Anyone who has worked in the field in Laos knows well the implementational challenges, contested objectives, and conflicting meanings that government projects bring to the daily life of its diverse people. Ever-deepening understanding of the bumpy road to a market economy and the shady sides of state governance has led to a received wisdom that the revolution is dead, leaving Laos to an awkward post-Socialist future. In Projectland: Life in a Socialist Model Village, Holly High provides an engaging and compelling account of how the larger national project of Socialism is alive and well in the livelihoods, social interactions, and cultural discourses of Ban Kandon, an ethnic Kantu (Katu) village located in Sekong Province of southern Laos. High's ethnography is penetrating, and sometimes dark, as she describes not only the struggles for solidarity in a multiethnic state where ethnicity is something to be recognized and then overcome by Socialism...

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