Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. ῐῑ, No. ῐ, March ῎ῌ῍ῌTime-geographic Analysis on Natural Resource Usein a Village of the Vientiane Plain

N>H=>BJG6 Yuichiro*, O@6BDID Kohei** and Somkhit BDJA>96B***

Abstract
This study aims to describe the spatio-temporal aspects of rural daily lives based onnatural resource use. We developed new research methodologies using GPS and GIS tocollect person-trip data in regions where it is difficult to use questionnaires. By applying
the methodology to research conducted in the Vientiane plain, Laos, we have found that
this new methodology makes it possible to obtain detailed information about people’s daily
activities, specifically: what activities were carried out, at what time, where, and withwhom. The research site was Dongkhuwaai Village, Xaithany District, located about ῏ῌ km
by road from Vientiane. The villagers live traditionally, depending on rice crops in therainy season and use various natural resources. We analyzed their daily activities both in
the rainy season and in the dry season. As a result, we found that the daily activities of thevillagers had nature-related constraints. They spent all their time in the settlements andthere were no modern forms of time discipline (synchronized activity by household
members).
We also investigated the influence of urbanization on rural lives. In recent years, a
growing number of foreign companies have begun investing in Vientiane and the vicinity,
hoping to take advantage of low labor costs. Commuting to such factories has started fromDongkhuwaai Village. However, the number of commuters is not increasing because
villagers already have other sources of income from selling natural resources such as
aquatic products, mushroom, bamboo shoots, insects, firewood and so on.
Keywords: daily activity, natural resource use, time-geography, urbanization, LaosI

Introduction

In recent years, Vientiane municipality has been experiencing the rapid penetration of
the market economy and urbanization. As a result of this, village economies in thesurrounding areas have been seeing a shift from a subsistence based economy to a
cash-oriented one as the chances to explore emerging opportunities of income generation
have arisen. Although the potentiality and risks of this shift are often discussed from an
economic perspective [Nonaka et al. ῎ῌῌῒb], the shift in itself is affecting the social life ofῌ Aichi Institute of Technology
e-mail: nishimuraaitech.ac.jp
ῌῌ Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya Universityῌῌῌ
National University of Laos426

N>H=>BJG6 Y. et alῌ : Time-geographic Analysis on Natural Resource Use in a Village of the Vientiane Plainvillagers in Dongkhuwaai village where our study was carried out. Villager’s daily life
consists of working, commuting, consuming and enjoying leisure with their family,
relatives, neighbors, and friends at home, within the village territory, and outside thevillage. This study focuses on the daily life of peri-urban village people and examineschanges in their lives induced by the penetration of the market economy based on a
spatio-temporal analysis of their behavior. In order to collect the necessary information
including where, when and how long each individual’s activities continue for various job
activities such as farming, hunting and gathering, fishing, housekeeping social interaction and communication such as shopping, sales, and visiting friends or relatives, thisstudy adopted a time-geography approach. Special attention is paid to natural resources
use because it has and will characterize Laos’ development [Kono et al. ῏῍῎῍].
Time-geographic, which was originally developed by the Swedish geographer Torsten Hägerstrand, describes the relation between individuals and natural and social
environments as an interaction among “matters” in time and space [Hägerstrand ῎ῒῐ῍;῎ῒῑῒ]. That is to say, an individual’s daily life is structured through their relationships
with various things in nature and other individuals in society.

By using a time-

geography approach, matters such as human beings, animals, plants and things can be
described as “paths” in time and space, and the interactions between these matters can be
represented as connections of paths. Furthermore, paths themselves are under a varietyof constraints which can be classified into the following three types [Hägerstrand ῎ῒῐ῍;῎ῒῑῒ; Gregory ῎ῒῑ῎].
( a ) Capability constraints, which limit the activities of individuals through theirown physical capabilities and/or the facilities they can command.
( b ) Coupling constraints, which define where, when and for how long the individual has to join other people, and use tools and materials in order to produce,transact or consume.
( c ) Authority constraints, which impose certain conditions of access on particularspace-time domains.
The paths of matters change under various temporal scales, being subjected to daily,
monthly, seasonal and annual rhythms and furthermore, they are constrained temporally
as well as spatially.

Matters can exist or act only within specific places that arechangeable in various temporal scales. As such, spatio-temporal change and constraints
come not only from nature but also from society [Hägerstrand ῎ῒῐ῍; ῎ῒῑῒ].
Pred has described how workers in nineteenth-century U. S. cities who were employed in factories and large-scale shops, were forced to follow a time discipline that they
had not experienced previously during the early stages of industrial capitalism. “Factoryand large-scale shop work inculcated a sense of time that was greatly different from thesense of knowing, for example, when cows were to be milked or when fires were to be fed
in order to maintain a smelting or heating process” [῎ῒῑ῎: ῒῌ῎῍]. This was the emergenceof nine-to-five work, and such work is described in the time-geographic notion as the427ῒΐῌ῍ῌῐ῏῎ ῑ

trajectory of a worker’s path which must meet that of a factory machine located in a
specific place. However, paths choreographed by the modern factory mode of production
are very different from paths in agriculture or hunting and gathering. Paths in production directly using natural recourses are swayed by the influence of nature, but are more
flexible and impromptu.
This paper presents an analysis of time-space allocation in the daily lives of thevillagers in the Vientiane plain, Laos, from a time-geographic perspective. Previous
time-geographical studies have focused on the quality of life of urban residents indeveloped countries. This study tries to bring a time-spatial perspective to the studies ofrural life depending on natural resource use.
In order to fully understand people’s daily lives, precise and detailed data is needed
about people’s paths in time and space, but it has been almost impossible to get such datain Laos using previous survey methods. Therefore, we first develop a new methodology
to collect information on people’s daily lives then analyze the differences in daily
activities between the rainy season and the dry season. Under the tropical monsoon
climate, the natural environment in the Vientiane plain drastically changes from therainy season to dry season, which places constraints on villager’s natural resource use. In
this paper, we focus on social change. In recent years the penetration of the market
economy and the spread of urbanization into the suburban area of Vientiane has been
influencing people’s daily lives which had previously been dependent on the subsistencecomplex of agriculture, hunting and gathering, fishing and so on. In focusing on these
dynamics, this paper examines the actual circumstances of influence as observed in thefield.

II Research Area and Methodology
Research Area
The area we researched was Dongkhuwaai Village, Xaithany District, located about km by road from Vientiane, the capital city of Laos (Fig.  ). The number of households
was  as of October , all of which stood close together, centered around a Buddhist
temple, and surrounded by rice fields and forests. The village’s main economic activity
was rice cultivation in the rainy season, primarily for self-consumption. Various natural
resources were utilized in securing cash income: fishing in the rivers, ponds, or rice fields,
the hunting and gathering of plants, insects and small animals in the forests, and the
production of charcoal, salt, and the grazing of cattle and buffaloes [Ikeguchi andNishimura ].
The village had one car,  motorbikes,

bicycles, and  hand tractors as of .

For public transportation, a bus called a songteo (“two-row coach” in Lao) connected thevillage to Vientiane with journeys twice a day, which took about   hours on the428

N>H=>BJG6 Y. et alῌ : Time-geographic Analysis on Natural Resource Use in a Village of the Vientiane Plain

Fig. ῌ
Source: Nishimura et al. [῏῍῍ΐ]Research Area

one-way trip along the long unpaved road. Because of the limited transportation means,
there were very few who commuted outside the village.
Survey Method
Many time-allocation studies have adopted questionnaires (activity diaries) or direct
observation of informants [Noma ῎῔ΐΐ]. However, it is difficult to use questionnaires in
the rural areas of developing countries due to problems such as illiteracy, the fact thatfew people possess watches, and the lack of detailed place names in these areas. Direct
observation also has limitations, as it is not possible to obtain information from many
informants simultaneously. We developed a new survey method combining interviews
with the use of GPS and GIS [Nishimura et al. ῏῍῍ΐ].
The procedures were as follows. ( ῎ ) Each informant was asked to carry a wristband
GPS receiver for an entire day.

The GPS unit recorded information relating to thespatio-temporal aspects of the informant’s activities. ( ῏ ) After ῏ῑ hours of GPS recording
was completed, the data was stored and represented visually using GIS software (ArcView ῔῕῎). The investigator worked out the shape of the spatio-temporal path of each
informant through the mapping of track points with time information. ( ῐ ) Subsequently, as GPS data reveals almost nothing about the content of activities, the investigator
interviewed each informant to clarify the details of the activities; what activity was
carried out, at what time, where, and with whom.
By carrying out a pilot survey in May ῏῍῍ῒ in which four households in Dongkhu429ῒΐῌ῍ῌῐ῏ ῐΐ῎ ῐ ῑwaai Village participated, we verified that the new survey method had the following
merits. ( ῍ ) The use of GPS improved the accuracy of the spatio-temporal data. ( ῎ ) GPS
data could be easily correlated with satellite images and map data, which enabled us toconsider people’s daily activities in combination with various geographical phenomena.
( ῏ ) Investigators could obtain information outlining an informant’s movements fromGPS data before conducting interviews, thereby improving the efficiency of interviews.
The investigation required three days per household. On the first day we visited
each survey household and explained the methods of investigation, and obtained consent
for the survey. On the second, we visited the household surveyed when the household
members woke up, and asked each of them to put a portable GPS on his/her wrist or
waistband.

On the third, we visited the households surveyed in the morning andretrieved the GPS devices from them. We took the GPS to the research station, andextracted the track log and displayed the location and time of tracks of each surveyed
person on satellite images of Dongkhuwaai Village using GIS. After this, we worked out
each person’s chart of travel of the day surveyed (the second day) and visited theinformant’s home again in the afternoon or evening interviewing them in detail about
their movements while showing them their GPS track logs on the laptop PC display.
This method required three investigation days for each household. If we staggered
the survey schedule (i.e. on the second day, begin the first day for another household), we
could investigate ῍ῌ households in ῍῎ days. Because we investigated four households
concurrently, we were able to collect data from ῐῌ households in ῍῎ days. We prepared ῐῌ
portable GPS devices for the survey (for each day we used ῐῌ GPS for eight households,
considering the average number per household is about five in the village).
The main surveys were both conducted in the rainy season (August ῎ΐ to Septemberΐ, ῎ῌῌῒ) and the dry season (March ῐ to ῎῎, ῎ῌῌ῔) with ῐῌ households participating. The
households surveyed were the same in both seasons and all of the members of thehouseholds except infants who were living in these homes at this time were surveyed.
The ῐῌ households for the survey were chosen so that each of the following fivehousehold types were represented: ῍ ) Households engaged in fishing, ῎ ) Households
engaged in grazing, ῏ ) Households engaged in retail or brokerage work, ῐ ) Households
receiving wages from manual labor, ῑ ) Households engaged in neither fishing, grazing,retail, brokerage nor wage labor.
The number of participants in the rainy season was ῍ῑῐ, and there were ῍ῐ῕ in the dry
season. Five of the ῐῌ households were excluded in the rainy season survey since all of
the members were living in a hut in the rice fields in the eastern area of the village.
Therefore the data included ῍῏῔ persons from ῏ῑ households for the rainy season survey.
Table ῍ shows the number of informants by sex and age.

430

N>H=>BJG6 Y. et al : Time-geographic Analysis on Natural Resource Use in a Village of the Vientiane Plain

Table ῌNumber of Informants by Sex and Age

In Rainy Season 
Age

Male

FemaleTotal

under  y
 yῌ
 yῌ
 yῌ
 yῌ
 yῌ
 yῌ
























Total





In Dry Season 
Age

Male

FemaleTotal

under  y
 yῌ
 yῌ
 yῌ
 yῌ
 yῌ
 yῌ
 yῌ
 yῌ



























Total











Data: activity survey

III Data Construction
Debugging GPS Data
A GPS device records the informants’ “track log” which contains information about aseries of track-points along routes that the informant travels, including latitude, longitude and time. This study used Garmin Foretrex 101 as GPS devices and set the mode of
track-point recording interval on “automatic.” In this mode, the device records many
track-points while an informant is moving and no track-points when there is no movement.
GPS devices might record mistaken track points when the conditions for receiving asatellite signal are weak.

Generally, acquiring a signal tends to be difficult insidebuildings and in the jungle. In Dongkhuwaai Village, devices easily picked up satellite
signals almost everywhere because the houses were wooden and ventilated and theforests were not dense. Since data was recorded with high precision, deviate data could
be identified easily. Based on verification of the track logs, we removed a track-point as
mis-recorded if it was located over  m away from the point recorded just before.
431ΐ῔῍῎῍ῑῐ ῏ῐ῏ ῏ ῒMerging GPS Data with the Data from Activity Diaries
As mentioned above, on the third day of the investigation, the researcher interviewed
informants about their behavior for the preceding day.

A laptop PC displayed theinformants’ tracks on satellite images of Dongkhuwaai Village, which enabled them torecall their actions more easily. While interviewing, the researcher wrote down theinformation from the interview and completed the activity diary of each informant. The
sheets of the activity diary gave details of the informants’ behavior in chronologicalorder, together with the behavior of other members of the household (Fig. ῎ ).
A form of person-trip data was made from these activity diaries. In the case of aperson-trip survey in urban areas,῍) the destination of the trip is generally a facility and
it is not hard for the traveler to recognize the arrival time. But in rural villages such as
Dongkhuwaai, especially in areas where hunting and gathering or grazing is carried out,
it is not that easy to clarify the trip or activity for the traveler and to identify the arrival
time at the destination place. Therefore, this study presumes that a unit of outdoor

Fig. ῌ

An Example of Activity Diary by Interview

῍ῌ In Japanese metropolitan areas, large-scale person-trip surveys have been conducted every
῍ῌ years by administrative organizations for transportation planning.
432

N>H=>BJG6 Y. et alῌ : Time-geographic Analysis on Natural Resource Use in a Village of the Vientiane Plain

Fig. ῌ

Person-trip Data in Dongkhuwaai Village

behavior began with the departure from a certain site and ended with the departure fromthe next site that the informant traveled to, without dividing the time between the trip
and the activity, as seen in Fig. ῏.
Next, various activities which the villagers performed outdoors were classified into
seven categories; i.e. work, shopping, leisure, social communication, attending school,other activities, and returning home. In addition, “work” activities were divided into
subcategories; fishing, hunting, gathering, agriculture, grazing, trade, wage labor, lumbering/making charcoal. In regards to the classification of activities, the internationaltime budget study by Szalai [῍ῑῐ῎] is well-known. As its classification has too many
categories, mainly based on daily lives in industrial cities, this study employs its own
classification of activities.
Finally, person-trip data made from the activity diary was merged with the GPS data.
Categorized activity codes were assigned to all outdoor track points of GPS data bycomparing the time information of both data.
Merging GPS Data with Land Use Data
Land-use data was polygon data which divided Dongkhuwaai Village into seven categories such as settlements, paddy fields, vacant lands, forests, artificial forests, riparian
forests and water areas. Settlement means a housing area. Since the housings of the
Dongkhuwaai Village were agglomerated, the settlement was included in one polygon. A
vacant area was an uncultivated grass field mainly used for grazing. Riparian forest is a
low-dense forest that is flooded in rainy seasons. For all of the track points a judgment
was made about whether they were located inside the boundaries of the village, and also
the track points inside the village were assessed to decide which land-use polygon they
belonged to using ArcView ῑῒ῍.

433ΐ῔῍῎῍ῑῐ ῐΐ῏ ῐ ῒIV Analysis
Number of Trips
Table ῎ shows the number of trips by kinds of activity. The average number of trips ina day was ΐ῕ΐ in the rainy season and ῔῕ῑ in the dry season. These figures are extremely
high in comparison with the results of other surveys conducted in the urban areas ofdeveloped countries. In surveys conducted in Japanese metropolitan areas, the number
was approximately two to three in the person-trip survey and two to four in the activity
diary survey [Arai et al. ῍῔῔ῒ]. Even in Japan, the average number of trips was relatively
high in rural areas. According to the activity diary survey conducted by Arai in Kiyomi
Village in Gifu Prefecture [Arai ῎ῌῌ῍], the average number of trips amounted to more thansix. Especially in the case of full-time farm households, the average number was aroundnine. Thus the number of trips in rural areas is high both in Laos and Japan.῎)
According to the activity diary surveys conducted on weekdays in Japanese cities,
the number of trips by married females was considerably higher than those by marriedmales because of the frequent outdoors activities the women engaged in for housekeeping and child rearing. When the married females had jobs, the number of trips increased
further [Arai et al. ῍῔῔ῒ].

A similar result was obtained among part-time farmers’

households and non-farmers’ households in Kiyomi Village in rural Japan. On the other
hand, among full-time farming households, the number of trips by both males andfemales was high as full-time farmers managed to carry out multiple farming activities invarious sites in the village, for example rice fields, vegetable fields, livestock barns, etc.
which were located separately to each other. That made the number of their daily trips
high.
Moreover, most full-time-farmers went back home for lunch and went out again forfarming after lunch, which was also the reason why daily trips by Japanese full-time
farmers were more frequent than those by both office workers and part-time workers. In
Dongkhuwaai Village, farmers were engaged in various kinds of jobs related to natural
resource use. Also, they returned home for lunch and a nap around lunchtime. Almost
all adult villagers in Dongkhuwaai could be regarded as full-time farmers, excluding a
few exceptions. The total number of trips was high, with a small gender difference,
which is consistent with the result in Kiyomi Village in rural Japan.
Table ῎ shows the contents of the outdoors activities (purposes of trips) by the῎ῌ The average trip number in metropolitan areas of Southeast Asia like Phnom Penh andJakarta was two to three. These are similar results to those for urban areas of Japan.
(EASTS ICRA Project Report ῌA Comparative Study on Urban Structures and Transportation Systems in Asian Metropolitan Citiesῌ ῎ῌῌ῏῍ῌῑ http: //www.easts.info/activities/icra/
῎ῌῌ῏/ICRA-Hyodo.pdf)
434

N>H=>BJG6 Y. et alῌ : Time-geographic Analysis on Natural Resource Use in a Village of the Vientiane Plain435ῒΐῌ῍ῌῐ῏ ῐῒ῎ ῐ ῑpeople in Dongkhuwaai Village.

Work trips dominated over returning home trips.

Although there were more work trips by males than females on the whole, a genderdifference was seen according to the kind of work. The gender difference was striking in
the field of fishing in the rainy season. On the other hand, trading (vending of natural
resources, operating small shops and so on) and shopping/household work were highamong females in the dry season.
More trips were counted in the dry season than the rainy season, which means thepeople are more active in the dry season. The total number of trips by males and females
were not so different. Fishing activity decreased among males and increased amongfemales in the dry season. Social communication increased among females in the dry
season. Lumbering/charcoal making was very popular among children in the dry season.
Such work sometimes means play for children.
Spatial Distribution of Trips
Figs. ῐa and ῐb show the spatial distribution of all the GPS track points of the surveyed
villagers. The white dots represent the tracks of ῍῏ΐ persons in the rainy season and theblack ones represent the tracks of ῍ῐ῔ persons in the dry season. The base map exhibits
the land use classification that Professor Ono of Niigata University produced from theFig. ῌa

Spatial Allocation of Activity by All Informants and Landuse of Dongkhuwaai Village in the Rainy Season (῎ῌῌῑ)

Data: GPS survey by authors, land use and village border data, Dr. Eisuke Ono, roaddata (outside of village) form Mekong GIS data, JICA
436

N>H=>BJG6 Y. et alῌ : Time-geographic Analysis on Natural Resource Use in a Village of the Vientiane Plain

Fig. ῌb

Spatial Allocation of Activity by All Informants and Landuse of Dongkhuwaai Village in the Dry Season (῏῍῍ΐ)

Data: GPS survey by authors, land use and village border data, Dr. Eisuke Ono, roaddata (outside of village) form Mekong GIS data, JICA

satellite image taken on February ῏῍῍ῒ with ground truth.
The track points have concentrated on the settlement area located in the west of thevillage. Many white points are distributed near the northeast edge of the village. Thatis the area called Nakhok where many tienna exist. A tienna is a villa used for cultivation.
It is a raised flooring type of house, and below the floor level is a feeding area for cattle
and buffaloes. Village people live within a settlement area in the dry season and some ofthem live in the tienna or commute there in the rainy season. Tiennaes are scatteredamong the rice fields in the village, mainly in the Nakhok area several kilometers
northeast away from the settlement.

In the rainy season, the region between thesettlement and Nakhok is submerged so the people go via Route ῎ῐ in the north of thevillage by tractors, taking a very roundabout way to get to their tienna, Some walkstraight there, chest-deep in water.
The southern part of the village along the Makhyo River, where land use is riparian
forest in the dry season, floods and becomes a fishery in the rainy season. Many whitedotted lines reach there in Figs. ῑa and ῑb. Most of them are tracks made by for middleaged and old-aged males going fishing in the rainy season. Waters move to the south in
the dry season, so black-dotted lines stretch to the south to find the fishery. As for the central southern region of the village called Naseen, dry-season rice cultivation is possible437ΐ῔῍῎῍ῑῐ ῏ῐ῏ ῏ ῒbecause the Makhyo River is near there. Some villagers visit Naseen for agriculture in
the dry season. The rice fields in Naasen are completely submerged in the rainy season.
Outdoor Activity and Land Use
Table ῎ shows the duration of outdoor activities for each land use. It indicates therelationship between land use and activity from the combination of GPS data, land use
data and activity information from the interviews. The activity time in Table ῎ shows
the total time for travel to the destination and time spent at the destination. For example,
the activity time for fishing includes the time the person spent traveling to the fisheryand the time spent fishing there. So the activity time for fishing is distributed not only
in water land use but also in settlement land use and so on.
Table ῎ shows that the total time spent on fishing, hunting and gathering was morethan the time for the agricultural tasks in both the rainy season and the dry season. It is
supposed that agricultural tasks do not consume much time except during the season fortransplanting and harvesting. The rainy season starts from the beginning of May andends at the beginning of October.

Transplanting of the paddy fields starts at the

beginning of May, and finishes at the beginning of August in Dongkhuwaai village[Nonaka et al. ῍ῌῌῑa]. The research period was from the end of August to the beginningof September and it did not correspond to the busy season for rice cultivation.
The activity time for fishing is longer than the time spent on agriculture time in therainy season. Fishing activity is carried out in the rice fields or riparian forests flooded
by the river near the southern village boundaries in the rainy season.
As for grazing and taking care of cattle and buffalo, the method of pasturing differs
between the rainy and the dry season. In the rainy season, villagers take the cattle andbuffalo to the forest to graze them and ensure that they do not eat rice in paddy fields. On
the other hand, cattle and buffalo are pastured without guard in the dry season because
there is no such danger. However, the villagers wait for their cattle and buffalo to comeback at the end of the settlement for a long time every evening and they sometimes go tolook for their animals. According to Table ῎, the main land used for grazing is paddy
fields and forest in the rainy season, while about ῑῌῌ of land used for grazing issettlements in the dry season, which means the villagers spend a long time within theirsettlements after leaving their home to wait for their cattle and buffaloes to return. Thus,
the activity time for grazing is longer in the dry season than in the rainy season.
Lumbering and charcoal production also occupies most of the time in the dry season.
Activity time for wage labor is not long compared with fishing and agricultural
tasks. The opportunities for wage labor are very limited within the village and mostwage labor is conducted outside the village, and some villagers commute to Vientiane.
Although the working hours are long for a person who engages in wage labor, theaverage activity time is shortening because few people engage in wage labor. The
average working time is longer in the rainy season due to long overtime work in the438

N>H=>BJG6 Y. et alῌ : Time-geographic Analysis on Natural Resource Use in a Village of the Vientiane Plain439ΐ῔῍῎῍ῑῐ ῏ῒ῏ ῏ ῒfactory where some villagers worked to produce Christmas goods, as will be mentioned
later.
Both males and females stayed within the village most of the day and spent morethan ῒῌῌ of the time surveyed in the settlement. The percentage of time spent in thesettlement was six percentage points higher among females than males (table omitted).
This shows that females are more involved in housekeeping jobs, child rearing, and social
activities in the settlement. On the other hand, males are relatively more involved in thejobs of hunting, gathering, and cultivating outside the settlement. So the time spent in
the riparian forest, water area, and the paddy fields was longer among males.

V

Seasonal Changes of Natural Resource Use

Most villagers spent time inside the village, and natural resource-based activities without
employment were common in the village. We focused on one of the households whose
members have a direct connection to the natural environment. We drew the daily pathsof the household members and analyzed the time-spatial relationship between humanactivity and the natural environment. Figs. ῐa and ῐb shows the daily paths in which theFig. ῌa Daily Paths of One Household (Rainy Season, ῎ῌῌῑ)Note: a: husband (ῐ῎), b: wife (ῐ῍), c: daughter (῎῍), d: daugher’s husband (῎ῐ), e: granddaughter ( ῑ ), f: son (῍ΐ)
Data: activity survey (῎ῌῌῑ)440

N>H=>BJG6 Y. et al : Time-geographic Analysis on Natural Resource Use in a Village of the Vientiane Plain

Fig. ῌb Daily Paths of One Household (Dry Season, )Note: a: husband ( ), b: wife ( ), c: daughter ( ), d: daugher’s husband ( ), e: grand daughter ()Data: activity survey ()time-space movement of each household member is arranged. The vertical line indicates
the time of day, while the horizontal line represents each different location in which
outdoor activities were practiced and the relative distance from the home [Carlstein ;Arai et al. ]. Fig. a shows household members’ activities in the rainy season, while
Fig. b shows them in the dry season.
The activities of the household indicate that the human behavior of this village isadjusted to the seasonal change of the natural environment. The water area and riparian
forest becomes a fishing spot in the rainy season, and the forest and riparian forest
become grazing spaces in the dry season. The people’s livelihood changes seasonally to
fit the ecological setting.
Here, we present example data from one household, which consists of six members.
The husband ( years old in ), the wife ( years old), the daughter ( years old), thedaughter’s husband ( years old), the granddaughter (six years old) and the son ( years
old) spent most of their time inside the village in the  rainy season. The husband inparticular used the natural environment for fishing, hunting or grazing. The husband
woke up very early in the morning aroundam to prepare for fishing. The reason forgoing fishing very early in the morning was to get a big catch of fish. His activity was
adjusted to the ecological cycle of fish activity. The fisherman set the fishing net theprevious evening. In the heat of the day, the fish hid in the shade of the trees and they441ῒΐῌ῍ῌῐ῏ ῎ῐ῎ ῎ ῑbecame more active at nighttime as they searched for food. In the early morning, thefisherman drew in the net to catch the fish before they lost freshness [Akimichi et al.

῍ῌῌῑ].
Fig. ῏ displays his GPS tracks. The black dotted line indicates his travel in the rainyseason. He went to the river located to the south of the village; he checked the fishing net
and caught fish at five places (around Point A in Fig. ῏ ). After that, he delivered theseFig. ῌ Detailed Spatial Allocation of the Activities
Data: GPS survey by authors, QuickBird satellite image (October, ῍ῌῌ῏)442

N>H=>BJG6 Y. et alῌ : Time-geographic Analysis on Natural Resource Use in a Village of the Vientiane Plainfish to his wife. The husband and the wife met at point B and he went to the tienna inpoint C. At the tienna he took care of his cattle and after that he went to the forests near
the tienna to catch insects to feed to the cattle. He spent some time at the tienna to graze
the cattle and took some rest, returning back home around ῑ : ῐ῍ pm. His son also cameto the tienna to graze cattle at around ῎῍ am and they worked together and rested forabout four hours.
In the dry season of ῏῍῍ΐ, the activity of the husband changed to fit the seasonalchange of the natural environment. He did not go fishing in the early morning because
the volume of river water became very low and they could not catch any fish in the river.
The husband went to the forest and the riparian forest (he could not go there in the rainyseason because the river water covered that area) to feed his cattle (around point a. Fig.

ῒ ). He returned home and went to a pond for fishing in the afternoon (around point b.
Fig. ῒ ).

In the dry season he could catch fish at several big ponds located to thesouthwest of the village.
As seen from this example, the seasonal changes of the natural environment influenced the changes in the daily paths of the people. This situation is analyzed from thetime-geographic concept of the constraints.
The daily path of the husband in the rainy season was affected by several related
constraints. Fishing in the very early morning meant that if he took the chance to get agood catch, he had to fit his daily path to meet the activity patterns of the fish. Their
activity patterns followed the daily, seasonal and ecological cycle of the river environment. The morning is when the fishermen can make the time-space bundles with thepath of the fish, and most fishermen in the village wanted to go to the river very early onin the morning. The end of August is the main growing season of the fish that come from
the Mekong River from May to July, and this was why the fishermen spent a long timeat the river during our research period.
The fishermen had another coupling constraint. The selling of fish has to be done at
an appropriate time. Small cyprinid fish caught with tangle nets have to be sold quickly
because they have already died when they are caught [Ikeguchi and Nonaka ῏῍῍ΐ]. Many
fishermen in this village sold the fish in the research period, and freshness and adjusting
to market demand were important for selling them at a good price. The selling of fish is
assigned to the women as part of the gender division of labor in the village. Thissituation, the coupling constraint between the husband and wife, affects the daily
time-space path. The wife went to the meeting point near the river to sell the fresh fishin the village, and this was the time-spatial peg of the activity of both husband and wife.
It was the strategy of the family to meet the market demand and this was one of the main
constraints on the husband’s daily path.
The daily life of the villagers in the natural environment is not like the slow, calm
village life. The rainy season was a busy time for the fisherman because his daily path
had several constraints related to the natural environment and the economic environ443

ΐ῔῍῎῍ῑῐ ῐΐ῏ ῐ ῒment, and he needed to adjust and coordinate his daily activities.
On the other hand, such constraints were not shown in the dry season. The husband
went fishing in the late afternoon because there was not a severe coupling constraint
with fish. The activity patterns of the fish were not affected by the daily ecological cycle
and the husband had the flexibility to be able to time his fishing activity.
The environmental setting also constrained the capability of human and buffaloes’
activities. The water and riparian forest areas lost water in the dry season and thevillagers had no barrier to their activities. They could easily enter these areas and use theland as a grazing area. The paddy field also changed to vacant land and they used it asa place for feeding buffalo. These changes indicate that the capability constraints werereduced and the flexibility of activities was increased in the dry season.
The analysis indicates that the daily activities of the villagers were still closely
related to the seasonal/daily ecological cycle of the natural environment. The activitiesof the household members are separated from each other and the rigid constraints did notexist with other members inside both the settlement and/or home. The home was not atime-space peg of the daily activities and the settlement or activities outside of it weremore important than the home. Such loose coupling constraints between villagers shape
the character of their daily living.

VI Influence of Urbanization
Recently, many labor-intensive industries have been established in Laos.

They areexport-oriented, and some of them are financed by foreign capital. Most employees inthese factories are young women. Since the ῍῕῕ῌs, there have been an increasing numberof such factories located in Vientiane municipality. Sewing factories are typical of suchindustries. According to the member list of Lao association of textile industries in ῎ῌῌῐ(῕῎ member companies), ῎ῒ members (῎῔ῌ) are direct foreign-invested and ῍ῌ members(῍῍ῌ) are joint corporations of Lao and foreign companies. Eighty-eight members (῕ῒῌ)
are located in Vientiane municipality [Nishimura and Okamoto ῎ῌῌΐ].

There are a

growing number of employment opportunities in and around Vientiane. However, theareas within commuting distance of the factories are restricted due to the poor transportsystem. Dongkhuwaai Village, which is located about ῏ῌ km from Vientiane, was beyond
the commuting distance of the factories. Small-scale commuting started in February ῎ῌῌῒin this village. A factory near Friendship Bridge, which connects with Thailand, offeredcommuting jobs to the village. Founded in ῎ῌῌῑ by Thai direct investment, it makes ῏-Dpicture books for children. Moreover, commuting to a French garment-washing factory
started in February ῎ῌῌΐ. These factories run commuter buses (songteo). Dongkhuwaai is
the furthest village that the buses reach and it takes approximately one hour and a halfeach way to the factories.
444

N>H=>BJG6 Y. et al : Time-geographic Analysis on Natural Resource Use in a Village of the Vientiane Plain

Monthly basic pay is ῌ US$ in the factories. Allowances for overtime work areadded. Regular working hours are  : ῌ : , but workers often come back to thevillage at midnight to do overtime work to meet the market demand for Christmas in the
US and European countries. Almost all the commuters are young females. Commuting
to the factory has brought cash earnings to young women in the village. However, theturnover rate of these young women is relatively high for the following reasons: ) Wages are so low that they cannot regard work at the factory as a rewarding job.
 ) There are alternative ways to get cash in this village, such as fishing, hunting andgathering. The selling price of natural resources is relatively high (Table).

 ) They are burdened with long overtime work, a long commuting time, and work on
the weekends.
) They have to spend weekdays in a different place and on a different schedule fromother members of their household.
The last reason is very time-geographic. To clarify the time-space constraints in thedaily lives of factory workers, we provide an example of one household in Dongkhuwaai
Village in which one member commutes to the factory.
Fig.  shows the daily path of the household in the rainy season. This household
consisted of the mother ( years old), the eldest son ( years old), the daughter ( years
old), and the second son ( years old). The daughter was a worker at the picture bookfactory. She left the village by commuter bus before:  in the morning, and worked

at the factory all day long. The time she returned home was usually around  pm when
her mother and brothers had already gone to bed. She came home later than usual at :  pm on the day surveyed. Other members of the household were staying in thevillage. The eldest son went to a tienna in Nakhok to take the cattle to the forest in themorning. The mother in the household surveyed also went to the tienna, and collected
firewood and nuts called Makbokk near there in the afternoon. The second son comTable ῌProducts

Income by Hunting/Gathering
HouseholdIncome (/month, US$)(  kip῍  US$)

Aquatic products
Mushroomῌbamboo shoots
Wild edible plants
Insects
Mammals
Firewood
Salt










 
 


 

Vegetables
Rice




 
  (/year)

Note: Most active month of households whose members engaged in hunting/gathering. Incomes from vegetables and rice were not deducted from the
cash cost.
Data: Socio-economic survey (all households in DK village in )445ῒΐῌ῍ῌῐ῏῎ ῑFig. ῌ Daily Paths of the Wage Worker and Her Household Members (Raing Seeson,  )Note: a: mother (), b: son ( ), c: daughter ( ), d: son ( )Data: activity survey (  )muted to the junior high school in Huaxien village neighboring Dongkhuwaai Village.
He went to catch frogs after school on the day surveyed, and after supper he visited a
middleman in the village to sell Makbokk that his mother had collected that afternoon.
He sold Makbokk weighing  kilograms for  kip ( cents).
Thus, the household members other than the daughter spent the day with nature in
the village; hunting and gathering and cattle grazing. On the other hand, the daughter
worked far from the village from the early morning to midnight. This shows how thetime-space of her daily life was quite different to the other household members.
The reason for the time-spatial distinction between the daughter and the otherhousehold members was that there was a severe coupling constraint on the daughter’s
daily activity. The daughter’s daily path and the path of the facility of the factory makethe bundle [Hägerstrand  ] that restricted the daughter’s activity. The long timecommuting and the lack of her-own transport removed the possibility of flexible use of
break time. She had very limited possibility for activities with members of the village on
workdays because the most of the villagers’ activities did not have such a severe coupling
constraint (Table  ).
What we can see from the above example is how globalization is introducing a new
446

N>H=>BJG6 Y. et alῌ : Time-geographic Analysis on Natural Resource Use in a Village of the Vientiane Plain

Table ῌThe Change of Livelihood and Work Place, Timing of Work and Use of Space

Kind of Work

Working Place

Timing of Work

Living Space

Social Communication

work related
naturalenvironment

mainly working
inside village

seasonal cycle
ecological cycle

seasonal cycle
ecological cycle
contiguous use of
ecotoneclosely
connected,
longterm

paid work

working outside
villagefactory and global
market demand

segmental
use of space

limitedopportunity, short

type of wage labor to Dongkhuwaai Village. It ties up the laborers with the worktable ofthe factory for long hours and forces them into the same work routine day after day; aroutine that sees them leave the village early in the morning and return late at night. The
time-space paths of factory laborers are simple and stiff depending on the commuter bus
schedule, which are very different from the diverse and flexible paths of other villagers.
In the time-geographic diction, laborers have to be riveted to the factory (a coupling
constraint) under the supervision of a manager (an authority constraint) without theirown means of transportation (a capability constraint).
Thus factory labor outside the village creates severe constraints and makes communication with family members and neighbors almost impossible on weekdays. Wages are
too low to be an incentive for them to continue this unhappy labor. Low wages brings
about a high turnover rate. Factories try to hold employees more than the necessity tocope with a high turnover rate. In the case of the factory making picture books, they kept
about ῐ῍῍ laborers for ῏῍῍ persons workload in ῎῍῍ῐ when we interviewed the personnel
director of the factory. Over-employment depresses the wage. Turnover rate is higher inthe farmers’ busy season. In Dongkhuwaai Village, not a few females were absent for rice
planting from factories before quitting their factory job. The factories are subject to theseasonal fluctuation of the workforce and the management have to coordinate theirproduction not only in changes in the demand of the global market but also to theseasonal changes of the workforce and their relation to the natural environment of theVientiane plain [Nishimura and Okamoto ῎῍῍ῑ].

VII Conclusion
This study aimed to clarify the spatio-temporal aspects of daily lives based on natural
resource use on the facing market economy. We have analyzed the spatio-temporal
structure of rural daily lives based on natural resource use, and examined the influenceof urbanization on rural daily lives.
We developed new research methodologies using GPS and GIS to collect person-trip447

ῒΐῌ῍ῌῐ῏ ῐῑ῎ ῐ ῑdata in a region where it is difficult to use questionnaires. By applying the methodology
to research in the Vientiane plain in Laos, we found this new methodology made it
possible to gain detailed information about people’s daily activities, namely what activities were carried out, at what time, where, and with whom. The research field was
Dongkhuwaai Village, Xaithany District, located about ῏ῌ km by road from Vientiane
where the villagers lived traditionally, depending on rice crops in the rainy season anduse of various natural resources. We analyzed their daily activities both in the rainyseason and in the dry season.
We found that the villagers spent most of their day in the village, and their activity
paths were closely connected to each other in a narrow settlement space. However, there
were a small number of synchronized activities among the household members and thecoupling constraints on them were not clear. The settlement was more important thanhome for their activities. The home was not time-space pegs of the daily activities. The
villagers spent much time in other places in the settlement apart from their own houses
as the starting and ending points of activities. There seemed not to exist a modern time
discipline in which all of the household members had dinner or watched television
together at a fixed time. The loose coupling constraints between villagers affected their
daily activities.
The daily activities of the villagers were still closely related to the seasonal changeof the natural environment. At present, the activities related to natural resource use suchas fishing, hunting and gathering still continue to occupy a considerable part of thetime-spatial allocation of rural daily lives. There were also some important constraints
with the natural environment, land use, animals, or plants.
On the other hand, the penetration of the market economy has increased theopportunity for various types of wage earning near Vientiane. In recent years, a growing
number of foreign companies have invested in Vientiane and the vicinity because of low
labor costs. Dongkhuwaai Village has found itself become a source of laborers commuting to factories. That might be a cause of the radical changes in the rural lives inVientiane plain which can be summed up in the three following points: first, theintroduction of wage work means not only a change in the income generating method,
but also transitions of the activity patterns and living time-space. Secondly, the daily
lives of the household members doing wage jobs are in sharp contrast to the daily livesof other household members who depend on natural resource use even though they livein the same household. In such households, the daily paths of the members have severe
coupling constraints and there is a lack of daily communication time. Finally, thesechanges imply that the penetration of the market economy could cause changes in thesocial relationships in the village and change how a household/family ought to be.
At the turn of the ῎῍st century, “global factories” have finally reached Laos forcheaper labor. Laos is the one of the latest developing countries to be pulled into theglobal economy. Today, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam are replacing the former cheap448

N>H=>BJG6 Y. et al : Time-geographic Analysis on Natural Resource Use in a Village of the Vientiane Plain

wage countries of Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia in Southeast Asia.
The cheap-labor-oriented enterprises newly established in these countries haveabsorbed unskilled workers not only from urban areas but peri-rural areas. In the s,many factories including the foreign invested were located in local cities in Thailand.
According to the long-term observation studies in Don Daeng Village in northeast
Thailand, the villagers’ daily lives have been dramatically changed since the s due tothe increase of commuting to the factories in and around Khon Kaen city [Fukui ].
Farmers in Don Daeng Village were split into many part-time rice farmers and few
full-time vegetable farmers. In Funahashi’s study, the proportion of the off-farm income
in annual household income of all the villagers has increased from  ῌ in the s toῌ in the s to ῌ in  [Funahashi ]. What this indicates is as thevillagers became commuters, their living space are segmented into workplace and home,
and their living time are segmented into working hours and non-working hours.
Is Dongkhuwaai village following the same road as Don Daeng village ?

The

beginning of small-scale commuting to the factories could be a symptom in Dongkhuwaai. Although many villagers experienced factory work from , most of them stop
going to the factories. It implies that the villagers are showing anxiety in the face ofsocio-economic change that such work brings, reacting against the risks and undesirable
influence to family/ village life.
On the other hand, the wage labor is not the only way to earn cash in this village.
Fishing, hunting and gathering bring the villagers respectable income (Table). These

activities are flexible in space and time. Unlike factory labor, they do not bind people toa certain place for long hours of the day. These activities are also initial-cost-free, unlike
vegetable production that needs the irrigation facilities.
The marketing of fish, insects, small animals and wild plants have increased since thes, along with the introduction of a cash economy into rural areas showing that many
villagers, including children, have become involved in fishing, hunting and gathering forcash-income.

The construction of social relationships between the family or otherpersons in the village through natural resource use remains important activities. However, if too many people become engaged in these activities, this may lead over-exploitationand the deterioration of bio-diverse habitats. We would have to further think about how
to balance the natural resource use, the villagers’ activities and these risks.

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