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CHAPTER 4 Commodities of the Place ◆ Ritual Expressions and the Marketing of Religious Culture The spectacular growth of the international tourist industry in contemporary Laos, especially in Luang Phrabang, has been almost as remarkable as the persistence of its spirit cults. If there is any place in Asia that represents the process of globalization, to employ that now over-worn concept, it would be Luang Phrabang.Contemporary Luang Phrabang dramatizes a conflict that many other communities in Asia are experiencing: it has been chosen by the West (in this case UNESCO), in collusion with an impoverished “capital-hungry” government , the Lao PDR, to represent and to market an “authentic Asia.” Within one short decade Luang Phrabang has been transformed from a sleepy, small (population about 30,000), neglected backwater town with some recently restored and architecturally unique Buddhist temples, to being one of the hottest attractions on the Asian tourist circuit for Westerners. In 2006 the number of tourists visiting Laos topped one million, about double the number visiting Sri Lanka. In 2007 the number was 1.4 million. Between 300,000 and 400,000 visited Luang Phrabang. Why? First, because Laos is an exceedingly beautiful country topographically, owing to its mountains, valleys, and rivers, it has been marketed as a destination for “ecotourists.” Second, two decades of isolation from the outside world spawns curiosity, and it is common to hear tourists say that they wanted to come to Laos before it changes too much. But I think these two factors may be less important draws than a third. My unsystematic attempt to ascertain the reasons tourists are coming suggests it is a combination of its Buddhist culture and its mixed ethnic population, amidst a relatively “unspoiled” or nonurbanized social context. Finally, Luang Phrabang seems to epitomize the values of “boutique tourism,” a search for “a tourism of scale” that promises a cultural experience different from the tourist “mega-sites” in South and Southeast Asia such as Nepal, Bali, Angkor, the beaches and islands of southern Thailand,and so forth.As Trankell (1999: 200) 186 Ritual Expressions and the Marketing of Religious Culture 187 says: “Louang Prabang is promoted on the tourist market as a place of romanticism and royal mystique.” As early as 1979 there was one inchoate plan for marketing Buddhism and Lao culture for international tourist consumption. Almost thirty years ago “Kaysone Phomvihane, Prime Minister and Secretary-General of the LPRP , referred only once to the ‘monks of the Buddhist clergy’ in his 82 page report on the state of the LPDR from 1975 to 1978, and mentioned the need to ‘restore . . . famous pagodas’only with reference to tourism”(Lafont 1982: 159).But the government’s conscious attempts to commodify the culture of Laos began in earnest only in the early 1990s. The gradual opening up of Laos from the mid-1980s onwards demanded the creation of tourist displays, sites and activities [that] conformed to the expectations of the international tourist industry. This inevitably meant that the Lao had to reach back into the cultural past and revive it, albeit selectively, because so much of that traditional past was permeated by the old regime, the so-called sakdina system. Information has had to be produced for tourist consumption and for this, old regime books and pamphlets have been cannibalized, taking care to excise wherever possible references to the monarchy or any positive references to the RLG. (Evans 1998: 130) Laos has now adopted an aggressive tourism policy that goes beyond simply marketing its ancient ruins. Luang Prabang has, for example, been registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Partly influenced by assistance and advice from the Tourism Authority of Thailand , they [the Lao PDR] now also proclaim French-style architecture from colonial times as evidence of the nation’s rich culture.They even extol its multiethnicity , an issue over which the government has been deliberating for some time, by proclaiming Laos to be “a treasure house of exotic ethnic cultures.” (Hayashi 2003: 351) In this chapter I present my reflections based on seven months of fieldwork in Luang Phrabang between June 2006 and June 2007. My discussion, which focuses on the Buddhist novices of Luang Phrabang and public ritual expressions within the context of two of the most important ceremonial occasions of the calendar year (Boun Phravet and Pi Mai) has been framed by my overarching concern to determine how Lao religious culture is responding to changes in its social and political economy. [3.21.97.61...

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