Rural Schooling and Good Life in Late Socialist Laos

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research in northern Laos, this article analyses articulations of a good life in primary school textbook imagery and how this resonates with everyday life in rural upland communities. This is contrasted with children’s sketches of a good life found in the classrooms and ethnographic accounts of moments of ‘good time’ in the context of rural schooling. It is argued that these latter moments constitute brief instances of a good life in the present. Given the deeply hierarchical power relations in which rural education is embedded, not all of these good times stay good for very long. This is reflective of the condition of late socialism in rural areas.

‘Having money is not the essential thing . . . but . . . it gets everything moving’: Young Colombians Navigating Towards Uncertain Futures?

“…However, the findings that I have presented in this article about young people’s aspirations show that the way these young Cartagenians expressed their aspirations has provided information about their strategies and social navigation. This is important for understanding that, rather than being ends in themselves, these aspirations are more of a means to realise a good life, while educational hopes are more about maximising their choices (Huijsmans and Piti, 2020) in the future than following one particular linear path. Here, young Cartagenians’ vision of a good life goes beyond educational and occupational goals to an enhanced quality of life and, like the respondents in a study by Brown (2011), the young people featuring in this research aspired to a life of stability and security, with a family and free from economic hardship and crime, which is their current reality within the neighbourhoods they live in.…”

“…Recent research drawing on Sen’s (1999) capability approach suggests that ‘realising a good life is about maximising the range of choices one has reason to value’, highlighting that education may then ‘be seen as instrumental to realising this good life’ (Huijsmans and Piti, 2020: 4). With a good life perceived as a better life than the current one, it includes both positive change and stability (Brown, 2011; Wilcox et al, 2021).…”

“…Thus, the majority of my participants had had to change their desired life trajectories and socially navigate according to emerging constraints and the opportunities that became available to them (Vigh, 2006). However, if we understand aspirations and a good life as the ability to make choices with the aim of realising and enhancing a subjectively defined living standard (Huijsmans and Piti, 2020; Wilcox et al, 2021), then the young people of this study have been successful and/or are still on a path to a good life. Huijsmans and Piti (2020) stress thatthe status conferred by being in successful self- or salaried employment might be a form of good life in and of itself, but the link to a good life may also be realised through the increased income resulting from this and the consumption and associated lifestyle it permits.…”