Author: Paul-David Lutz
Dates: January 2026
Venue: Being Present: Emerging Ethnographic Perspectives and the Study of Laos (edited by Rosalie Stolz & Paul-David Lutz)
Link to the publication: https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg

In still predominantly rural-agricultural Laos, the daily demands of rice cultivation continue to fundamentally shape lives, livelihoods and culture. Concomitantly, conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Laos has often meant doing field-work, literally. Joining in the growing of swidden or padi rice has been part of many ethnographers’ experiences. Yet these experiences have rarely been reflected upon. All to often, they remain an important but implied backdrop to ethnographic accounts of rural Laos.

This chapter addresses this lacuna and focuses on the field-work in fieldwork. In so doing, it offers grounded reflections of the salience of rice-related toil in understandings of poverty, work and indolence among ethnic Khmu peasants in Laos’ north. The chapter also offers a critical appraisal of the affordances and limitations of pursuing ethnographic empathy through embodied attunement to human-rice relations.