Staying with the Trouble: Elephants, People, and the Future of Coexistence in Laos

In the dense forests and riverbanks of Laos, elephants have long been more than animals. They have been kin, workers, companions—part of a shared world shaped over generations. In recent years, however, this relationship has come under strain, caught in the shifting currents of conservation policy, global tourism, economic development, and cultural change. To understand where we are and where we might go, we must, as Donna Haraway urges, learn to “stay with the trouble.”

This means not seeking quick fixes or pure solutions, but instead learning to live within the complexity of human–elephant entanglement. It means resisting fantasies of pristine wilderness or total separation between people and animals. And it means recognizing the lived realities of those who still care for elephants—not from a distance, but through daily labor, bodily presence, and enduring cultural ties.

Maurer et al. (2021) provide a powerful lens into this reality. In their study of Laos, they describe a “social–ecological system” in which elephants have historically moved between wild and human-managed spaces, often roaming freely during parts of the year while returning to their mahouts for food, care, and work. This flexible arrangement is now under pressure. The decline of logging, the rise and fall of tourism, and the import of externally-driven conservation ideologies are destabilizing this delicate balance.

What emerges is not a simple story of loss, but a deeply relational problem. Elephants are not just disappearing—they are becoming disconnected from the systems that once gave their lives meaning and structure. Mahouts, too, face an uncertain future. Younger generations are leaving the profession. Cultural knowledge is fading. And the moral authority to define “good” elephant care is increasingly claimed by distant institutions rather than local communities.

Against this backdrop, Haraway’s call to “stay with the trouble” becomes a plea for situated thinking and ethical imagination. It asks us to recognize that elephants in Laos are not best served by models that idealize untouched nature or propose total separation from humans. Instead, we need practices of care that are rooted in local ecologies and social relationships.

This future does not lie in turning elephants into isolated symbols of wilderness or commodities for spectacle. Nor does it lie in imposing abstract welfare standards divorced from local realities. Rather, it lies in supporting hybrid, adaptive models that honor the shared histories of people and elephants and make space for those relationships to evolve.

To stay with the trouble is to accept that we are entangled—and to act from that place of entanglement. It is to walk beside elephants, not in front or behind, and to imagine a future in which humans and animals can flourish not in spite of one another, but because of the care, respect, and creativity that connect them.

In Laos, this path is still open. But it will take listening, humility, and a willingness to learn from those who have long lived with elephants—not as abstractions, but as living, thinking beings in a shared and troubled world.

Under pressure: How human-wild-captive elephant social-ecological system in Laos is teetering due to global forces and sociocultural changes

Staying with the Trouble Making Kin in the Chthulucene