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State formation, social hierarchies, and ethnic dynamics: a case from upland Laos

ABSTRACT State formation below the national scale remains under-researched. In this article, the reconstitution of the local history of an upland region of Laos – Sepon – reveals a process of state formation from a territorial margin. Contrary to James C. Scott’s thesis on state-evading peoples, members of a local ethnic minority population – the Phuthai – have been part of the making of the state over centuries. In addition to the material aspects of state-making, this article explores its intangible components that are often neglected in analyses of state formation. This wider lens is particularly applied to the Communist state-making efforts in Sepon during the American-Vietnam War. These have had the unintended consequence of producing a new class that replicates age-old social hierarchies and have resulted in Sepon, and probably other upland areas of contemporary Laos, being more socially inequitable than the Communist Revolution intended.