PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Luang Prabang has assumed the status of an iconic city and one of Southeast Asia’s must-visit destinations, largely since its recognition by UNESCO as a world heritage site in 1995. Scholarship on Luang Prabang recognises the complexities and contradictions of heritage making, how these have transformed space in central Luang Prabang and how these celebrate the aesthetics of colonialism. This paper argues that these dynamics are also visible through the consumption of coffee. Like the city’s prized architecture, coffee has its roots in colonialism. Moreover, its production in Northern Laos, around Luang Prabang, is recent. Coffee is available in several of the town’s protected heritage buildings but served in a style with which many Lao are unfamiliar and at a price they cannot afford. Consequently, coffee shops are apparently public spaces, but inaccessible to much of the local population. Researched through ethnographic fieldwork, this paper argues that coffee practices in Luang Prabang reflect wider discourses of heritage and allow visitors and locals to participate in the making of this space to particular agendas of heritage. Thinking with and through coffee allows a deeper understanding of a spatialised culinary geography in Luang Prabang and its relationship to the process of heritage-making.