Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

New Means, Old Ends? World Bank Governmentality In Thailand And Lao People's Democratic Republic, Nicholas Ryan Zeller

Masters Theses

The purpose of this research is to make explicit the arts of government, defined as a field of power in the Foucauldian sense, employed by the World Bank in the cases of Pak Mun Dam in Thailand and Nam Theun II Dam in Lao PDR. Much of the literature on the latter case, both from the World Bank and its critics, focuses on the incorporation of conservation practices and the creation of state apparatuses which account for natural resources and local populations through a discourse of environmentalism. Using World Bank planning and evaluation documents, I argue that although these practices …