This paper argues that Lao bureaucrats who migrate to the uplands offer possibilities for re-thinking the immutability of uplandlowland distinctions and the power of the modern state. The specific focus is on low-ranking government officials on the Nakai Plateau in central Laos who are positioned at the nexus of state authority, development schemes and the rural poor. Nakai is a site of nationally significant resource utilisation and practices that has provided a model for development across the country. Officials' experiences in Nakai suggest that the uplandlowland contrast can provide valuable understandings of power when combined with an awareness of social processes that reproduce and shift the meanings ascribed to these nominally distinct domains. Significantly, the experiences of mobile marginal officials highlight an idea of state power as the potential to grant prosperity. © 2011 The National University of Singapore.

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bureaucracy rural population social development political power upland region Nakai Plateau Laos migration