Skip to content

Commodifying Sovereignty: Special Economic Zone and the Neoliberalization of the Lao Frontier

Laos has followed its Chinese neighbor in creating the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) as part of the new economic engine that allows distinctive economic policies and flexible governmental measures conducive to doing business in certain areas of the country. SEZs in Laos operate as one form of self-imposed extraterritoriality tailored to foreign investors especially the Chinese. Vast areas of local land have been turned into entertainment and tourist complex. This paper uses the case of the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone to examine the paradox between the desire to civilize and the will to survive played out in the border zone of northern Lao PDR. It investigates the means and mechanism that facilitate the process of the civilizing mission by the Chinese investor. Commodifying sovereignty has contributed to the creation of the space of exception necessary for the new economic possibilities to reshape the wild zone and its people into a productive resource. Negotiation and reluctance by the Lao villagers to participate in the new economic enterprise has kept them in the state of abeyance. The paper also analyzes the role of the Burmese migrant workers as the key actor --the neo-liberal subjects that help make the Chinese civilizing mission possible.

Data Resources (1)

Data Resource Preview - Commodifying Sovereignty: Special Economic Zone and the Neoliberalization of the Lao Frontier

Additional Info

Field Value
စာတမ်းအမျိုးအစား Reports, journal articles, and research papers (including theses and dissertations)
စာရွက်စာတမ်း၏ ဘာသာစကား
  • အင်္ဂလိပ်ဘာသာစကား
ခေါင်းစဉ်များ
  • Economy and commerce
  • Special economic zones
ပထဝီဧရိယာ (spatial range)
  • လာအိုပြည်သူ့ဒီမိုကရက်တစ်သမ္မတနိုင်ငံ
မူပိုင်ခွင့် Yes
ပြင်ဆင်ချက် 1
ခွင့်ပြုချက် Creative Commons Attribution
ရေးသားသူ (တစ်ဦးချင်း) Pinkaew Laungaramsri
ထုတ်ဝေသူ Palgrave Macmillan, New York
ထုတ်ဝေသည့်ရက်စွဲ 2015
စာမျက်နှာခွဲ 28
တင်ခဲ့သည့်ရက်စွဲ မေ 20, 2019, 07:16 (UTC)
ပြန်လည်ပြင်ဆင်သည့်ရက်စွဲ နိုဝင်ဘာ 29, 2019, 06:34 (UTC)