have captured the extent to which and how the presence of a network of agricultural investors with knowledge and social ties to Laos, as well as connections and social networks in China, shaped the banana expansion. A place-based and an institutional land system approach defining, for example, the village (or Northern Laos) as one system and China as another, would indeed have complicated the task of capturing the role of these investors, as well as ignored the fact that this area is a 'porous' border region where people have long had economic and social engagements with each other, despite being separated physically and institutionally residing in two different countries [94][95][96]122]. By analytically constructing the banana system as we did, it was possible to capture the 'functional' importance to this system of the social space created in the interactions between the investors, the local middlemen, and the Lao farmers.…”

“…In addition to formal foreign investments, the agricultural and economic developments in Luang Namtha are heavily influenced by more 'informal' economic interactions between borderland people [94,95]. A general expansion of cash-crop production in the province over the past decade is to a large extent driven by borderland Chinese people with ethnic relations in Luang Namtha Province.…”

“…The fields had suffered from a periodic lack of water and the production of surplus rice was thus limited, making the leasing fees substantially higher than the possible income from the sale rice. Stories of successful engagement with banana and cash-crops reaching the villagers from rural areas in southern China, as well as information about other villages in Luang Namtha engaging with banana investors at the time of the contract negotiations, were also noted to influence some villagers' incentives to engage in similar ventures (see also [95,115]). Some middlemen and investors stated that similar stories were used to incentivise Lao farmers to accept the deals.…”

Socioeconomic and Ecological Impact Analysis of Rubber Cultivation in Southeast Asia

“…The wood from a rubber tree is moderately hard with an insignificant amount of heartwood, and it can be used either directly as timber, useful for making furniture or to make plywood. Thus rubber wood helps to reduce the pressure on forests for timber and firewood and thus leads to "indirect sequestration of carbon" [11] [32] [33].…”

“…Latex is used in thousands of products, from gloves to condoms, it is indispensable in transportation, in communication, in furnishing us with power and light, in cushioning our bodies and protecting our senses from the jars and jolts, the noise and tumult of modern life [11] [32] [33]. Latex from natural rubber provides essential parts of garden products, sports equipment and the ball in many games, and in weatherproofing garments.…”