Being Present

Rosalie Stolz is a postdoctoral researcher at the Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany. She conducts research among Khmu-speaking uplanders of northwestern Laos with a focus on the prevalent transformations of houses. She is also the author of Living Kinship, Fearing Spirits. Paul-David Lutz is an anthropologist and (former) rural development advisor with a longstanding focus on Laos. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. His ongoing research focuses on animism in the context of agrarian transition among ethnic Khmu.

• FOREWORD by Liana Chua INTRODUCTION by Paul-David Lutz and Rosalie Stolz PART 1: ETHICS, IMMERSION AND AFFECT CHAPTER 1 Fieldwork, literally – 'indolence', immersion and perceptions of poverty in upland Laos by Paul-David Lutz CHAPTER 2 Ethical evaluation—and its absence—at a wake in Luang Prabang by Charles P. Zuckerman CHAPTER 3 Embarrassment and social belonging: Pathways of participant feeling in northern Laos by Rosalie Stolz PART 2 EXPERIENCING INFRASTRUCTURE CHAPTER 4 The politics of dammed rivers and their futures: insights from the Nam Ou basin in northern Laos by Sumiya Bilegsaikhan Taij CHAPTER 5 Refrigeration after relocation: What refrigerators can (not) do to improve lives in a resettled community in northwestern Laos by Floramante S. J. Ponce CHAPTER 6 Cycling as method, train as transect: Exploring infrastructural friction and flow through mobile ethnography on the Laos-China Corridor by Jessica DiCarlo CHAPTER 7 Closer together, but still apart: reflections on the Laos-China Railway and the (re)making of neighbour relations by Phill Wilcox PART 3: SPIRITS, EFFICACY AND THE STATE CHAPTER 8 Potency and phitsanu medicinal efficacy in the southern lowlands by Elizabeth M. Elliott CHAPTER 9 'Do just enough for riid': the contemporary understanding of health and the reduction of rituals in Yrou communities by Thipphaphone Xayavong CHAPTER 10 When new shamans enter the stage: traditional customs and ecstatic healing among the Akha by Giulio Ongaro AFTERWORD by Sophie Chao