Enchanting frontiers - a sacred forest and symbolic-material complexities in Laos

Abstract

Frontiers are odd, “wild” places that trouble the well-established, institutionalised classifications of Western scholarship. Far away, geographically as well as socially, from the arrived centres of the world economy, the frontiers of capitalism urge scholars to transcend disciplinary boundaries. This paper is an analysis of the complexity of a sacred forest in Laos, and it is also an exploration of one gap in the academic division of labour that obstructs a comprehensive, sociological understanding of current transformation in mainland Southeast Asia: the division between political economy, or political ecology, and the study of symbolic forms and practice.