Power relations in community resilience and politics of shifting cultivation in Laos

This article is a contribution to a critical resilience literature that emphasizes the lack of recognition and consideration of social and power relations, the complexity of local cultural heterogeneity and aspects of justice in current resilience approaches. We base our contribution on an empirical study related to policy and project interventions implemented by governmental agencies and international development partners in Laos. The studied interventions are the so-called ‘village livelihood development grants’ that involve giving individual households cash payments to limit shifting cultivation practice and to engage in ‘alternative and more sustainable’ livelihood activities, promoted by a number of state policies and donor funded projects. Promoted alternative livelihoods include cash crop production, cattle rearing and income generating activities, such as weaving. Based on our empirical case, we explore the implications of these interventions on local peoples' livelihoods, food security and access and rights to resources, on the one hand, and offer theoretical implications to resilience scholarship, on the other hand. We identify analytical elements with respect to social and power relations and show their relevance for local community members' ability to deal with the imposed external forces to change, and hence community resilience. We find that horizontal and vertical power relations, exercised through direct/visible and indirect/hidden ways, significantly influence the socio-ecological outcomes of the interventions, and abilities of individual members of the community to benefit, or bear costs and risks from the interventions.