Eight o’clock, 14 July 2024
I arrive at the office of Ajan Mala, a teacher at a Public Health School in southern Laos. We grab brooms, buckets, sponges and floor cleaner and she walks ahead of me towards the student dorm. As we get closer, she spots people in the distance and yells: “Students, come and help clean Amelie’s room!”. Her tone sounds commanding and makes me uncomfortable; I do not wish to force anyone to clean my room. But Ajan Mala turns around, smiles and says she is just joking, that this is like “a game between teachers and students.” She assures me there is “midtaphāb” (friendship) between them.
At the student dormitory, Ajan Mala unlocks the door of my room-to-be. Suddenly there are around fifteen adults who pick up brooms, open all windows and doors, carry out beds and wardrobes, sweep and scrub. Ajan Mala tells me to dust the cobwebs from the wardrobes, while they will take care of the room’s interior and the bathroom.
I take a step back, feeling slightly overwhelmed by the rush and what to me appears chaotic action. Everything seems to happen at once: while people are still sweeping, one student finds a few pieces of green rubber hose that he links together and connects to a tap outside. Suddenly water floods the tiled floors, and gushes towards the wooden furniture I am still dusting off. Afraid of water damage to the untreated timber, I ask a student to help me move the furniture away from the deluge. I hear the noises of engines, and behind the back window, a couple of men slash the plants that had crossed the threshold between in and outside.
There are some teachers who help and some who watch. The school director, dressed in pink tracksuit and sun hat, walks by, takes a video with her phone, and kicks some snails off the corridor walls with her parasol. I watch one teacher pull out some plant with its root and stick it inside a plastic cup she found on the ground. She adds some dirt and says she’ll take it home to her garden. Ajan Mala squats and scrubs the walls, while her colleague mops the floor. I start to relax amongst these people who are chatting, joking, yelling teasing comments across the corridor—and the place is getting cleaner.
But the action is over as quickly as it started; students and teachers begin to disappear. As I notice a group walking away through the corridor, I run after them with biscuits as thanks. They share the biscuits and then leave. Once everyone is gone, I get down on the floor with a bucket of water-vinegar mix and a sponge, and give each tile a final, thorough scrub (much gecko poo has survived the water flood). I feel grateful as if I received a welcome gift. But it also occurs to me, that the students and teachers seem used to this; not of course, to clean a visiting anthropologists’ room, but to clean together.
Collective cleaning as labour: ǭkhǣngngān
Cleaning together at a worksite or educational facility is a routine practice of collective, physical labour in Lao PDR. At my field site people called it ǭkhǣngngān (ອອກແຮງງານ). When I first read the term in the weekly lesson timetable, I falsely translated it to “workout”. I expected ǭkhǣngngān would be some outdoors exercise regime (“ǭk” as “out”, “hǣng” as “strong”, and “ngān” as “work”). When the day came around, I asked a student what we will do this afternoon. She replied “ǭkhǣngngān!”, and I asked “mǣn nyang?” (“what is this/that”), so she said “anāmai” (tidy up). That afternoon, we swept concrete floors, scraped snail poo off walls, and squatted down to pull out weeds along paths. The weeds were piled up together with plastic rubbish and set alight.
A nursing student uses rubber strip as fire lighter (Photo: author)
My Lao friends tell me ǭkhǣngngān happens at every government-run workplace and school. The organised, institutional character of this labour can be observed in a number of aspects. A specific slot is allocated to ǭkhǣngngān in the school’s weekly timetable, usually on a Thursday or Friday afternoon. The task of the day is determined by a senior staff member. Lists of participation are kept which students and teachers sign, and all are expected to participate. The place to be cleaned is an outdoors area, in the vicinity of the classroom or school offices, and this location puts ǭkhǣngngān in full view of the public. In government news publications, stories of ǭkhǣngngān sessions abound accompanied with imagery of groups working together, especially in preparation for days of national celebration: tidying up around government buildings, pulling weeds at a military school, or sweeping in the capital’s public parks. At my field site too, students and staff take pictures of their tidying-up session to post on social media.
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?
Possible answers as to why ǭkhǣngngān persists at state-run institutions in Lao PDR can be derived from its roots in a Marxist–Leninist concept of collective labour. This becomes clear when looking at how the concept of ǭkhǣngngān is taught in a Lao schoolbook on “Civic Education” for Year 5 students published in 2019:
People’s labour (kanǭkhǣngngān khǭng khon) is related to movements that have a social character. In that labour, people need to coordinate together to move together as a group. If just alone, a single person cannot earn food to live and resist disasters or forces that occur in the natural world. The ancient primitive people (khon pathombūhān) lived in a group before to carry out labour that had a social character because of that society. Therefore, as products (phalidtaphan) that affect each other, there is a relationship between person and person (khon), and labour is a power (kamlang) that creates (sāng) the person (khon) and society (sangkhom).
In this reading, labour as movement is social in both process and outcome. Social labour is naturalised because this is what allows humans to survive since the “ancient primitive people”. But this labour is about more than mere use-value, such as procurement of food or building of shelters that protect from wind and weather — because labour here is also a generative power to create the person and society as its “products”.
This means that neither person nor society are understood as abstract conditions or identities pre-existing to interpersonal relationships and practices of labour. The term (ǭk)hǣngngān as labour in this sense is used in Laos in political contexts, such as the “International Labour Organization” (ongkanhǣngngānsākon), and government news stories might use the term to refer to workers (phūǭkhǣngngān).
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The organisation of weekly ǭkhǣngngān at all Lao government workplaces and schools is thus based in a socialist political philosophy of creating people and society through physical, collective labour. It links historically to the Soviet socialist organisation of unpaid, physical labour on Saturdays under the name of ‘Subbotnik’. Frederick Kaplan quotes from the Soviet Regulations of Subbotniks which describes them as “one of the forms of propaganda of the idea of labor service and self -organization of the working class” and as “a laboratory of communist labor”. Lenin in his 1920 handbill Pervomaisky Subbotnik, following the first large-scale Subbotnik for the Moscow–Kazan Railway, describes this process as a “matter of transforming the very habits of the people” from an individualist, capitalist economy towards labouring according to the two socialist rules of ‘“All for each and each for all”’, and ‘“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, in order to gradually introduce “communist discipline and communist labour”.
Ǭkhǣngngān at government institutions in Laos can then be interpreted as the (intended) enactment of a socialist political theory about how people and society come to be. This political and symbolic loading turns it into more than just a mere tidying-up session, and hence it has a different frame compared to other types of working-together at the school, as described above.
This idea of labour as a transformative power that builds certain kinds of people also shines through in how education is described at my field site, where I was conducting ethnographic research on nursing education. The stated objectives of the nursing course use the language of “creating” or “building” students to become part of collectives as “good citizens” and “professional nurses of the ASEAN community”, with not only professional knowledge and nursing skills, but also with “revolutionary morals”, “correct political thinking”, and “patriotism and unity”. Ǭkhǣngngān as part of this education then presumably intends to practice the “rules” of socialist labour to be applied in the context of public health work. Simultaneously, it serves the practical need for tidying-up schools and workplaces in absence of paid maintenance personnel in Laos’ resource-poor public health and education system.
The term “labour” in anthropology is often used to describe “physical toil, performed out of necessity, coercion, or domination”. Folz and Smith see this application influenced by Marx’s writings on labour exploitation and class struggle. But for Marx, the process of work/labour (Arbeitsprozess) to begin with has positive connotations as that which makes humans human, as a practice of turning one’s abstract ideas or imaginings into things of the material world (Marx 1967, 141–142). In Volume One of Capital he describes this ideal state of working as a “play” of human’s “physical and intellectual powers”. Only from this conception of the working process could Marx develop his theory of Entfremdung (alienation) of humans to their own work activities in the capitalist mode of production—and thereby to themselves as humans, and to other humans, whose work (and being) is perceived as a mere commodity.
Instead of simply interpreting ǭkhǣngngān as physical toil due to state-driven coercion of nursing students into labour, I want to experiment with Marx’ concept of physical labour as attempt to realise an abstract idea or imaginings: in this case, the idea itself that people and society are created through the power of labour, which underpins the institution of ǭkhǣngngān in Laos. Further, I want to return to Marx’ ideal notion of the working process as a “play” of our “physical and intellectual powers”. I argue that despite its seemingly restrictive set-up, the social situation that ǭkhǣngngān creates takes the form of play and re-imagining: within a “high level” imaginative frame, people working and studying at Lao institutions use their own imagination, invent their own rules and transgressions, and thereby create their own game in physical action with others.
ǭkhǣngngān: playing with the regulations
Above, I outlined the basic organising characteristics of ǭkhǣngngān: the idea(l) situation and structure of mobilising physical labour. The first was a bounded temporality. A Lao friend who speaks English and has participated in ǭkhǣngngān said he would translate the term to “the day we clean together”. He emphasised the temporality of a day per week that was allocated to ǭkhǣngngān. At my field site, ǭkhǣngngān has a spot in the weekly class timetable on an afternoon at the end of the week. But despite this dedicated slot, teachers may also call students to ǭkhǣngngān on other days, such as when lessons are cancelled, a new term begins, or for special visitors.
The actual beginning and ending of ǭkhǣngngān, as I observed it, are rather fluid. Some students and teachers who live nearby go home during lunch break, change outfit from their uniforms to casual clothes and return for the clean-up. Others just wait in the airconditioned classroom until it is time, take naps, eat snacks, drink the odd rice spirit and chat. When people re-gather, it takes some time to determine the location of the clean-up in communication between teachers and students, for people to make their way to that location, to gather cleaning equipment and get started. Action subsides when people spontaneously decide it is enough. This happens less by verbal communication and rather by simply stopping and doing something else.
Watching others finish in their own time is also totally normal and accepted. Distractions come easy: if a market seller walks through, with bags of bamboo shoots and sour fruit hanging off the ends of a stick over her shoulders, students and teachers stop to buy and eat, always inviting others with a vigorous “kin, kin!” (eat, eat!). Most ǭkhǣngngān that I participated in took no longer than an hour (prior to national holidays, they took up to three hours), but the lesser part of that time would be actually spent with cleaning up.
In terms of outcome, an expected end goal of ǭkhǣngngān, in my experience, is not clearly defined. The direct objective is indeed to create some level of spatial order (which follows its own logic) and some people show a lot of commitment: they bring their own tools from home, expose themselves to toxic smoke, pick weeds with bare hands, and sharpen the blades of a grass cutter with a circular saw (and no goggles). Yet, incapable of achieving anything close to complete order—the school (a former hospital) is huge, the people few, the buildings in various stages of decay, and any plant grows at an enormous speed during the wet season—people seem to follow their own energy level and motivation in how much they clean up.
Effectiveness comes second to play: two adult men carry a basket of weeds away that a single boy could master, hold on to one handle each and joke about. While some students still sweep, rake and burn-off, another asks his classmate to take a video of his latest karaoke/dance performance. There is no “vote” or formal collective decision-making process to stop. But once most people have stopped, the final finish call “phǭ” (enough) and “mư̄a bān” (go home) come from the class leader or a teacher.
People do not celebrate or preserve the results of their labour either. The day we cleaned up my room, I discovered a half-eaten package of biscuits with crumbs covering the ground that was cleaned fifteen minutes earlier. I see people frequently throw plastic and cigarette butts in the grass around the classroom which they clean up at the next ǭkhǣngngān. And the rubbish and weeds set on fire never burn down completely, but leave sad-looking piles that greet us as we enter the schoolgrounds and classroom.
Playing with an idea of serious labour
To sum up, the practice of ǭkhǣngngān was messier and more playful than some outsider might expect of collective physical labour at an institution run by a socialist state. It felt more like a casual hang-out than any kind of physical toil for the institution. Because of its fluidity in temporality and achievement what seems to count most is turning up and doing something together, including continuous chatter, joking and eating.
However, people like to play with the idea that this ought to be a serious affair: like Ajan Mala on the day I moved in, students and teachers alike shout commands at someone further away, then turn to the people close to them, and laugh together. People also sometimes tease those right next to them about not doing a good job, which might result in a playful little wrestle. When students bring children who join in, this is another source of play and amusement for the adults. No one would say a child was in the way of the adults labouring.
Yet some formalities are kept. Students still address their teachers with the formal “Ajan”, never with first names. Participation is recorded on a list, which at my first clean-up day the class leader asked me to sign. Since then, I always sign when the list is handed around. This record-keeping indicates the possibility that there could be positive and negative consequences of people’s presence or absence in ǭkhǣngngān (that this could indeed be serious!). When I asked a student whether there is a problem if someone does not join ǭkhǣngngān, she said that “if they give a reason, if they have family or other work, there is no problem if they don’t come”.
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Students are supposed to notify the school prior when they are unavailable. I asked the same student why lists are kept. She said “so that the school director can see how many people came, how many did not come with a reason, how many did not come without a reason”. “And if people do not give a reason and do not come many times?” “Then the director will talk to them,” she responded. A possible consequence could be a lowering of one’s score, which according to students can occur due to breaks with the school’s regulations (such as incorrect uniform wearing). However, the barrier to participation is very low: physical presence at ǭkhǣngngān alone seems to count as participation. I have seen the odd person turn up, sit on a bench, chat and sign their name on the list. Play never exists completely outside of social rules, whether these are made explicit or unspoken. But it cannot be assumed that official ones are always the strongest.
Granted its jovial character, ǭkhǣngngān keeps shared facilities clean(er). One student also pointed out that the cutting and burning of grass was important to contain dangers of mosquitoes and snakes around the school. The school uses about 20% of a former hospital’s space and has the sole responsibility to maintain it. But people speak more about social benefits. They say ǭkhǣngngān is “mūan” (fun, enjoyable), because “mī lāi khon, yǭkkan” (have many people, joke with each other). A common story I hear in Laos is that at government work sites ǭkhǣngngān results in extended beer drinking, though this is not the case at my field site. The benefits of ǭkhǣngngān are also perceived by people who do not work at government institutions: a Lao friend who works at a private language school tells me they employ a “mǣ bān” (literally mother / woman of the house, but means cleaner). Yet, each morning the staff clean together before starting their desk work. He likes this and says: “we can talk together when we clean together. If you just go to work, go in your room, do not talk, not good. When we first arrive, we clean together, talk together. Then if you have a problem, is easier, I think”.
The tangible outcomes of this cleaning up were much less impressive, and certainly took up less time, than most other work I saw students engage in outside of ǭkhǣngngān. Although ǭkhǣngngān was a space of labour for the institution, it was simultaneously a space to play for students where the actual outcome of labour mattered much less than in their day-to-day lives.
This does not mean that work outside of ǭkhǣngngān happens always in a serious manner. Instigated by students, I picked fruit from trees in a village head office’s backyard, our giggles travelled through the open door inside the office where other students collected information and exchanged amused looks with us. I saw a student drop her hair ribbon in front of a teacher who checked her outfit for compliance with regulations—the teacher and the whole class broke out in laughter. I sat in the car with teachers on a work excursion who laughed about their own imagining that I was “collecting information” about how many frogs and crabs they bought on the way to the district health department.
Students taking a break to pick tamarind pods (Photo: author)
It is not as easy as allocating specific behaviours of obedience or transgression to spaces—as Sarinda Singh has observed in her studies of worker dormitories in Laos— or to constellations of people interacting. No place at the institution is reserved for any one kind of behaviour, and no person is excepted from play. The atmosphere and dynamics of interaction can change from one moment to another. I would suggest that when people joke and when not can be an indicator for the power of particular imaginings that turn into reality at a specific moment.
Labour, in Marx’ initial reading, is a practice in which humans play with imaginings about what their handwork ought to do, what is supposed to be realised and materialised through their practices. In this process that Marx called Verwirklichung (real-making), people’s own imaginings and those of others fold into each other and create ever-new expressions. Our imaginings are not fixed, but can easily shift and change in the process. And so the results are never identical with what anyone imagined their ideas would do prior to the practice.
Nursing students, for instance, might venture to the village head’s office to collect information about public health for their assignment, and then get distracted by fruit they spot in the backyard. A teacher might turn up at a classroom to discipline people who do not follow the dress code, but then breaks out in laughter when a student drops her ribbon in front of his feet. An anthropology student with a serious interest in nursing education in Laos might be joked about by a group of teachers who imagine she is collecting information on the most random things such as dead frogs (and they were correct).
For sure, not all people are equally able to realise their ideas or imaginings in the work process. What can be brought closest to real-making—or rather, is recognised by others as real—is where power dynamics can be located. But then, there is no objective judge as to what is made real: to some observers of ǭkhǣngngān, the state’s idea (as implemented by its officials) does mobilise the power of labour to form a group that gathers every week and makes a real difference to the tidiness of the school. Some might say ǭkhǣngngān subjects students to physical, at times risky, labour as an unfair condition to receive an education and progress in the public sector.
To others, ǭkhǣngngān is just a thin frame that is filled with people’s play who realise their idea of a fun time together, for that moment, and then disperse again. Of course, these realities can exist simultaneously. People were aware of what the basic idea was: they named the practice of “anāmai” or “the day we clean up” when I asked what the term meant. They consciously played with the idea that this ought to be taken seriously and made sure that people like me who were not used to their game (yet) understood they were “just joking”. During my time with them, I admired the students’ ways of finding enjoyment when they were called to ǭkhǣngngān yet again, when smoke stung in our eyes and lungs, when we watched the buildings crumble around us, and the jungle crawl back in. Together, the students developed and played their own game—which, perhaps, is a real power of imagination and labour.
The post “Playing” with labour: on collective cleaning in Lao PDR appeared first on New Mandala.
This post was originally published on New Mandala.
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(Amanda Weisbrod/RFA)
