“Chiangkhan City” The Changing of Landscape and the Way of Constructing Meaning of the City

Abstract

This article presented the change of Chiangkhan’s landscape according to the land used in the area between Chai-Khong Rd. and Sri-Chiangkhan Rd. in the time period from the commercial age in the Mekong river (before Lao PDR transformed the state to communist country in 1975) up to 2018 (a context of tourist city after 2009) and the way of constructing meaning through the landscape. Finally, the study focused on the outcome of the way of meaning construction through the landscape when it acted as if it was an agency by using the concept of Signs. Based on this procedure the landscape will be considered as a “Signified” and can revert to a “Signifier” for giving a meaning or directing to people or things, whom or which were related. It was shown that the process enabled a specific context of Chiangkhan city by revealing the connections between people and the landscape. In addition, it can expose the pattern of relationships among the stakeholders such as villagers, government agencies, entrepreneurs, companies etc., whomever had played the roles throughout the history of Chiangkhan’s development.