Kearrin Sims

James Cook University | JCU · college of arts society and education

This article examines the centrality of infrastructure connectivity within the post-2008 'retroliberal' global aid regime. Through the critical interrogation of connectivity and development discourse within Southeast Asia, as well as longitudinal field research examining repeated bouts of dispossession in Laos, I argue that all Southeast Asian stat...

The discourse of "non-interference" features prominently in China's so-called "peaceful rise" and "win-win" approach to international diplomacy. This article contests Beijing's non-interference rhetoric through a case-study analysis of Cambodia. We make two core arguments: first, interference by foreign powers is not limited to actions that challen...

Motivation On December 15, 2012 Sombath Somphone was abducted at a police checkpoint in his home city of Vientiane, the capital of Laos. This article considers his work and enforced disappearance through the lens of Thinking and Working Politically (TWP) approaches to development. The article is supportive of TWP, but emphasizes the significant ris...

This chapter explores some of the emergent collaborations and tensions between two of Asia’s leading providers of infrastructure financing: the ADB and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). It provides a brief summary of the similarities and differences in the institutional size, scale, and objectives of these institutions; an analysis o...

As both the global development sector and global higher education sector are transformed in ways we have not previously experienced, there is a pressing need to think anew about development studies pedagogy. What, for example, are the key challenges that future development practitioners are likely to encounter, and how can we best equip students to...

Despite the bad press that it generated, Canadian Bob Pickard’s resignation from the Beijing-based development bank is unlikely to have a lasting impact. https://thediplomat.com/2023/06/how-last-weeks-high-profile-resignation-will-impact-the-aiib/

In this chapter, we argue that megaprojects are a critical feature and technology of the global land rush within the current infrastructure boom. We contribute a land-oriented perspective to the turn towards infrastructure within the social sciences by studying the role of large infrastructure and special economic zones in land grabbing. We suggest...

On April 29, an unknown assailant attempted to murder Anousa Luangsuphom. The administrator of a Facebook page that served as a platform for public political debate in Laos, Anousa, known by the nickname “Jack,” was shot twice at close range in a Vientiane coffee shop. At just 25 years of age, Anousa represents one of a swelling number of young L...

Simon Rowedder’s Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos: Mastering Smallness draws on ethnographic research to examine Tai Lue cross-border trade across northern Thailand, northern Laos, and southern Yunnan (108). It sketches ‘small-scale traders’ everyday lived worlds of transnational connectivity in their own right’ (198).

Full article at: eastasiaforum.org/2023/01/28/laos-in-limbo-heading-into-2023 Laos experienced compounding social and economic pressures in 2022. The headline news story of the year was the country’s dire external debt. 2022 was also significant as it marked the 10th anniversary of the enforced disappearance of Sombath Somphone — a community devel...

After gambling with “high risk” levels of debt distress for more than a decade, Laos has fallen into a debt crisis (and possibly a trap). Expectedly, the current crisis has led to much speculation about what the near-term future will bring, as well as extensive commentary on possible causes, culprits, and consequences. Although the recent shocks h...

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become the lodestar of Beijing's efforts to increase its global political and economic influence. This article interrogates BRI discourse, arguing that the normative adoption of BRI narratives as a means for making sense of connectivities between China and other places risks producing new forms of epistemi...

In Silencing of a Laotian Son, Ng Shui Meng provides a moving memoir of Sombath’s life, work and disappearance. Beginning by detailing the circumstances of his abduction, the book then shifts back to Sombath’s childhood to provide a chronological biography that charts his life experiences across Laos, the United States and Singapore. Later chapters...

This Handbook provides a comprehensive analysis of some of the world’s most pressing global development challenges – including how they may be better understood and addressed through innovative practices and approaches to learning and teaching. Featuring 61 contributions from leading and emerging academics and practitioners, this multidisciplinary...

It was a milestone year for Laos in 2021. The ruling Lao Peoples’ Revolutionary Party held its 11th Congress, finally realised its long-held aspiration to graduate from Least Developed Country status, and released a draft of the country’s ninth National Socio-Economic Development Plan. Laos also joined the newly ratified Regional Comprehensive Econ...

This chapter provides the introduction to the Handbook. It provides a broad overview of global development. It notes that while progress has been made on some development challenges, this progress has been uneven, and has been accompanied by the emergence of new challenges. Following this, it makes a case for the shift from international to global...

Background An Aboriginal-developed empowerment and social and emotional wellbeing program, known as Family Wellbeing (FWB), has been found to strengthen the protective factors that help Indigenous Australians to deal with the legacy of colonisation and intergenerational trauma. This article reviews the research that has accompanied the implementati...

https://thediplomat.com/2021/07/on-chinas-doorstep-laos-plays-a-careful-game-of-balancing/ China is a critically important partner for Laos, but it is by no means its only partner. Political, economic and cultural ties to a number of other countries continue to shape Laos’ international affairs.

Four key, interrelated, themes mark Laos in 2020. First is COVID-19 and its socio-economic effects. With just twenty-three reported cases and no reported deaths, Laos has performed exceptionally well in its containment of COVID-19. However, the social and economic effects of policies implemented to respond to the pandemic have been stark. Included...

On 23 September the Fitch Ratings agency downgraded Laos’ credit rating to CCC — the second downgrade in 2020, having dropped to B- in May. Much of the blame lies with COVID-19, which has seen Laos’ economic growth drop from 5.5 per cent in 2019 to a projected 0.5 per cent for 2020. This represents the country’s slowest economic growth recorded sin...

Climate change is a leading threat to sustainable socioeconomic development in Bangladesh. Adverse impacts of climatic disasters including flash floods, recurrent cyclones and erratic rainfall patterns are already causing hardship for both rural and urban people and are expected to accelerate into the future. The aim of this research note is to ide...

In my summary of Laos and its political trajectory over the past 12 months, I seek to capture how constraints on freedom of expression have expanded alongside dynamic economic growth.

In this paper I discuss '5 reasons why it is a great time to be a Development Studies ECR in Australia'. The five themes I covered are: 1. The need to provide a nuanced engagement and dialogue with some of the critical challenges of our time (both domestically and internationally); 2. the need for further interrogation of rising South-South coopera...

https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2019/10/24/cooperation-and-contestation-between-the-adb-and-aiib/ The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has grown into a 100-member institution since its inception in 2016, with 45 projects operating across 18 member countries. The AIIB is the second largest multilateral development bank (MDB) by membership...

https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/can-the-land-of-a-million-elephants-survive-the-belt-and-road/ If current trajectories continue there will be no elephants left in Laos by the year 2030. In just 12 years, we could see the complete eradication of elephants from a country that once was known as “the land of a million elephants” (Lan Xang). So how did...

According to macro-scale measures and indicators the principal development narrative for Lao PDR is one of strong economic growth and continued socio-economic progress. However, the true complexity of socio-economic transformations to have occurred in the country are not easily captured by reductive macro-scale indices. In this chapter I problemati...

Following the extraordinary wealth generation of casinos in Macau and Singapore, governments and non-state actors across Southeast Asia have developed gambling establishments as a means of fast-tracking economic growth and stimulating national development. Yet, here and elsewhere, casinos have been heavily criticized for their association with immo...

In many respects, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) is a development success story. Since 2006, the country’s average economic growth rate of 7.9 per cent has made it one of the ten fastest growing economies in the world – and seen its income categorisation rise from a low-income to a lower-middle income economy. During the past decade...

Vientiane a city undergoing rapid changes. New shopping malls, restaurants, hotels and apartment blocks are popping up in increasing numbers, resulting in the relocation of thousands of families forced to make way for the ‘development’ of the city. At the centre of recent controversies around this hurried transformation are the Vientiane New World...

If Australia wants to show leadership within Asia, drawing attention to the disappearance of activistSombath Somphone is a good place to start, write Kearrin Sims and James Arvanitakis

This October marks the 4th anniversary of the founding of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission of Human Rights (AICHR). Since AICHR was formed ASEAN has had a mixed track record with human rights. Although there have been some impressive political reforms across the region, particularly in Burma, some states appear to have grown increasingly conf...

ASEAN’s weak response to the disappearance of Lao community worker Sombath Somphone raises questions about the strength of the institution’s commitment to human rights. http://asaa.asn.au/missing-sombath-a-test-for-asean/

In a recent article by the Diplomat, for example, Luke Hunt highlighted how the coupling of Laos’ draconian media monitoring laws with the country’s current role as the 2016 ASEAN Chair has the potential to constrain international reporting on important transnational issues discussed at ASEAN meetings and conferences. While the Government of Laos...

In a recent article by the Diplomat, for example, Luke Hunt highlighted how the coupling of Laos’ draconian media monitoring laws with the country’s current role as the 2016 ASEAN Chair has the potential to constrain international reporting on important transnational issues discussed at ASEAN meetings and conferences. While the Government of Laos...

In a recent article by the Diplomat, for example, Luke Hunt highlighted how the coupling of Laos’ draconian media monitoring laws with the country’s current role as the 2016 ASEAN Chair has the potential to constrain international reporting on important transnational issues discussed at ASEAN meetings and conferences. While the Government of Laos...

In a recent article by the Diplomat, for example, Luke Hunt highlighted how the coupling of Laos’ draconian media monitoring laws with the country’s current role as the 2016 ASEAN Chair has the potential to constrain international reporting on important transnational issues discussed at ASEAN meetings and conferences. While the Government of Laos...

Over the past decade, academic research on Laos has grown significantly. This growth in the field of Lao studies is well synthesized in Vanina Bouté and Vatthana Pholsena’s edited volume Changing Lives in Laos. Incorporating the expertise of an impressive range of scholars, the 15-chapter book is thematically grouped under four research themes: sta...

It is widely agreed that much of Asia’s economic growth over the past two decades has been the product of expanding transnational capitalist flows that have been mobilized through rapid industrialization and infrastructure development (Asian Development Bank, 2013; Chandra et al, 2012; World Bank, 2011). Heralded as “the most spectacular developmen...

This article critically interrogates current policy-sector approaches to culturally sensitive development and the manner in which culture has been conceptualised within the post-2015 development agenda-setting process. By providing a brief interpretive summary of academic debates surrounding culture and development, an analysis of how ‘culturally s...

In 1992 the Asian Development Bank coordinated a meeting between government representatives from China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam to discuss regional economic integration. From that meeting the Greater Mekong Subregion was formed to promote peace and prosperity within the Mekong countries. Yet, despite more than more than USD 14...

The rise of China over the past two decades represents one of the most important shifts in global geopolitics. Nowhere has China’s growing global influence been more prolific than within Asia. This article examines China’s growing interests within the ‘Greater Mekong Subregion’ (GMS). Drawing together Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Ch...

Development in Laos has occurred slowly, with uneven distribution and significant negative effects. This article challenges the simplistic assumption of human development and human security as mutually reinforcing Processes. It suggests a holistic approach addressing simultaneously competing demands from the perspective of the most vulnerable secto...

Over thirty-four years since the 1960-1975 Second Indochina War, Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) continues to inhibit a multitude of development priorities in Laos. One of only three remaining Least Developed Countries in Southeast Asia, greater understanding of the socio-economic effects of UXO is crucial to the development of Laos. Drawing on three wee...