Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Human Development in Latin America Hardcover by Harry Anthony Patrinos

Author:Harry Anthony Patrinos
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Indigenous peoples – Economic conditions, Poverty – Cross-cultural studies, Indigenous peoples – Social conditions, Indigenous peoples – Government relations
ISBN: 9781403999382
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2006-03-01T18:30:00+00:00

Cambridge Books Online

http://ebooks.cambridge.org/

Indigenous Peoples, Poverty, and Development

Edited by Gillette H. Hall, Harry Anthony Patrinos

Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139105729

Online ISBN: 9781139105729

Hardback ISBN: 9781107020573

Chapter

7 - Laos pp. 249-303

Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139105729.007

Cambridge University Press

7

Laos

Ethnolinguistic Diversity and Disadvantage

Elizabeth M. King and Dominique van de Walle

INTRODUCTION

Laos (oi

cially, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic) is one of Southeast

Asia’s poorest countries and probably also the region’s most ethnically

diverse. Its population of 5 million has four broad ethnolinguistic families:

the Lao-Tai (67 percent of the population), the Mon-Khmer (21 percent),

Hmong-Lu Mien (8 percent), and the Chine-Tibetan (3 percent). h

ese

categories further subsume 49 distinct ethnicities and some 200 ethnic sub-

groups (World Bank 2006b ). 1

h

ere are pronounced disparities in living standards across these ethno-

linguistic groups, with some groups faring much worse than others. h

e

groups are geographically dispersed and sometimes categorized not by their

linguistic family but rather by whether they live in the country’s lowlands,

midlands, or highlands. Many live in ethnically homogeneous villages. h

e

historically politically, economically, and socially dominant Lao-Tai are the

primary residents of urban areas, and also live in the high-density, agri-

culturally productive lowland areas around Vientiane and the Mekong

corridor. h

e Mon-Khmer people, whose presence in present-day Lao PDR

predates all the other groups, typically live in midland rural areas of the

north and south. h

e Hmong-Lu Mien people are found in the uplands

and high mountains in the north, and the Chine-Tibetan are located in the

northern highland areas.

1 h

ere are several ethnic classii cation systems in Lao PDR, and depending on the sys-

tem used, the number of ethnic groups vary from about 50 to more than 200 (Pholsena

2006 ). An alternative classii cation that is commonly used is based on geographic location.

Hence, Tai-Kadai is called Lao Loum or Lao people of the valleys; Mon-Khmer are Lao

h

eung or the Lao people of the hillsides, and Tibeto-Burman and the Hmong-Mien are

the Lao Soung or Lao people of the highlands.

249

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139105729.007

Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2012

250

King and van de Walle

Lao PDR is a predominantly rural country: In 2003, agriculture contrib-

uted 48 percent of the country’s gross domestic product and employed 80

percent of its labor force (World Bank 2006a ). Rural Lao-Tai households

are ot en engaged in the cultivation of lowland irrigated paddy-rice. In

contrast, non-Lao-Tai households typically practice subsistence-oriented

semi-permanent or shit ing agriculture in ways adapted to their specii c

agro-ecological environments; they grow upland rice, ot en supplemented

by corn and, in many more isolated areas, poppy (Ireson and Ireson 1991 ;

Evrard and Goudineau 2004 ). 2 Many are also reliant on the collection of

forest products and, although ot en blamed for deforestation, they are also

negatively af ected by encroaching commercial logging by the govern-

ment and military for whom this has become a proi table source of foreign

exchange (Ireson and Ireson 1991 ). Some non-Lao-Tai minority groups are

still seminomadic, moving to new areas when their lands are depleted, but

others have become sedentary. h

ey ot en live in areas with limited access

to transport infrastructure, marketing opportunities, and social services,

and many have low levels of human development outcomes, have no tradi-

tion of literacy, and do not speak Lao, the oi

cial national language.

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