Flow piracy and percolation in a hydropower watershed: interceptions of Indigenous languages in upland Laos

This paper reports on findings of long-term field research in upland central Laos, examining the rapidly changing dynamics of language among multilingual Indigenous communities in the upper reaches of the massive Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Project.

The paper uses a study of language and social change in a hydropower project area in Laos to develop a conception of infrastructures as horizon-exceeding distributional networks. Language is one such infrastructure. The paper distinguishes infrastructures at three main, inter-articulated levels: natural, technological, and institutional. The conception of language as an infrastructure helps to understand its spatialized dynamics and adds language as a new empirical domain to the literature on infrastructure.

Using the case study of sudden language shift in the context of new transport infrastructure, this article develops a conception of nested infrastructures that captures the notion of distributional flow at multiple levels, from natural forces to built networks to the circulation of communicative norms and social encounters. One of the key findings is that power is exercised in infrastructures through mechanisms of flow piracy (intercepting flows and transforming them for new purposes) and percolation (the denuding of networks and their subsequent critical reconfigurations). This provides a new perspective on language contact and social networks in complex linguistic ecologies.

About the Speaker

Nick Enfield is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney and Director of the Sydney Social Science and Humanities Advanced Research Centre. He is also Head of a Research Excellence Initiative on The Crisis of Post-Truth Discourse. His research on language. culture, cognition and social life is based on long-term fieldwork in mainland Southeast Asia, especially Laos. His recent books include Natural Causes of Language, The Utility of Meaning, Disturbed Agency, How We Talk and Language vs. Reality.

For more details of Nick's research interests and publications see here.