| Description |
1 online resource (1 PDF (xiv, 213 pages) :) : illustrations, maps |
| Series |
Challenges of the agrarian transition in Southeast Asia |
|
Challenges of the agrarian transition in Southeast Asia.
|
| Contents |
Introduction : towards a political ethnography of desire -- Eat with you : power as nurturing and devouring -- The mobility of the marginal -- Poverty becomes you : black, white and gold -- Stories of state -- Resurrecting the state : "the will and desire of the people" -- The participatory poverty reduction project -- Mutual aid : delirium and the political field -- Conclusion : fieldnotes from the postrevolution -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index |
| Summary |
In this important new book, High argues that poverty reduction policies are formulated and implemented in fields of desire. Drawing on psychoanalytic understandings of desire, she shows that such programs circulate around the question of what is lacking. Far from rational responses to measures of need, then, the politics of poverty are unconscious, culturally expressed, mutually contradictory, and sometimes contrary to self-interest. Based on long-term fieldwork in a Lao village that has been the subject of multiple poverty reduction and development programs, High's account looks at implementation on the ground. While these efforts were laudable in their aims of reducing poverty, they often failed to achieve their objectives. Local people received them with suspicion and disillusionment. Nevertheless, poverty reduction policies continued to be renewed by planners and even desired locally. High relates this to the force of aspirations among rural Lao, ambivalent understandings of power and the "post-rebellious" moment in contemporary Laos |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 193-203) and index |
| Notes |
English |
|
Print version record |
| Subject |
Desire (Philosophy)
|
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Poverty -- Government policy -- Laos
|
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Poverty -- Political aspects -- Laos
|
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Poverty -- Laos -- Psychological aspects
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Poverty -- Laos -- Sociological aspects
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SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural
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Desire (Philosophy)
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Poverty -- Government policy
|
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Poverty -- Political aspects
|
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Poverty -- Psychological aspects
|
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Business & Economics.
|
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Economic History.
|
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Laos
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9789971697792 |
|
9971697793 |
|
