“Playing” with Labor: On Collective Cleaning in Lao PDR
Picture: Author
In an article by New Mandala, Amelie Katczynski’s notes of a community of nursing students in the south of Laos show how group tidying-up reflects both a socialist institutional practice rooted in Marxist-Leninist thought and the improvisational, dynamic labor that aligns with Marx's own recognition of worker agency.
The term ǭkhǣngngān also sets this activity apart from other occasions of working together. “Work” in Lao is more commonly referred to as vīak: housework (vīak hư̄an), work on rice fields (vīak nā ), or gardens (vīak sūan), going to work (pai vīak). The nursing students at my field site work in groups for assignments (vīak kūm) and do homework (vīak bān). With most work, they refer specifically to the practice: hā kin (look for food, or go and get food), hed kin (prepare food), anāmai (tidy up), keb (collect). During our lunch break, we climb up on chairs or use long sticks to reach tamarind pods and raw papayas in the trees, we search for edible leafy greens, peel bamboo shoots, make a fire to cook bamboo soup or grill buffalo skin, prepare a floormat and dishes to eat on the classroom floor, and tidy up after the meal. None of this collective, physical labour that occurs on a daily basis would make the news.
Whilst ǭkhǣngngān is structured by the institution, these everyday practices of working together evolve dependent on people’s needs. Who participates and how depends on individuals’ motivations, skills and time. Often one person starts an activity which then spills over to others. People verbally organise each other to a degree, but this occurs spontaneously and according to emerging needs and desires identified by the students themselves—nothing is pre-set by an authority. All this work happens out of view from the institution (school staff). There is no fixed lunch group, but people drop in and out, some go home to eat with their family or to a restaurant. In comparison, ǭkhǣngngān at first sight appears to be an “unnatural” way of people working together at this school.
If working together already takes place on a daily basis, and seems to work to fulfill people’s needs, what then is the point of ǭkhǣngngān, and to whom? Is it just a means to make people tidy those large, shared spaces outside the classroom and office that no one would take care of otherwise? Or are there other reasons to make people work together in this particular way?
