Abstract

Book Reviews 297 HOLLY HIGH University of Hawai‘i Press, 2021 Projectland is a beautifully composed ethnography of the Katuic-speaking ‘socialist model village’ of New Kandon in southeastern Laos. A core argument of the book is that ‘Laos is a socialist country’ (8). As the author, Holly High, contends, ‘Lao socialism’ is a politico-cultural reality that must be understood on its own terms; a ‘lived affect’ and ‘metalanguage’ through which lives in New Kandon are understood, evaluated and enacted. High posits ‘success’ and ‘necessity’ as the two poles of this socialist metalanguage and, concomitantly, of her book. Chapters 2–4 present New Kandon as a self- proclaimed success story. They offer detailed vignettes on local historiography, and on New Kandon as an ‘exemplary culture village’ and Laos’ first ‘Open Defecation Free Village’. Unpacking these vignettes, High argues for a Lao socialist concept of culture. This culture concept eschews Western liberalism’s preoccupation with ‘authenticity’ in favour of an evolutionist notion of culture as acculturation: the consciously pragmatic cultivation of self and society. Consequently, socialist culture villages like New Kandon serve less to preserve tradition than to proclaim —to officials, TV crews, development workers, ethnographers—that the state’s exacting struggle for acculturation is indeed