points to traditionally male activities. Only a few women managed to enter the decision making process. Evans writes about women's place in the society, but he makes a serious mistake by presuming that the farmer is a male. The experienced development workers we talked to said that women do 60% of the farming. In a society where age is a strong indication of the degree of respect conferred, the point system of the cooperatives decreased the perceived contributions and social status of the elderly. "Attempts to use a system of strict accounting in the cooperatives clearly advertises the relative contributions of each member of the family and therefore can loosen or undermine the bonds of dependency and the sources of authority within the peasant family."(p.l31) Ownership in common also weakens the social control by elders by taking away their inheritance control. Evans states that the old farmer still in charge of "his" own land and family is in a much more secure position. Also, early on in the attempted collectivization, child labor did not count toward points. This was an unfair design since children's labor in peasant subsistence farming contributes to the family's survival. Owing to these problems, cooperative work groups are no more productive than individual peasant households. These problems were also difficult to counteract because the peasants' cultural traditions did not include public criticism, making constructive criticism often unbearable to individual peasants. Furthermore, in traditional peasant societies, a rough reciprocity of work develops into a haziness about who really owes who what, which "bonds social groups and forestalls hostility".(p.141) "Perhaps one of major ironies concerning communist beliefs in the continuity between what they see as traditional peasant communalism and socialist cooperatives is that the organizations they encourage in fact dissolve the bonds of traditional cooperation in favor of a form of individualism."(p.l48) Evans asserts that donations for religious ceremonies provided a leveling of wealth in traditional Lao society. This might be true, but it seems that the contributor also gained much prestige and power. It is interesting that although the Lao peasants resisted production cooperatives, they were enthusiastic about irrigation, consumer and marketing cooperatives. Instead of wasting energy on collectivising, there are a number of other ways the government could have helped its people. Small decentralized pilot projects have worked well in other revolutionary settings like Nicaragua where a better storage system (simple com cribs) were introduced to farmers from various areas by teaching those who agreed to teach their neighbors. In Vietiane there is a Lao group which creates small-scale well adapted technologies that have reached and aided many villages without creating international dependence. However, Evans seems to have a different vision, he suggests that, "A proper supply of farm inputs and consumer items is a crucial stimulus to peasant producWinter/Spring 1991 RAIN Page 21 tion". "A more efficient strategy in terms of available resources would import fertilizer and pesticides, both of which assist with productivity increases."(p.172) He does not mention that this led to the downfall of many peasant farmers in other countries who borrowed for expensive foreign inputs and consumer items only to have a poor yield and lose their land. Evans believes in the miracle of the Green Revolution. By importing these chemicals, Laos would increase its international debt, damage its environment and increase its population beyond what the land could eventually sustain. Some simple changes such as beginning to use animal dung and compost to enrich the soil could produce measured increases in productivity. Also, the widespread use of such developments as the Azolla fern would vastly increase the protein content of rice when grown in the paddies. All this would be positive politically because it maintains the independence of the farmers. Evans may not have come to these conclusions because his research focused mainly on the villages around Vietiane. A further investigation of more self-reliant communities might have yielded different conclusions. He also seems to have an odd view of "benign" capitalist military regimes in the third world as comp~ed to "totalitarian" communist/socialist regimes. He says, "Moore makes a distinction between autocratic and totalitarian regimes. Autocratic regimes, he suggests, leave the basic social structure intact, and many social activities that are perceived as a political threat to the regime are allowed to go their own way. Various military dictatorships in the Third World may be seen in this way. Totalitarian regimes, on the other hand, attempt (one must say that total success is impossible) to organize all aspects of cultural and social life. The Lao state can be located somewhere between the two because it has never had the capacity to carry through more than a limited totalitarian reorganization of society ... " . ( p . l 8 3 ) In Latin America, the totalitarian military governments of Guatemala, El Salvador and Chile can hardly be said to have left the basic social structure intact. The only group allowed to function was the Catholic Church, itself an earlier colonial import. International and domestic economic exploitation of the majority of the people tore apart families, undermined cultural traditions, and resulted in the death of those who resisted. Under no circumstance did these regimes allow activities perceived as a political threat to go their own way. Overall, this is a useful and interesting book in furthering the study of Lao and other peasant cultures and natural economies. It adds to the research on the adaptation of peasants to orthodox Marxist collectivization, and lends credence to the assertion that peasant lifestyles do not inherently lead to capitalism. Note: The map on page 5 and the illustration opposite both come from Evans' book.
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