Contribution short abstract:

The lifeworlds and temporalities of Lao miner-peasant communities are shaped by the seasonal cycle as well as the boom and bust cycles of the extractive industries operating in the area. This paper investigates the miners' shifting sense of time and perceptions of landscape transformation.

Contribution long abstract:

Lao miner-peasant communities in the tin mining area of Khammouane Province (central Laos) have followed seasonal cycles since precolonial times: the rainy season was reserved for wet rice agriculture while artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) formed the local livelihoods in the dry season. During the 20th century, this pattern shifted towards year-round mining (today, agriculture only amounts to a meager ten percent of people’s income). However, the seasonal cycle is still important, as dry and rainy season are characterized by different mining techniques. The Lao-Buddhist ritual cycle, which runs parallel to the seasonal one and shapes the lifeworlds and temporalities of Lao rice farming communities elsewhere in the country, has never lost its sociocosmological significance in this particular miner-peasant community.

Meanwhile, since the establishment of the first French colonial mining enterprises in the 1920s, large-scale mining has transformed social life and the physical environment in the tin mining area, adding another temporal dimension: the boom and bust cycles of extractive industries. Nevertheless, ASM remained the basis of local livelihoods and was sometimes even practiced on the site of industrial mines. Currently, the precarious co-existence between foreign mining operations and local ASM communities is under pressure due to recent trends of large-scale concessions granted to Chinese mining enterprises. Local Lao villagers now feel dispossessed and excluded from what used to be the common and collective property of “the people” in socialist Laos, creating a growing sense of rupture (instead of cyclical time) and nostalgia.