Common Property as Enclosure: A Case Study of a Backswamp in Southern Laos

Society and Natural Resources, 18:41–60, 2005 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Inc. ISSN: 0894-1920 print/1521-0723 online DOI: 10.1080/08941920590881925

Common Property as Enclosure: A Case Study of a Backswamp in Southern Laos NATTAYA TUBTIM PHILIP HIRSCH Australian Mekong Resource Centre School of Geosciences, University of Sydney Sydney, New South Wales, Australia In this study we examine the enclosure of a common pool resource and ways in which a changed property rights regime has been legitimized by reference to the common property arrangements inherent therein. Legitimizing discourses of common property are situated in the wider discursive context of postsocialist development, territorialization, and community benefits. The resource in question is a backswamp1 in southern Laos that has traditionally been fished by 17 villages, but which since 1997 has been claimed exclusively by one village. Multiple contexts for this altered property regime include an experimental fish stocking program, a nationwide land and forest allocation program, a development approach that seeks to simplify property regimes, and traditional management and belief systems that have adapted to new circumstances. The exclusion process has resulted in relatively little conflict, in part due to the legitimizing role of common-property regimes in incremental microprocesses of enclosure. Keywords common property, enclosure, fisheries, laos, natural resource management

Rural development involves significant changes in property relations. A common assumption is that marketization and associated striving for surplus in rural production go hand-in-hand with exclusionary trends toward individualization and privatization of land and other resources that have previously been held in common or otherwise been subject to social control over access. Less well explored is the role of common property, in particular circumstances, in justifying exclusion through enclosure. In this study, we use the example of a wetland in southern Laos to show how incremental microprocesses of enclosure may employ common-property discourses as part of the dual tendencies of resource marketization and exclusion. The contextual development significance of the Lao case is twofold, in that it involves a dual transition from subsistence to market orientation of the resource base—in this case a freshwater fishery—and from socialist to market production and resource tenure arrangements. The study is based on research carried out under the auspices of Received 6 October 2003; accepted 24 June 2004. Address correspondence to Associate Professor Philip Hirsch, School of Geosciences (F09), University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

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a community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) program in fisheries management, which was supplemented with reflective ethnographic research on the part of the first author for a thesis undertaken at Chiangmai University (Tubtim 2001).2 We start with a discussion of the exclusion and inclusion inherent in common property arrangements and show how access can be rescaled from multicommunity to single-community commons. We also consider the extent to which exclusion is contested and accommodated or legitimized in various situations. After a general discussion of common property in the transitional context of the Lao rural economy, we describe the preexisting resource regime around Nong Bua backswamp in Champassak Province of southern Laos. The processes of enclosure of this wetland that occurred over a period of time and series of events (meetings, ritual performances and negotiations) form the backdrop to considering the legitimation that has occurred in this instance, leading to more generalized considerations concerning the microprocesses of enclosure in the development process. There are lessons in this study at practical, policy, and theoretical levels, perhaps most immediately in the field of CBNRM.

Common Property, Inclusion, and Exclusion Common Property and Inclusion While Bromley and Cernea’s (1989) ‘‘trinity’’ of property arrangements (Vandergeest 1997) is undoubtedly a simplification, key place-based inclusive aspects of common property nevertheless distinguish it from state and private property. The first is access by the poor to forests, rangelands, wetlands, and other resources that have not been alienated by those of higher socioeconomic status and that have not been set off-limits by state authority. Common property is thus associated with access by the rural poor to key livelihood resources (Beck and Nesmith 2001), particularly by what Johnson (2003) refers to as the moral economy and entitlements arm of common property literature. The second aspect, emphasized by the ‘‘tragedy of the commons’’ critique-driven arm of common property scholarship (Johnson 2003), is that common property is open to social and cultural controls at the village level, which means that there is an inclusive and effective community element in its management (Berkes 1989). Based as it is on collective action, common property is sometimes given a utopian tinge as inherently more equitable than other regimes, but equality is in fact a highly contingent characteristic and depends on the nature of interaction with private property arrangements (Quiggin 1993). On the other hand, economists’ attention to rules and incentives can overlook the symbolic meanings and functions of common property in the wider production of locally inclusive social relations (Mosse 1997). Enclosure and Levels of Exclusion Enclosure is most often associated with developments in 18th-century England, when communal grazing and other resource rights of peasant farmers were usurped (Moore 1966, 20ff.). Enclosure has been used to draw critical analogies with current neo-liberal agendas of economists and others who assert that both rural productivity and the environment are under threat because of absence of property rights (Watts 2000). Drawing on analogies with present day Peru, Campbell and Godoy (1992,

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116–118) show that this is in spite of evidence that the ‘‘improvement’’ rationale of enclosure was based on shaky evidence and was more about redistribution in favor of landlords than about productivity. Other contemporary critiques of latter-day enclosure include those based on government development policies in Thailand, which are seen to legitimate enclosure by allowing private urban-based interests to extract cheap resources and labour from rural areas (Yos Santasombat 1996), while concessions enclose common resources for corporate resource projects such as eucalyptus plantations (Lohmann 1991). In the sense that enclosure is normally associated in such critiques and in the political economy literature with the conversion of communally held or regulated resources into private property (Cohen and Weitzman 1975; Lazonick 1974), the term normally implies a degree of privatization. In this case study, two key features of enclosure are identified that reveal interesting parallels between 18th-century England and what we observe in early 21st-century postsocialist Laos, but which in this case do not imply privatization. These are exclusion of resource access rights beyond formalized village boundaries, and legitimation of new access arrangements in the name of agrarian improvement. Because they are nonprivatizing, the enclosing tendency of such arrangements tends to be missed. Reforms in common property arrangements that simplify and further exclude those with prior access rights receive much less attention than the expropriation of common property in favor of private property. Because of the maintenance of a degree of nonprivate access and collective management, such changes in property regimes may be less noticeable and more generalized, albeit in a quiet way, than headline-making and more conflictual expropriation. Taking the hypothesis yet further, property rights institutions that appear to replace open access with common property may be legitimized by the apparent combination of equity, efficiency, and sustainability that new arrangements afford. Equity of access in common-property regimes is subject to scale considerations. Inclusiveness at the village level can be associated with exclusion of neighboring communities. Depending on the preexisting resource regime, common-property innovations may thus be simultaneously inclusive and exclusive, equitable and inequitable, depending on scale of reference and institutional relationship between related communities. Within discourses of community are also found exclusionary processes that may restrict the poor, women, or others from access to particular resources (Li 1996). Contestation, Accommodation, and Legitimacy It is normally assumed that alienation of resources leads to contestation on the part of those excluded. Studies of responses to enclosure and infringement of moral economy (Scott 1976) contain a rich historical account of rebellion and challenge to such change, particularly where it alienates resources from the poor. The politics of environment in Thailand are in part a response to such alienation, most notably in forest reserve peripheries (Hirsch 1993). Conditions for challenge vary from one country to another. In Lao PDR and other socialist polities, responses are seen to be muted due to the limited development of civil society and restricted expression of dissent. However, we need also to raise the possibility of new arrangements being accommodated and legitimized. Legitimacy in changed property relations may come from a moral economy of acceptable change, may be established through the imprimatur of accepted

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authority, may be justified as ‘‘entitlement’’ according to common sets of societal values and established practices (Leach et al. 1999), or may be created through cultural processes such as storytelling (Fortman 1995). The case study that follows draws on each of these to show how common property facilitates these processes in an agrarian postsocialist emerging market economy, using the concept of legitimation to understand the significance of incremental enclosure through formalized common property arrangements. Common Property, State, and Market Common property is sometimes associated with discourses of community as an institution, or institutional arena, for managing resources at a local level (Berkes et al. 1989; Agrawal and Gibson 1999). Recent interest in ‘‘third-way’’ community alternatives to state and market governance tends to reinforce the ‘‘trinity of property’’ (Vandergeest 1997), setting common property as distinct from state or private property. However, the case study presented here problematizes these distinctions in two main ways. First, the boundaries between property regimes are more fluid than the ‘‘trinity’’ suggests. There is no clear-cut distinction between resource users and systems. Far more common is a system of overlapping, complex and contested regimes (Vandergeest 1997; Cleaver 2000; Leach et al. 1997). Rocheleau and Edmund (1997) and Peluso (1996) show that there are often many layers of rights and claims over resources within the same areal unit. Furthermore, the variations in commonproperty arrangements allow for significant shifts in levels of access, hence allowing moves from more inclusive to more exclusive arrangements. Second, there are aspects of common property that can be mutually supportive of both market and state agendas. Marketized conservation and resource management approaches, sometimes under the rubric of CBNRM, legitimize formalized common-property arrangements with an eye to production of surplus (Zerner 2000). Common property can thus be materialized in support of market integration (McKean 1997). Furthermore, state involvement in CBNRM programs, in comanagement frameworks and in formalized devolution of resource management, can centralize state control (Edmunds and Wollenburg 2003).

Common Property, State, and Market in Lao PDR Lao PDR and Postsocialism Laos is a small, landlocked Southeast Asian country with a 2001 population of 5.4 million. The country is mostly mountainous, and its people are largely dependent on subsistence-oriented agriculture, fishing, and other resource-based livelihoods. The resources of the Mekong River, its main tributaries, and a range of wetlands are thus fundamental to the well-being of Laos. Property arrangements governing access to these resources are integral to the local and national political economy of development. The Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) is a one-party state whose ruling regime came to power in a leftist revolutionary struggle that culminated in 1975, but that has seen a fundamental shift in economic orientation and associated property relations since 1986. Lao PDR is thus among the postsocialist states that maintains political continuity with the socialist system but whose economy is going through fundamental restructuring. Political discourse of ‘‘socialist market economy’’ provides a continued legitimacy for arrangements that promote collective

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benefit within an increasingly marketized framework, and hence for commonproperty arrangements that allow for enhanced agrarian surplus. Postsocialism raises a number of questions regarding common property. The collectivization of agriculture following 1975 was short-lived, as the collective ideal fit less well with common-property arrangements than Party theorists had assumed (Evans 1995). To the extent that production cooperatives were set up, decollectivization was more or less complete by the beginning of the reform period in 1986. However, two fundamental changes with implications for common property have been part of the postsocialist reforms: territorial management of resources, and marketization of the economy, including partial commodification of the resource base. Continuity of socialist discourse helps development measures for the ‘‘common good’’ achieve a legitimacy that private wealth creation does not. In this way, valorization of common property resources for community benefit attracts particular interest from those committed to the sometimes contradiction-ridden market socialism ideal. Territorialization (LFAP) Vandergeest (1996) has discussed territorial governance of resources as a state agenda of control, a process to monopolize the administration of resource tenure through clear zoning and mapping. This is one of Scott’s (1998) ‘‘state simplifications,’’ which achieves control through legibility—that is, an increased ability of the state to ‘‘read’’ village goings on in the sense of surveillance and control. Fox (1998; 2000) shows that such resource mapping can set the basis for conflict between and within communities, and between state and community, by replacing complex imagined boundaries with simplified and all-inclusive lines on maps. However, it should not be assumed that territorially defined access to common property is necessarily or exclusively an external, statist or centralist agenda. Indeed, Peluso (1995) has shown that countermapping exercises employ territorial discourses to challenge from below the state’s assertion of top-down control—although with sometimes unforeseen consequences. In other cases, territorialization can involve state–community collusion by those who stand to gain advantage vis-a`-vis their neighbors. In Lao PDR, several government development programs are oriented toward clarification of boundaries and thereby enclosure of resources within more fixed and legible territories than hitherto. The Land and Forest Allocation Program (LFAP) defines territory for each village and zones forest and agricultural land boundaries within cartographically defined borders. In some cases, these boundaries enclose village territories in a manner that appropriates other resources, including water bodies and the aquatic organisms contained therein. Market Economy (Chintanakan Mai) The post-1986 reforms are known both as konlakai sethakid mai (new economic mechanism) and chintanakan mai (new thinking), reflectng the thoroughgoing material and discursive shifts inherent in the move toward a market economy (Stuart-Fox 1996). Marketization is concerned with production of a surplus through new mechanisms, in recognition of the failure of collectivized and nationalized production units to do so. Yet fundamentals of socialist ideology and the existing subsistence agricultural practices place a check on full-scale commodification of the

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economy. The reality is that Laos remains one of the world’s least marketized agricultural or rural resource economies. Property relations are a key to the ambivalent shift toward market economy. Land titling has occurred in urban and periurban areas, agricultural land boundaries have been formalized, and under LFAP formalized village boundaries enclose forest lands in a way seen to provide the incentive and, in limited circumstances, collateral for productive investment of labor and capital. Yet there is a reluctance to proceed with full privatization, particularly at the village level. This is related in part to the continued socialist principle of land as state property under local management and in part to existing property relations and cultural limitations on individual alienation of resources. The push for surplus has filtered down through development programs to place emphasis on productive use of the resource base that goes beyond existing subsistence-oriented livelihoods. Programs that involve investment with the promise of higher returns thereby lend a legitimacy to changes in property relations that provide incentives for such investment. In some cases, these changes involve a move from more open to more closed forms of common property.

Nong Bua Situated on the left bank of the Sedone River, Nong Bua (lit. Lotus Backswamp) is located to the east of Kaengpho village in Sanasomboun District of Champassak Province in southern Laos, 44km upstream of the Sedone’s confluence with the Mekong at the town of Pakse (Figure 1). Linked to the Sedone by a seasonal channel, Nong Bua is 28ha in area at the height of the wet season and has water year round. The backswamp is surrounded by rice fields and pockets of low forest. It is fed by rain through 18 small channels connecting rice fields to the backswamp, and it drains through a single outlet. During the wet season, the Sedone rises and overflows through this outlet in a reverse flow that lifts water levels in the backswamp and brings in fish from the river. Filter traps (tawn) at each channel catch fish migrating

FIGURE 1 Location of Kaengpho and other villages in Sanasomboun District, Champassak Province, Lao PDR.

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between rice fields and the backswamp and between the backswamp and the Sedone River, respectively. Nong Bua has been a significant part of the portfolio of fishery resources accessible to villagers, most notably for freshwater shrimp and snakeheads (Channa striata). Fishers also use the Sedone River, rice fields, and small streams. For most of its history, Nong Bua has been a wild-capture fishery operating under a relatively open common-property resource regime, but since 1997 it has been stocked with fingerlings and the common-property arrangements have become more closed. Its management needs to be understood with reference to the history of use and settlement, to belief systems associated with the backswamp, and to relations with surrounding communities. Ecological History and Spirits Nong Bua has gone through a number of ecological changes during the past several decades. Freshwater crocodiles have disappeared. Fish catches and species abundance have declined. The backswamp has become choked with water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) and reeds (Cyperaceae spp.) (Lao names: phak tob and pheu), and infested with leeches. People in the area believe two female guardian spirits, Maethao Kammai (widow) and Nang Whan (sweet), watch over the backswamp. Kaengpho villagers connect poles and broken pots found in the backswamp with the tale of ‘‘Phadaeng and Nang-Aai,’’ a legend of female guardian widow spirits of natural ponds that is common in Laos and the northeast of Thailand. Villagers pay strict respect to the spirits of Nong Bua, reporting sickness or the death of animals and people on occasions when the spirits have been offended. Rules include prohibitions on certain fishing activities, including blocking streams entering the pond and use of brushfilled basket traps (khaa) or plunge traps (soum). The main fishing gears employed within the rules include hook and line, floating hook, cast nets, gill nets, one-person bait nets, and handled scoop nets. It is also forbidden to fell trees or cut tree roots close to the edge of the backswamp and to farm or establish dwellings near the backswamp. Those who infringe the rules have to appease the widowed spirit with two pigs, one black and one white (more recently reduced to chickens), a piece of cloth, a bottle of distilled rice liquor, and a khouai yai (phallus or large timber carved in the a shape of penis) for Maethao Kammai and some dessert for Nang Whan. A kwuan khao jam (shaman) performs ceremonies of worship, combined with propitiation of Chao Puu (the village’s spirit) each year before the annual farming season starts in May. People in Kaengpho assume custodianship of Nong Bua and used to send letters to neighboring villages requesting them not to break the taboos of the backswamp, for fear of causing harm to the village. Dependence on the Backswamp by Surrounding Communities Nong Bua serves as a fishery for surrounding communities that are located upstream of the Saelabam Dam (specified by village names in Figure 2), which blocks riverine fish migration and increases dependence on Nong Bua during the dry season when the Sedone would normally be accessed. For communities downstream of the dam, there are more fish available in the Sedone so fishers do not bother to come to Nong Bua. Before the enclosure, 17 communities, including Kaengpho Village, accessed Nong Bua. The intensity of access varied by season, distance, resource availability, and the economic status of the fishers in those communities.

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FIGURE 2 Seventeen villages that accessed Nong Bua before the enclosure. NB, Nong Bua.

Table 1 shows patterns of fishing in Nong Bua before the regime changed. The table ranks communities accessing Nong Bua from those with most to those with least access. Fishers residing in communities closer to Nong Bua came to fish more often than distant communities. Kaengpho village accessed and gained the most year-round benefit from Nong Bua as it is located within the village boundary, and Nong Bua is one of the main water bodies available to its people. In the wet season, people can make enough paa daek (fermented fish) for a year from this source. Fishers from other communities who came to fish in Nong Bua in the past were located up to 9 km from the backswamp. They came on foot, in boats and by bicycle. This took them from 12 hour to 112 hours from their home villages. Most fishers from other communities were among the poorer families, the better off instead tending to buy fish. Nong Bua was open year round, but fishers from other communities came only in the dry season (from February to April), due to the lack of fishing resources in their home villages at this time when most streams and backswamps dry out and food is scarce. It was estimated by local fishers that people could catch a total of about 100kg of shrimp during each month of the dry season.3 February in particular is a breeding time for snakehead (Channa striata) fish. Fish caught were mostly for household consumption and minor local sales. While others might come to Nong Bua only once or twice a week, fishers from Nongphai, which is not adjacent to the river, came more frequently and were often more skillful than Kaengpho villagers at backswamp fishing, using cast nets and bare hands. About 20 of the poorer Nongphai fishers came to Nong Bua every second day or so to catch fish for sale in their village, some exchanging fish for rice to eat daily. Fishing in Nong Bua also served as a social event. Until the 1970s, Nong Bua had attracted 1200–1500 people for a big boun (traditional ceremony) on Lao New Year (mid-April). On that day, people from nearby villages and also from

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surrounding districts would come early in the morning to Nong Bua with their cooking utensils, baskets of rice, and bottles of rice liquor and to fish at Nong Bua for their food. Some communities such as Nongphai, Naa, and Khamyaad villages invited monks from their villages to join the event. Food would be served to monks before people started their meals. Government officials from the province and district also came. This social event has declined as people have less time for other activities and due to the difficulty of fishing in the dense weeds that have infested Nong Bua.

Processes of Enclosure Since 1997, the 16 communities that used to access the backswamp have been excluded. This effective enclosure of the previously open resource has been due to a combination of external interventions and initiatives internal to Kaengpho. While the change in property rights regime has alienated the resource from some users, the enclosure of Nong Bua has involved incremental, nonconfrontational change, rather than a sudden or stark response. External Interventions The Land and Forest Allocation Program (LFAP) was first implemented in Sanasomboun District in the mid-1990s, but was not implemented in Kaengpho until 1999. Here, LFAP merely formalizes prior boundaries between established wet rice farming communities. Kaengpho and the other villages, especially Saelabam, demarcated village boundaries in 1994, and people in this area have recognized their land tenure through tax collection for decades. LFAP can thus be seen as the latest step in a longer process of resource clarification. Its significance is in creating a sense of resource ownership throughout the country. While the boundaries between villages are clear, the pattern of resource uses varies. People access certain resources regardless of village boundary. For example, people cross the border to collect wild vegetables, bamboo shoots, and mushrooms, but they do not cut trees in other villages without permission. Spiritual belief in some resources is another crucial condition that controls access, indicating continued reliance on customary practices in resource tenure. LFAP has thus only partially formalized a property regime in which rights over resources are still negotiated and overlapping. The Small-scale Wetland Indigenous Fisheries Management project (SWIM) and its precursor, the Indigenous Fisheries Development and Management Project (IFDMP), were implemented in the study area from1997 until 2002. This CBNRM work commenced with socioeconomic studies of community level fisheries. In 1997, local government and village leaders requested the project to support a ‘‘development’’ scheme at the community level, leading to trial stocking of fingerlings in several natural backswamps in the District. The objectives are to improve food security for local communities by enhancing the productive capacity of natural water bodies with community-based management using indigenous species. In 1998, Kaengpho received a small grant from the Community Assistance Scheme, Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), to build a sluice gate at the outlet of Nong Bua. This helped ease the problems of drought and the decline of fish in the backswamp. One result of the stocking trial by the SWIM project is evident at Nong Bua, where Kaengpho has applied its village boundary

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Village names

Kaengpho

Nongphai

Saelabam

Naa Nai

Naa

Kaengmaihia Thoeng

Lao

Rank

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1.5 km 30min 4km 50min 3.5 km 40min 3.5 km 40min

2km 30min

4km 1h

0.3 km 7–10min

Distance to Nong Bua (km)=travel time (min)

50 p: female 30 p: female 30 p: female 30 p female 60%

70%

70%

60%

60 p: female 70%

80% of village, male 70% (out of 111 households, 662 persons in village) 60 p: male 80%; 20 men always come

Number of people (p) fishinga

Came in group, 3–4 times a week, and stayed the whole day, many caught for sale=exchange for rice, New Year; using cast net, bare hands Came in group, 2–3 times a week, mostly target shrimps for consumption, New Year Came in small group, target shrimps for consumption, New Year Once a week, came in big group with more women, New Year Once a week, came in big group with more women, New Year Once or twice a month, target shrimps, New Year

All year

Period and characteristics of participation

TABLE 1 Use Pattern of Communities Fishing in Nong Bua During the Dry Season Before Enclosure

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Huasae

Phonethad

Nongduu

Suwankhiilii

Khamyaad

Khambon

Namthaeng

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

5km 1h 4km 1h 5km 40min (bike) 3km 40 min 6km 50 min (bike) 3km 40 min 4km 40 min (boat) 3.5 km 40 min 8km 1.30 h 9km 1 h (bike) 5–6 Males only

5–6 Males only

Less than 10 p, male > female 10 p, male ¼ female 3 Households, only males

Less than 10 p, mostly males Less than 10 p, mostly males Less than 10 p, only males 10 p, female > male 5–6 Males

a month, New Year

a month, target fish,

a month, target fish,

a month, target shrimps,

a month, target fish,

a month, target fish,

a month, target fish,

Once or twice a month

Only households staying close to Nong Bua, New Year Once or twice a month

Once or twice New Year Once or twice New Year Once or twice New Year Once or twice New Year Once or twice New Year Once or twice New Year Once or twice

Note. Field data collected in January 2001. This data was collected mainly from interviews in Kaengpho Village and cross-checked with the other four studied villages. a These percentages are rough estimates based on key informants and should be taken as indicative.

Nonesawan

Kaengmaihia Loum

9

10

Huaphuu

8

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to claim the backswamp under exclusive ownership, with support from the local government. Changing Property Rights Regime The fish stocking in Nong Bua has been associated with a change in the property rights regime and the management of the backswamp. With the support of the district, the village of Kaengpho has claimed exclusive rights and has established a community backswamp committee to manage Nong Bua and to set rules. The spiritual beliefs and taboos in using certain fishing gears in the backswamp are still practiced, but users and periods of access are exclusively controlled by the single village of Kaengpho. Under the new regime, authority over Nong Bua belongs exclusively to Kaengpho. People from the other 16 communities are not allowed to access Nong Bua in the dry season as they used to. This is explained by Kaengpho people in terms of conserving fish during growout of stocked fingerlings. Several fishing techniques such as hooks and collecting snails are nominally allowed to people from other communities. However, this rule only benefits Kaengpho fishers, as hooks have to be set in the evening and checked early the following morning. During the wet season when Nong Bua is open, people are busy with their farming activities and food is also available for all, so they do not have to come to Nong Bua. The benefit directed toward Kaengpho is geared more toward commercial purposes than to the previous subsistence orientation of the fishery. Each year in late March to early April, the committee arranges a group of fishers to harvest fish communally from the backswamp when water recedes. Nong Bua is then open for fishing until the rains end in October, but in practice the harvesting is difficult during higher water levels and weeds infest the backswamp. In 2000, Kaengpho arranged to sell fishing rights to outsiders in support of the village coffers and also asked for donations from invited guests to maintain the primary school in the village. Fish caught by the committee are sold mostly in the village, and the remainder to neighboring communities. The income is for a community fund used for communal purposes such as buying books, pens, and paying for the village committee to attend meetings at the district or province. Funds are also used for development schemes in the village, such as maintaining the temple and school, and for village ceremonies. As Lao communities normally have to rely on themselves with very little support from the government, villages without such an income normally request each family to contribute out of its own pockets for such expenses. One reported result of the new regime of Nong Bua is that Kaengpho village committee does not collect the money from villagers as often as before. Reactions and Contestation The enclosure of Nong Bua has, for the most part, not resulted in explicit or forceful contestation by those excluded. While not all are satisfied with the changes, disagreement emerges in subtle ways. The most vocal opposition early on was from Saelabam Village. About 30 Saelabam people went to fish in the backswamp a few times after the new rules were enforced. Eventually, one village committee member stopped them by firing a gun into the air. The Saelabam fishers who were chased away by Kaengpho have diverse opinion toward the enclosure. Some were opposed on the grounds that Nong Bua is a natural backswamp that people have accessed for generations, so Kaengpho does not have the right to exclude them, but they got no

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support from the district in their early opposition. Other opposition was expressed in more basic, private ways—for example, by a man who declared, ‘‘I would not turn my face to Kaengpho when I shit,’’ or the case of a primary school boy at Saelabam who said to his Kaengpho classmates, ‘‘If you do not allow us to fish in Nong Bua, you should not come to study here [Saelabam] as well.’’ However, there have been no further incidents, partly as villagers noticed that some released fish from Nong Bua were appearing in their rice fields. The only outstanding grievance is lack of access to shrimp, which are scarce in other water bodies. In contrast, Nongphai fishers were relatively more affected by the enclosure, as there are limited alternatives, but showed little reaction against the Kaengpho initiative. Rather, the response was to seek alternative activities such as collecting cattle dung to sell for organic fertilizer being produced by a company. Some have turned to traveling to fish in the Mekong, with assistance from relatives or friends living nearby who lend them gear and boats. Some now go to fish in the open backswamp of a nearby district. Nongphai fishers responded with a milder contestation, found in what Scott (1990) refers to as the ‘‘hidden transcript.’’ Fishers have subtly shown their dissatisfaction with the enclosure by complaining and gossiping in small groups among themselves. Some teased Kaengpho people who brought fish to sell in their and other villages, saying that ‘‘in the past, we fished and sold in our village but now we have to buy fish from you.’’ However, they have not actively opposed the new regime or those who benefit from it, and even the hidden transcript reveals an acceptance and absence of lasting resentment. Rather, they simply feel unfortunate that they can no longer access Nong Bua. Some initially complained to the village leaders, but there was no active support and the reaction soon faded away. This raises the question of why the enclosure does not result in more confrontational or sustained responses. Relationships between Kaengpho and surrounding communities have not changed greatly. People from these communities still continue their ordinary activities such as trading between villages, and early opposition has fizzled out. Part of the explanation lies in the material fact that, despite the economic disadvantage suffered by those excluded from the resource, its removal has not closed off subsistence security options of the excluded communities. However, a discursive approach is also necessary to understand acceptance of the new regime.

Legitimizing Enclosure How has the enclosure of Nong Bua as exclusive common property been legitimized at the local level? To address this question, we turn to ways in which agendas of different actors have been articulated, focusing on events and on interactions between groups and discursive responses during the changing property rights regime of Nong Bua. Three sets of discourses are represented: those of Kaengpho people, the local government officials, and excluded communities. Legitimation Through Formalization of Customary Practices Most people in Kaengpho support the new management arrangement, despite new restrictions on gill nets in the dry season. However, not all were confident with the change, especially elders, who worried about challenging the guardian spirits. Kaengpho leaders have increased confidence in the new regime through several discursive means of legitimation.

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Kaengpho villagers have formalized the new regime of Nong Bua through various channels beyond legal claim, including a narrative history of territory, rituals, and social norms. The village committee insists that Nong Bua is located in the longstanding territory of Kaengpho. Moreover, the backswamp is surrounded by 18 in-stream filter traps (tawn), connected with rice fields owned by Kaengpho. Apart from discourse on location of Nong Bua, there is an oral history of village territory. The present residential area of Saelabam used to belong to Kaengpho. During the wartime in the 1970s, Saelabam had to move from Lao Village (Figure 2) and asked Kaengpho for an area to settle. This story initially only emerged in discussion with village committee members and elders on the history of relationships with neighboring communities, but in the context of tension over Nong Bua it started to be told by others in the village, supporting the sentiment that, in the words of one villager, ‘‘Saelabam has received enough from Kaengpho so they should feel gratitude to us instead of requesting access to Nong Bua in ‘our territory.’’’ This boosts feelings in Kaengpho about the legitimacy of exclusive claims over Nong Bua. Traditional and formalized state-sanctioned events represent ritual as another important discourse reinforcing the formalisation of Kaengpho’s ownership over Nong Bua. Kaengpho people have performed a traditional ritual three times: on the first day of fish releases in 1997; when the village built a sluice gate in 1998; and when they sold fishing rights to outsiders in 2000. On each occasion, they arrange a propitiation ceremony attended by government officials, project staff, and representatives from excluded communities, inviting monks to chant. Guests and Kaengpho people dine on a feast of fish caught in Nong Bua. Significantly, the most ostentatious occasion was when the village sold fishing rights to outsiders, and included music and Lao dancing. These traditional rituals are arranged as a conscious type of political insurance by the village committee. Before the sluice gate was built, the Kaengpho village committee sent a letter to the SWIM project asking for propitiatory items in case the innovation upset the spirits and harmed the people. Fortunately, the sluice gate was finished safely in a few weeks. This not only reflects feelings of anxiety of Kaengpho people toward the new regime of Nong Bua, but also risk avoidance by the leadership. An elder in the committee explained that if this innovation had failed, villagers would hold the project rather than the village committee responsible. The fear of Kaengpho people over the new regime was further diminished by a case of spirit possession at the end of the day of selling fishing rights, witnessed by a number of villagers. A woman who had never been seen smoking or drinking suddenly rolled a large cigarette and drank a big glass of Lao rice liquor. She said that she was Maethao Kammai, one of the two guardian spirits of Nong Bua. She expressed delight in the ceremony. Asked about disappearance of fish caught for the feast and how it was that fishers who bought tickets had caught very few fish, she replied that it was she who determined the results. She said further that she did not know it would be so much fun, and that it is all right that ‘‘the others’’ were excluded as the fish were still in ‘‘our’’ backswamp anyway. The village shaman and elders interpreted this as agreement by the spirits with the new arrangements over Nong Bua. They went further, suggesting that ‘‘if people are united for the common good, the spirits will support us. On the other hand, if so much as one person does not agree or uses the resource for individual benefit, the spirits will get angry.’’ The ritual and the possession have thus reinforced collective action based on a sense of legitimacy in the new property regime. The excluded communities abide by these rituals, as they share similar values and beliefs to those in Kaengpho.

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Meanwhile, government officials have different values. In the socialist ideology in particular, the state perceives animism as superstition that obstructs progress and societal development (Evans 1995). The director of the District Agriculture and Forestry Office (DAFO) said that if there were no belief in backswamp spirits, people would move faster. However, the officials share the agenda of claiming exclusive property rights, and they are central to the other type of ritual that involves presence of higher authorities in the activities or ceremonies. The power of such ritual is not so much through rationale or ideology but through the performative role of formality and occasion. During one fish release event, there was a careful arrangement of invited guests, performance of traditional ceremony, chanting by invited monks, and representation from neighboring communities, district officials, and project staff, and Lao television and newspaper crews were invited to record the event. The venue, at the bank of the backswamp, was decorated and equipped with microphones. After the chanting, a Party member of Kaengpho read out the objectives of fish stocking, emphasising policy of Phak Lat (the Party and government) to decentralize development to the rural areas. This was followed by the village head reading out the new regulations of Nong Bua. Then the district head gave a speech expressing that the government gave a start (supply of fingerlings) and rights (in managing the exclusive property regime) for Kaengpho, so now the villagers had to improve themselves and make it yeunyong (sustainable). Lastly, fish were released by district officials, project staff, representatives from the other communities, and Kaengpho people. Such events are consistently reinforced by explaining that the enclosure was initiated by khan theung (higher authorities—the province and the district), and by the objectives of khongkaan (the development project), which itself has special significance in communities otherwise left to survive on their own limited means. Questioned on whether Kaengpho people would be able to change the regime of Nong Bua without assistance from the district and the SWIM project, the village committee explains that this activity is not yet paphenii (tradition, or internalized norms) in this area. What establishes them as paphenii over time is a combination of traditionalist ritual and belief, together with the authority of state discourses. The latter are closely tied to the notion of phatthanaa, or development. Because Kaengpho and the other communities have equal power at a horizontal level, the new exclusive regime requires legitimation through power vested by the higher authorities. In Laos’s political culture, local communities tend to follow the lead of official authorities, forestalling challenge by the excluded group. By referring to higher authorities and khongkaan, or ‘‘bon-ing’’— site of reference—Kaengpho people can detach themselves from confronting the other communities. Discourses of Development as Legitimacy While both villagers and state officials see the more exclusive property rights system as a prerequisite of development, they base their explanation on different rationales and priorities. The state views the property rights regime as serving development by encouraging improvement and efficient uses of resources that allow local communities to increase sustainable self-reliance. Officials consider that local villagers normally use resources in an opportunistic, irregular, and extractive—and by implication degrading—manner, following the Lao saying haa taam mii taam keud (collecting what is there, what appears). State officials want to see local people

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improve and manage resources more efficiently and productively to generate income and use funds for ‘‘development.’’ The fish-stocking scheme and the formalized property regime fit these aims well. In addition, the district and provincial authorities see the outcome of the new regime as a good step in pursuit of development. First, the stocking of fish and the sluice gate help sustain the fish stocks in the backswamp. Second, the new institution allows Kaengpho to generate income to develop the village for the common good, namely, improving the school building and creating a community fund for communal development schemes. With this catalyst, resources were supplemented to Kaengpho. The District Education Office gave material support to the village in the form of tin roofing and nails for the school; the Provincial Agriculture and Forestry Office (PAFO) brought the National Wildlife Day activity into the village by releasing more fish in Nong Bua; also, PAFO funds some Kaengpho villagers for training in fish breeding and nursing at the provincial fisheries station. This supplementary assistance has been noticed by other communities. Furthermore, the case of Kaengpho has been raised in various official meetings as ban tua baeb or a model village for the other communities to follow in developing their villages. In contrast, Kaengpho people start from the premise that they want to develop the village but lack resources and development project inputs. Unlike neighboring communities, they have no electricity, a very poor school building, and no other markers of development support. In their view, this lack of access to these basic facilities is an unequal development between communities, even though Kaengpho is not economically the poorest village in the area. People in Kaengpho do not want to stand out of the crowd but only aim to catch up on ‘‘development’’ with their neighbors. A further aspect of development discourse in support of the new regime at Nong Bua is the state’s association of development with more clearly defined property rights systems. Officials believe that people are encouraged to manage and use resources productively and sustainably if boundaries are clear. The state expects that nationwide resource clarification (LFAP) will facilitate market economy development. In the case of Kaengpho, LFAP was implemented after the enclosure of Nong Bua. Kaengpho people explain that LFAP simply gives them and also the other communities in this area the maps of their previously agreed boundaries, and moreover that this does not imply exclusive access rights to all resources. People continue to access several types of resource across village boundaries, including firewood, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, red ant eggs, wild vegetables, and grazing land. So existing resource uses at the local level are not bound in a static sense to physical borders but rather continue to reflect customary practice based on livelihood circumstances and social relations between communities. In general, territorialization through LFAP tends to effect changes in de facto tenure over commodified resources, but to leave more open arrangements over subsistence resources relatively more intact. Employing the discourse of development, Kaengpho people base their claims on social norms, with emphasis on the common good. During the ceremony of selling fishing rights, the Kaengpho village head said in his speech: The money gained from selling tickets and from donations of all guests was for maintaining the village primary school. Furthermore, this school was for ‘‘suan ruam’’ [common], for ‘‘our’’ children [everyone, not only Kaengpho]. So, this is like making merit together.

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The requests for sympathy and fairness are local strategies that the state rarely uses, but they are effective among people who share the same social norms and values. Village committees of several nearby excluded communities are quite supportive of the new regime. One of the committee of Naanai, which has lost most by the enclosure, said that many people came to complain to him in the first year but in his position he could not encourage his people to oppose. This group explained the importance of a clarified property regime and development, in that If the village lets people fish after the stocking, it would be a waste. It is true that individuals would benefit but the village would never be developed. The government does not have a big budget so the village should manage the resources given by the state well, and individuals will benefit too. Village heads of some excluded communities admire Kaengpho village committee in its mobilization of villagers, seeing this in itself as deserving. The processes of a changing property regime at the local level thus present a combination of two ideologies within the framework of an emerging developmentalist discourse. The resource is managed to accumulate wealth in support of market economy development, but the benefit goes to the common good that continues to be applauded within official socialist ideology and local norms. This claim fits well with postsocialist Laos.

Conclusion: Microprocesses of Enclosure Nong Bua demonstrates a case of shifting common-property arrangements from inclusive toward more exclusive property rights, enclosing a formerly multicommunity common-property resource into a single-community boundary. Within the context of postsocialist economic development, the state aims to clarify property rights so as to facilitate development based on a market economy. While this meets the state’s goal of simplification (Scott 1998) and increased control through what Vandergeest (1996) terms ‘‘territorialization,’’ and while it alienates resources from some local players in favor of others, it is not a simple process of resource appropriation. Rather, the case shows that common property plays a role in incremental microprocesses of enclosure, helping to preempt and diffuse potential conflict. The processes are incremental in the sense that they rely on a combination of meetings and other discursive encounters, together with material project inputs that legitimize, soften, and preempt significant challenges. The case also demonstrates that scale is important in understanding changing common-property arrangements from a multi-community to single-community commons, in two main ways. First, the loose management of common property between a number of villages, whose commonality is a shared set of taboos based on a common belief system, is more open to change toward a more exclusive regime than is a longstanding village-localized common-property arrangement with established rules such as an irrigation system. In the case of Nong Bua, the 17 communities had not actively managed the backswamp other than through sharing common and ritualized belief in the spirits. These arrangements have been readily adaptable to new property relations. Second, the shift in scale of common property means that equitable sharing of the resource is now within a single community, but that there is a loss of equity vis-a`-vis neighbouring villages. On the other hand, this is seen locally

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as a way of redressing existing disadvantage in Kaengpho, particularly with regard to basic village infrastructure. Unlike in Thailand and other countries that have made the transition to market economies through a combination of bureaucratic and proto-capitalist approaches to development, the state in Laos recognizes communal property—but in an exclusive regime within the territorial unit of an administrative village and formalized institutions. Further, territorialization is not simply a state imposition, but rather a type of collusion with local agendas of specific communities. Local people support aspects of market economy development and expect a more exclusive property regime to facilitate such development. The formalized property regime that diminishes traditional practices based on the usufruct rights and social networks that were the basis of subsistence is supported by village as well as state agendas. The local-level claims and incremental microprocesses of enclosure have resulted in accommodation of the new arrangements by excluded groups. Several mutually supporting factors have allowed this relatively nonconflictual enclosure, including notions of development that have been promoted by the government for some time. Other factors have been locally embedded through a complex internalization process. The new property relations have been incorporated by overlapping levels of authority, based on formal laws and spiritual belief, and shared norms of moral economy between communities. In addition, the successful adoption of one case can snowball into legitimation of other cases. This contributes to a continuing process and ethos of formalizing exclusive property rights that can encourage enclosure of resources in other situations. External development projects have a significant influence on changing property rights regimes, both in the substantive nature of the community-based enclosure that is supported, and in the discursive aspect of legitimizing agendas of particular communities—or village leadership and committees—in close cooperation with state agendas. For the most part, this influence is inadvertent rather than planned, and a lesson from the case of Nong Bua is that community-based natural resource management programs need to pay particular attention to property rights implications of new initiatives and the distributive and sustainability issues inherent therein.

Notes 1. The term ‘‘backswamp’’ is used to denote a permanent or seasonally flooded depression on the floodplain of the Mekong or one of its tributaries that is separated from the main rivers by levee banks. Such wetlands are seasonally linked to the river by small channels that have seasonal bidirectional flow. While the term ‘‘swamp’’ has tended to take on a depreciatory connotation, Goudie (1994; 42) defines a backswamp scientifically as a ‘‘low-lying marshy or swampy area on a floodplain where overbank flood or tributary drainage water may become ponded between river levees and valley sides or other relatively elevated alluvial sediments.’’ 2. The research was carried out through the Department of Livestock and Fisheries and the Living Aquatic Resources Centre and supported by the International Development Research Centre and Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. It involved a collaboration with the Australian Mekong Resource Centre at University of Sydney and the Regional Centre for Social Science and Sustainable Development at Chiangmai University. The ethnographic research at Kaengpho involved both reflection on an applied CBNRM program and ancillary ethnography by the first author. 3. This figure should be taken as a very rough estimate. While the overall biomass extracted is not large, particularly by comparison with yields of other Mekong wetlands such

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as Tonle Sap, in local terms this quantity of freshwater shrimp (which are only present in certain water bodies) is seen as a significant income and food resource—particularly for the mainly women and children who collect freshwater shrimp.

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