Upland Transformations in Vietnam 9971695146, 9789971695149

Table of contents :
Cover Page
Title Page, Copyright
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
Introduction: Opening Boundaries
1. A View from the Mountains: A Critical History of Lowlander-Highlander Relations in Vietnam
2. The Politics of Highland Landscapes in Vietnamese Statecraft: (Re)Framing the Dominant Environmental Imaginary
3. Who Should Manage the Land?: Common Property and Community Responses in Vietnam’s Shifting Uplands
4. “Forest Thieves”: State Resource Policies, Market Forces, Struggles over Livelihood and Meanings of Nature in a Northwestern Valley of Vietnam
5. Geographical Settings, Government Policies and Market Forces in the Uplands of Nghệ An
6. Land Allocations in Vietnam’s Uplands: Negotiating Property and Authority
7. Market Relations in the Northern Uplands of Vietnam
8. The Cultural Politics of Agrarian Change in the Highlands of Ba Vì, Vietnam
9. The Development of a Land Market in the Uplands of Vietnam
10. “Stretched Livelihoods”: Social and Economic Connections between the Red River Delta and the Central Highlands
11. Changing Labour Relations in a Hmong Village in Sa Pa, Northwestern Vietnam
Postscript: Towards a Conjunctural Analysis
Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Challenges of the Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia (ChATSEA)

Upland Transformations in Vietnam

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Challenges of the Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia (ChATSEA) The shift from rural societies dependent upon agricultural livelihoods to predominantly urbanized, industrialized and market-based societies is one of the most significant processes of social change in the modern world. The Challenges of the Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia (ChATSEA) project examines how the transformation is affecting the societies and economies of Southeast Asia. Headed by Professor Rodolphe De Koninck, holder of the Canada Chair in Asian Research at the University of Montreal, and sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the ChATSEA project includes publications by senior academics as well as junior scholars.

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Upland Transformations in Vietnam

Edited by

Thomas Sikor Nghiêm Phương Tuyến Jennifer Sowerwine Jeff Romm

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© 2011 Thomas Sikor, Nghiêm Phương Tuyến, Jennifer Sowerwine and Jeff Romm NUS Press National University of Singapore AS3-01-02, 3 Arts Link Singapore 117569 Fax: (65) 6774-0652 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.nus.edu.sg/nuspress ISBN 978-9971-69-514-9 (Paper) All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher.

National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Upland transformations in Vietnam / edited by Thomas Sikor ... [et al.]. – Singapore : NUS Press, 2011. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN : 978-9971-69-514-9 (pbk.) 1. Uplands – Economic aspects – Vietnam. 2. Uplands – Political aspects – Vietnam. 3. Uplands – Social aspects – Vietnam. 4. Land tenure – Vietnam. 5. Land reform – Vietnam. 6. Forest policy – Vietnam. I. Sikor, Thomas. HD890.5 333.7309597 -- dc22

OCN706773590

Typeset by: Forum, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Printed by: Mainland Press Pte Ltd

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Contents

List of Figures

vii

List of Tables

viii

Preface

ix

Introduction: Opening Boundaries Thomas Sikor

1

Historical Constitution of the Uplands 1 A View from the Mountains: A Critical History of Lowlander-Highlander Relations in Vietnam Oscar Salemink

27

2 The Politics of Highland Landscapes in Vietnamese Statecraft: (Re)Framing the Dominant Environmental Imaginary Jennifer Sowerwine

51

Authority and the State 3 Who Should Manage the Land? Common Property and Community Responses in Vietnam’s Shifting Uplands Pamela McElwee

75

4

“Forest Thieves”: State Resource Policies, Market Forces, Struggles over Livelihood and Meanings of Nature in a Northwestern Valley of Vietnam Hoàng Cầm

92

5 Geographical Settings, Government Policies and Market Forces in the Uplands of Nghệ An Stephen J. Leisz, Rikke Folving Ginzburg, Nguyễn Thanh Lâm, Trần Đức Viên and Kjeld Rasmussen

115



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6 Land Allocations in Vietnam’s Uplands: Negotiating Property and Authority Thomas Sikor

Contents

146

Production and Exchange 7 Market Relations in the Northern Uplands of Vietnam Nghiêm Phương Tuyến and Masayuki Yanagisawa

165

8 The Cultural Politics of Agrarian Change in the Highlands of Ba Vì, Vietnam Jennifer Sowerwine

183

9 The Development of a Land Market in the Uplands of Vietnam Tô Xuân Phúc

208

10 “Stretched Livelihoods”: Social and Economic Connections between the Red River Delta and the Central Highlands Alexandra Winkels

228

11 Changing Labour Relations in a Hmong Village in Sa Pa, Northwestern Vietnam Dương Bích Hạnh

244

Postscript: Towards a Conjunctural Analysis Tania Murray Li

259

Bibliography

262

Contributors

292

Index

295

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List of Figures

0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 2.1 3.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 7.1 7.2 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 9.1



Relief Forest cover Population density Ethnicity Transportation network Incidence of poverty Literate population 15 years of age and older Changing forest cover in Vietnam Ha Tinh province, indicating site of fieldwork and topography Location of the study sites in Nghệ An province, Vietnam Upland fields in Cần hamlet: 1993–2003 Upland fields in Lưu Phong hamlet: 1993–2002 Upland fields in Ma hamlet: 1998–2003 Upland fields in Quê hamlet: 1993–2003 Mean centre and first standard deviation of the distribution of upland fields Analytical framework: interaction of government policies, market demands and ecological landscape Bảo Thắng District (Lào Cai province), Northern Mountain Region Transformation of the local market network Villagers prepare to plant cassava within the national park. Map showing official land-use categories in Ba Vì National Park. Villagers process cassava in the upper elevations of Ba Vì National Park. Sabotage of forest plantations is evident in the national park. Villagers grow canna beneath acacia plantations in the national park. Land-use pattern in study village

4 5 6 7 9 10 11 60 85 118 128 130 131 133 134 137 167 180 187 188 191 196 197 211

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List of Tables

3.1 Common lands held in districts of Hà Tĩnh province 80 in 1932 3.2 Classification and size of “bare hill” land in Cẩm Xuyên 85 5.1 Basic information on each hamlet for 2003–4 123 5.2a Agricultural land and returns per person from 126 livelihood system activities: rice production 5.2b Agricultural land and returns per person from livelihood 127 system activities: animal husbandry and forest products 5.3 Development of rice production (husked) 129 6.1 Villagers’ assessment of control rights in 154 forest management 7.1 Average growing area for cassava by poor and better-off 174 households in Trì Quang commune (m2/person) 7.2 Share of household income from sale of cassava 175 7.3 Households’ choice of buyers for their cassava 176 8.1 Area of land-use types in Ba Vì village, 1998 189 8.2 Distribution of current and projected livelihood sources by 192 land category, 2000 8.3 Diversity of forest contract arrangements on 200 sloping land, 2000 10.1 Settlement histories and formal recognition of 235 various communes situated in and around CTNP

viii

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Preface

The present volume originated from a workshop on “Montane Choices and Outcomes: Contemporary Transformations of Vietnam’s Uplands” held in Hanoi in January 2007. The workshop offered an inspiring forum bringing together an exciting group of emergent scholars—from Vietnam and elsewhere—on Vietnam’s uplands. It provided the inspiration for this volume and many of the ideas that have come to shape it. We thank the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for financial support to the workshop and the production of this book. There are many people who have made important contributions to the present volume. Tania Murray Li, Janet Sturgeon and Krisnawati Suryanata were inspirational discussants at the workshop. Stan Tan and Bent Jorgensen contributed ideas and presentations. Robin Mearns, Nguyễn Quang Tân, Phạm Thị Tường Vi, Phan Triều Giang and Vương Xuân Tình provided insightful commentary during the workshop discussions. Chris Smith and Đào Minh Trường assisted in formatting the papers according to English and Vietnamese language rules and the publisher’s requirements. At NUS Press, our particular gratitude goes to Paul Kratoska, Sunandini Arora Lal and two anonymous referees. Above all, we thank the contributors to this volume. Their research on Vietnam’s uplands and enthusiasm for debate on the processes constituting the uplands provided the foundations for an exciting intellectual endeavour that began with the workshop in 2007, produced this volume and has hopefully not come to an end yet.

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Introduction



Introduction: Opening Boundaries Thomas Sikor

Scholarship has long treated Vietnam’s uplands (vùng cao) as a separate realm defined by elevation. The underlying premises are that there is an essential difference between uplands and lowlands, and that differences in socio-economic conditions are due to topographic differences indicated by elevation above sea level. In other words, scholarship on Vietnam has naturalized differences between uplands and lowlands, just as noted for other countries of Southeast Asia (Li 1999a, Vandergeest 2003). Vietnam scholars commonly refer to the upland-lowland divide in the sense of a naturalized dichotomy—as if the apparent social differences between uplands and lowlands were solely due to variation in altitude. This naturalization has masked the social processes that have constituted the uplands historically and produced spatial differences in contemporary Vietnam. The upland-lowland dichotomy finds its reflection in the emerging compartments of Vietnamese studies. Vietnam’s ethnologists are divided between two institutes—the Viện dân tộc học and the Viện nghiên cứu vǎn hόa. Ethnologists at the former have the mandate to study ethnic minorities and upland development, whereas those working at the latter are expected to look at cultural issues in general and the culture of the Kinh majority in particular. Similarly, the table of contents of a recent international textbook suggests that the uplands require separate study. Postwar Vietnam includes a chapter specifically dedicated to “Upland Areas, Ethnic Minorities, and Development” next to other chapters on the state, economy, inequality, etc. (Lương 2003a). The two examples illustrate how scholarship has contributed to the reification of the uplandlowland divide instead of critically interrogating the erected conceptual boundaries and institutional divisions. This book seeks to open boundaries in two senses. First, it is intended to show that the uplands are not separate from the lowlands but 

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Upland Transformations in Vietnam

connected with them through manifold linkages. Uplands and lowlands are engaged in an intimate relationship, because both are subject to larger forces at regional, national and transnational scales. Moreover, upland people’s practices and strategies influence larger-scale dynamics, including those commonly associated with the lowlands. By implication, spatial variation—between uplands and lowlands and within uplands and lowlands—reflects the combined effects of larger political-economic forces, biophysical possibilities and local people’s practices. Differences between uplands and lowlands are the outcomes of social processes and not of a natural dichotomy. Second, the book seeks to cross some of the conceptual boundaries that have confined research on Vietnam’s uplands in the past. It is a conscious effort to respond to recent calls for new conceptualizations of the uplands (e.g., Scott 2009) through empirically rich research. In addition, the book is intended to open boundaries that have restricted scholarship on Vietnam’s uplands in three other ways. First, its contributions demonstrate the benefits of crossing the boundaries separating research conducted at upper elevations from that taking place at lower elevations. Studies conducted in upland settings can make important contributions to key themes in Vietnamese studies, such as the nature of the state and dynamics of inequality. Second, the book brings together an emergent group of junior scholars from Vietnam and other countries. Many of its contributors have seriously engaged with scholarship on the “other” side by publishing or editing collections in the “other” language. The book itself comes with a companion version published with Nhà xuất bản Khoa học Kỹ thuật (Science and Technology Publishing House) in 2008. Third, the book seeks to connect debates about Vietnam’s uplands with those occurring on uplands in other Southeast Asian countries. Many of the issues discussed with regard to Vietnam’s uplands, it will become clear in this introduction, resonate with key themes and insights derived from research elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The book is conceived in parallel to recent scholarship on ethnicity in Vietnam that has challenged the ingrained divide between ethnic majority and ethnic minorities (e.g., Salemink 2003a, Taylor 2008b). A focus on the social constitution of ethnicity has highlighted how different social actors, including state agencies and local people, actively negotiate ethnic identities in their interactions. Ethnic identities are not natural in any sense but are heavily influenced by state classification projects. The officially assigned categories, in turn, are subject to challenges by people’s claims of recognition and vernacular categories. They are also modified by the

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Introduction



responses of international actors, including tourists and human rights advocacy groups. This book, therefore, does not pay much attention to the processes constituting ethnicity and ethnicizing the uplands but highlights other dynamics transforming the uplands. Vietnam’s Uplands: An Initial Approach Topographic maps show stark differences in elevation across Vietnam’s national territory. The Socioeconomic Atlas of Vietnam (Epprecht and Heinimann 2004), for example, paints the two big deltas in the north and south and the many small coastal plains in the centre dark green (see Figure 0.1). The hilly lands and the Hoàng Liên Sơn and Trường Sơn mountain ranges are yellow, brown and—as if to indicate snow on the highest peaks—white. Spatial statistics tell us that uplands account for “no less than 2/3” of Vietnam’s national territory (Lê Bá Thảo 1997: 35). They encompass not only entire provinces in the Northeast, Northwest and Central Highlands but also significant portions of many other provinces. In fact, after swallowing up Hà Tây in 2008, the capital—Hanoi—now includes upland areas around Ba Vì Mountain, from where Chapters 8 and 9 originate. Flipping through the pages of the Socioeconomic Atlas, we find that the elevation distinction between uplands and lowlands overlaps with other differences. For example, forests are largely concentrated in the uplands (see Figure 0.2). Dense forests cover much of the Trường Sơn range in the centre and parts of the Central Highlands, giving the latter a forest cover of 55 per cent in 2006 according to the statistics published by Vietnam’s Forest Protection Department. Degraded forests are dispersed across the northern mountains, producing a forest cover of 40 per cent in the northwest and 48 per cent in the northeast. The maps in the Socioeconomic Atlas also reveal striking overlaps of elevation with demography, ethnicity and transportation infrastructure. Vietnam’s famously high population densities in the deltas drastically drop off in upland regions (see Figure 0.3). By 2007, there were 1,238 persons per square kilometre on average in the Red River Delta and 432 in the Mekong Delta (GSO 2009). The corresponding numbers for the Northwest, Northeast and Central Highlands were only 71,149 and 90. Similarly, a map of ethnicity shows a checquered patchwork of ethnic groups in the uplands and confines the ethnic majority Kinh to the lowlands (see Figure 0.4). In total, ethnic minorities account for slightly less than 14 per cent of the total population, most of them living in the uplands. In contrast, a map

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Upland Transformations in Vietnam

Figure 0.1 Relief Source: Epprecht and Heinimann 2004.

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Introduction



Figure 0.2 Forest cover Source: Epprecht and Heinimann 2004.

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Upland Transformations in Vietnam

Figure 0.3 Population density Source: Epprecht and Heinimann 2004.

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Introduction



Figure 0.4 Ethnicity Source: Epprecht and Heinimann 2004.

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Upland Transformations in Vietnam

of transportation infrastructure displays a much denser network of roads and railway lines in the lowlands than in the uplands (see Figure 0.5). Finally, there is an obvious overlap between elevation and living standards. The percentage of poor is much higher in the uplands than in the lowlands (see Figure 0.6). In 2006, 49 per cent of the population living in the northwest, 25 per cent in the northeast and 29 per cent in the Central Highlands were considered to be living under the poverty line, in contrast to a nationwide poverty rate of only 16 per cent (GSO 2009). Similarly, literacy and educational attainment are much lower in the uplands than in the lowlands. For example, the percentage of illiterate population 15 years of age and older is much higher in the uplands than in the lowlands (see Figure 0.7). Maps and spatial statistics, therefore, display two distinct regions: uplands and lowlands. They indicate how the conception of uplands as a distinct realm separate from lowlands has become entrenched in research and policy. Moreover, they reflect—and reinforce—deeply ingrained beliefs that there is an essential difference between uplands and lowlands, and that differences in socio-economic conditions are due to topographic differences indicated by elevation above sea level. For example, government planners and popular writers have depicted the uplands as remote regions by nature, ignoring the historical production of remoteness through transportation infrastructure, state activity and market networks, among other factors. Maps and spatial statistics thereby become implicated in broader processes naturalizing social differences between uplands and lowlands. The naturalization of social difference has justified visions of upland development that emphasize the need to bring about economic and cultural development from the outside. Some accounts have portrayed the uplands as a frontier to be exploited for valuable natural resources—above all, the water to be harnessed for irrigation in the deltas and the generation of hydropower. Other strategies for upland development have emphasized the need for external interventions to help upland people develop, taking the form of agricultural collectivization, sedentarization projects and investments for economic development. Despite the differences between them, these visions converge in an image of Vietnam’s uplands as primordial regions separated from the lowlands and isolated from larger dynamics, a powerful image also found in other parts of Southeast Asia (Scott 2009). External interventions are necessary—and have the potential—to bring about upland development and close the socioeconomic gap with the lowlands.

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Introduction



Figure 0.5 Transportation network Source: Epprecht and Heinimann 2004.

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Figure 0.6 Incidence of poverty Source: Epprecht and Heinimann 2004.

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Figure 0.7 Literate population 15 years of age and older Source: Epprecht and Heinimann 2004.

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Recent Scholarship: Upland People’s Agency and State Projects Research conducted over the past two decades has reacted to such presumptions by highlighting upland people’s agency. By now, the research includes numerous short-term and some long-term studies on how upland people produce agricultural crops, manage natural resources, make ends meet and organize themselves. It has resulted in a number of comparative assessments (e.g., Lê Trọng Cúc and Rambo 2001) and edited volumes (e.g., Hoàng Xuân Tý and Lê Trọng Cúc 1998) that attest to upland people’s ingenuity, the local specificity of livelihood strategies, and the diversity of social and environmental conditions in the uplands. The research has highlighted the specific nature of production practices in the uplands. Above all, it suggests that production in the uplands is different from the lowlands because of distinct biophysical and social conditions. The interest in production has coalesced in a central concern with the dynamics of shifting cultivation. Field studies show that shifting cultivation may be a rational response by upland cultivators—ethnic minorities and majority alike—to soil conditions and nutrient cycles in the uplands (Rambo 1995). Swidden practices may also be part of special customary arrangements for managing natural resources and cultural systems in the uplands (Trần Đức Viên 2003). Their effects on forests may not be as detrimental as generally assumed, even in the presence of significant population growth (Fox et al. 2000). Also, swidden cultivation may enhance upland people’s livelihoods more than conventional agricultural practices (Trần Đức Viên et al. 2006). Other research has examined the projects undertaken by the Vietnamese state to bring about upland development. Some of the projects that have come under scholarly scrutiny are the resettlement programmes implemented by Vietnam’s colonial and independent governments (Hardy 2003a; see also Chapter 10). In the 1960s and 1970s, resettlement programmes relocated some 400,000 persons from the Red River Delta to New Economic Zones in the Northern Mountain Region. In the 1980s and 1990s, more than 1 million people moved to the Central Highlands, initially under state sponsorship but over time increasingly on their own. As a result, Kinh today account for the majority of the population in many upland regions, particularly in the Central Highlands. Moreover, migration has caused deforestation (De Koninck 1999) and has affected social relations in the uplands (McElwee 2008). The migrants have not been passive recipients of state orders but actively negotiated the opportunities and risks associated with resettlement (Hardy 2003a). Many influenced the terms of their resettlement under state

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Introduction

13

projects or found ways around the household registration system. Settlers also showed the capacity to adapt their farming practices to the new biophysical conditions encountered in the uplands, for example by taking up shifting cultivation (Tạ Long and Ngô Thị Chính 2000). And when economic reforms opened up new opportunities, many people migrated outside state programmes or made very liberal use of state assistance (Zhang et al. 2006). In this way, migration resulted from the combined effects of “[s]tate organised migration programmes, the Đổi Mới process of economic reform, and the decisions and struggles of these families and individuals” (Hardy 2000: 23). Land allocation is another state project that has received significant attention in research (see also Chapter 6). Land allocation has figured at the forefront of research because it was a cornerstone of the rural reforms enacted by Vietnam’s government in the late 1980s. By way of land allocation, the government has sought to strengthen household control over agricultural production and to thereby promote more efficient land use, economic growth and poverty alleviation. Land allocation possesses a particular significance for the uplands because most land there is classified as forestry land (đất lâm nghiệp), i.e., land to be used for forestry. In the uplands, therefore, land allocation has not only involved a shift from collective to household agriculture but also renewed state attention on the demarcation and protection of forestry land. As a result, land allocations in the uplands have been found to extend government control over land (Sikor 2004a), exclude upland people from valuable resources such as timber (McElwee 2004), create conflicts between upland people over scarce agricultural land and devolved forest (e.g., Scott 2000, Sikor and Trần Ngọc Thanh 2007), and cause changes in farming practices and forest management (e.g., Sowerwine 2004c, Castella et al. 2006). At the same time, research on land allocations attests to the many ways in which upland people have effectively influenced the implementation of land allocation. Local land allocations have taken highly diverse forms as a result of upland people’s reactions. These reactions mediated the effects of land policy on local livelihoods (Jakobsen et al. 2007), forest use (Sikor 2001a) and social differentiation (Sikor 2001b, Sikor and Nguyễn Quang Tân 2007, Jorgensen 2006). More important, studies of land allocation attest to upland people’s political agency. Many have contested renewed state efforts to exclude them from forestry land (McElwee 2004, Sowerwine 2004c) or asserted customary property arrangements against state definitions (Vương Xuân Tình 2001, Ngô Đức Thịnh 2003, Vương Xuân Tình and Sikor 2003). Their responses were motivated not only by a desire to affect the material outcomes of

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land allocation but also by contestations over the meanings attributed to landscapes and symbolic significance of property (Sikor 2004a). Uplanders’ political agency raises questions about the nature of the Vietnamese state and, more broadly, authority relations in the uplands. On the one hand, local cadres have taken on much more active roles than being simple implementers of centrally conceived state projects. Cadres staffing the provincial, district and commune governments have influenced the implementation of land allocation in keeping with their own visions of a desirable landscape and personal interests (Sowerwine 2004c). They have also accommodated uplanders’ customary practices and political demands even when in direct conflict with national legislation (Sikor 2004b). On the other hand, the very significance of the state as a politico-legal institution exercising control over land displays significant variation in the uplands. The authority attributed by upland people to the state turns out to be surprisingly variable, whether it is with regard to the latter’s control over land or in other fields such as control over population. Besides the state, other politico-legal entities assert claims of authority, such as village communities (Sikor 2004b), customary regulations (Ngô Đức Thịnh and Chu Thái Sơn 1996), social norms and public values (Sikor and Tô Xuân Phúc forthcoming), and transnational conventions on human rights and environmental stewardship (Zingerli 2005, Salemink 2006). Recent scholarship on Vietnam’s uplands, therefore, has effectively laid the foundation for future research to move beyond the notion of the uplands as a separate realm in need of external development intervention. The need for novel conceptualizations emerges very strongly from the rapidly increasing presence of Kinh migrants in the uplands and their connection with the lowlands. Yet more profoundly, it arises from new understandings of uplanders as active economic and political agents as well as of the intimate linkages between upland livelihoods and ecosystems and the Vietnamese state’s policies and programmes. The interplay between uplanders’ actions and state projects has produced a tremendous diversity of production strategies and resource management practices. Moreover, the research directs attention to production and authority as two arenas in which social differences between uplands and lowlands emerge. These insights form the point of departure for the analyses presented in this book. Historical Constitution of the Uplands This book presents several new lines of inquiry about the social processes constituting Vietnam’s uplands. The first is about the historical processes that have constituted the uplands as distinct from the lowlands. It

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Introduction

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raises questions about social processes that have produced the longestablished differences between uplands and lowlands, differences that have often been cast in terms of distinct upland traditions. It also probes representations that have essentialized features of upland life as being due to a natural difference between lowlands and uplands. In Chapter 1, Oscar Salemink looks into one feature of the uplands that has often been portrayed in terms of distinct upland traditions: the nature of historical leadership. He suggests that “traditional” upland leaders were closely associated with economic, political and ritual exchange between uplands and lowlands in precolonial Vietnam and during the times of French conquest. Long-distance trade created strong ties between uplands and lowlands, connecting the mountainous hinterland with maritime trade, particularly in southern Vietnam. By the time the French arrived in Vietnam, political and ritual leaders in the uplands controlled long-distance trade networks, such as the Đèo lineage’s hold on the opium trade in the northwest. The lowland polities, in turn, were dependent on trade and alliances with highland leaders, including the imperial court in Huế in the nineteenth century. Salemink thus suggests that both upland and lowland leadership reflected the influence of the same larger-scale dynamics of exchange and authority, even though they took different forms. Historical leadership in the uplands had as much to do with larger dynamics of exchange as with local notions and struggles over authority. Salemink’s emphasis on long-distance trade and its linkage with upland authority resonates with findings in other Southeast Asian countries. Historical research has shown that riverine and overland trade connected the uplands with maritime trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For example, Indonesia’s uplands exported rice, tobacco, coffee and spices (e.g., Li 2001). Upland people in turn imported fish, salt and other food items as well as precious goods used in rituals (e.g., Ellen 1999). In addition, lowland and upland elites assumed important positions in the trade, sometimes in alliance and at other times in conflict with each other (Li 1999a). For example, in nineteenth century northwestern Laos, upland chiefs controlled the trade between uplands and lowlands (Walker 1999). In addition, so-called interpreters regulated the trade between uplands and lowlands, allowing them to wield powers that went far beyond those of normal wholesalers. Yet Salemink pushes the association between longdistance trade and authority a notch further by arguing that the trade was constitutive of authority in both upland and lowland polities, a dynamic that has underlain processes of precolonial state formation also in other parts of Southeast Asia (Keyes 2010).

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Jennifer Sowerwine performs a historical analysis of the uplandlowland imaginary in Chapter 2. Her concern is with the representation of uplands as remote, isolated and barren lands inhabited by backward and uncivilized people, an imaginary conceived in contrast to notions of fertile and civilized plains. She locates the origins of this imaginary in the French mission civilatrice. French colonial ethnography and cartography contributed to a spatialization of ethnic identity, tying cultural to elevational difference (Salemink 2003a). Furthermore, French forest management emphasized the environmental effects of upland production by depicting swidden cultivation as the major threat to Vietnam’s forests. Sowerwine finds that the upland-lowland imaginary survived independence unscathed, as illustrated by the major ethnological studies launched by northern and southern governments in the 1960s. Most recently, it was reinforced by international development organizations attributing upland poverty to geographic and cultural remoteness. Sowerwine’s concern with the upland-lowland imaginary in Vietnam connects with recent writings on the “culturalization” and “environmentalization” of uplands in Southeast Asia. The writings show how representations have depicted differences between uplands and lowlands in cultural terms (Kahn 1999). The representations attribute distinct practices and institutions in the uplands to differences in culture, applying the label of “tradition” to unfamiliar cultural forms (Li 1999a). They employ the reference to “tradition” to cast upland institutions as relics of the past, explain underdevelopment and justify coercive state policies. Similarly, representations of the uplands have consistently stressed their environmental values and functions, in contrast to the focus on agrarian dynamics in the lowlands (Agrawal and Sivaramakrishnan 2000). They have fostered a primary concern in research and policy with environmental issues, such as water supply, forest protection and biodiversity conservation (Forsyth and Walker 2008). These trends of culturalization and environmentalization have shaped not only the projects of states and international organizations but also academic research. Moreover, they have influenced upland people’s own discursive strategies (Vandergeest 2003). Authority and the State A second line of inquiry concerns contemporary processes of authority formation and their effects on the uplands. Much of the relevant research in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian settings has focused on the exercise of authority through control over land, particularly land that

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the state designates as forest. This focus reflects the above-mentioned environmentalization of policy and research on the uplands. In Vietnam, it is also a reaction to the nationwide land allocation programme. Research on control over land in the Southeast Asian uplands has put the spotlight on the exercise of state power. In a groundbreaking article, Vandergeest and Peluso (1995) suggest that modernizing states employ control over space as a way to consolidate their authority (see also Li 1999a). They demarcate forests, register landholdings and map their territory in a process referred to as internal territorialization. Other work shares the focus on states but conceives the exercise of statecraft in terms of Scott’s (1998) notion of legibility. For example, Sturgeon (2005) examines efforts of the Chinese state to make upland landscapes and livelihoods legible in order to promote economic development and consolidate control. These accounts attest to the significance of the state and its policies as a key force shaping upland livelihoods and ecosystems. They also suggest that states, especially central governments, assume the central role in the authority relations governing the uplands. In Chapter 3 Pamela McElwee illustrates such exercise of state power and its effects on upland livelihoods. Village common lands have a long history in Vietnam, having already been documented in the precolonial period. The commons afforded significant control to village communities, which decided about allowable uses, allocated the commons to users and taxed their use. Village control survived classification of the commons as “empty” land by French administrators, yet was severely reduced when the socialist state collectivized agriculture and nationalized forests. Nevertheless, using evidence from Hà Tĩnh, McElwee shows that village communities still managed much of what government statistics called bare hills, wastelands or unused land in the early years of the twentyfirst century. At the same time, the individualization of landholdings and reforestation programmes promoted by Vietnam’s central government threatened to do away with village commons. In Chapter 4 Hoàng Cầm echoes McElwee’s concerns over state resource policy. He identifies the nationalization of forestry land as a primary cause of deforestation in a northwestern valley. Nationalization removed local institutions through which Thái people had exercised control over forests until the 1950s. The shift towards state control over forests became a problem when the central government liberalized markets in the 1990s. Local people cut valuable timber from forests to satisfy urban demand for construction timber and their own desire for newly available consumer goods. The demand for timber overwhelmed

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forest protection officers, as they could no longer keep local people out of forests. Hoàng Cầm’s account thus mirrors a key finding in research on state forestry in other Southeast Asian countries: attempts to exclude local people from forests are often unsuccessful (Peluso 1992a, Vandergeest and Peluso 1995). Both McElwee and Hoàng Cầm indicate how state forest policies have created “political forests” in Vietnam just as across Southeast Asia (Peluso and Vandergeest 2001). Central governments have declared large tracts of land as forests to be managed by the state. They have sought to shift control over forests from local institutions to centralized forest agencies. McElwee and Hoàng Cầm both demonstrate the ambiguous effects of state management on control over forests on the ground. In addition, Hoàng Cầm hints at a two-way relationship between local control over forests and larger-scale dynamics of authority. Facing a rapid rise in unwanted logging, government officials and the media were quick to denounce local forest use as illegal. A national TV show, for example, depicted a local forest ranger as a “forest queen” ready to give her life in the fight against “forest thieves”. The choice of terms—pitching a “forest queen” against “forest thieves”—illustrates how state control over forests has become highly politicized in Vietnam, not only on the ground but also in national-level debates about appropriate statecraft (Sikor and Tô Xuân Phúc forthcoming). State control over forests is a critical building block in broader processes through which states, particularly central governments, seek to establish and consolidate the authority attributed to them. Nonetheless, territorialization and the creation of political forests remain unstable projects, as illustrated by Stephen Leisz and colleagues in Chapter 5. Like Hoàng Cầm, they point to the limits of state control because of unruly local practices. In addition, they highlight how various kinds of actors negotiate the very nature of state rule. In four villages of Nghệ An, villagers reacted to land allocation in different ways, ranging from outright resistance to compromise and accommodation. They felt compelled to react because different visions of a desirable landscape informed their own land-use practices, central policies and local state actions (Sturgeon 2005). As a result, land allocations brought about different limitations on upland cultivation and thereby local food security in the four villages. The differences were not only due to variation in local biophysical and socio-economic conditions but also reflected the outcome of political struggles between villagers and various kinds of state officials. Thomas Sikor, finally, flips on its head the conventional approach applied in studies of land allocation (Chapter 6). Instead of starting from

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policy and then proceeding to analyze local implementation and outcomes, Sikor first examines actual property practices in the uplands and then explores what those imply for control over land and ultimately authority relations. He finds an astonishing variability of control over land in the uplands. Control rests with multiple politico-legal institutions at various scales, not only local customary bodies and the state but also international donors and transnational actors. The state itself is not a unitary actor but more like a forum in which different actors contest over control of land and, more broadly, authority. Resonating with Salemink’s historical argument, Sikor also suggests that upland negotiations about land have fed into larger-scale dynamics of authority. More broadly, the move away from a singular focus on the state and central government policy dwells well with shifts in the Southeast Asian literature away from state territorialization to struggles over territoriality (e.g., Peluso 2009) and from the state to multiple locations of power (e.g., Sturgeon 2005). Production and Exchange A third line of inquiry deals with the dynamics of production and exchange and their influence on the uplands. Recent research on the Indonesian uplands highlights the influence of capitalism spreading across the uplands, as evidenced by an increasing commodification of upland products, land and labour (Li 1999a, 2002). Capitalism penetrates the uplands by way of commodity markets, as upland people sell an increasing share of agricultural output and forest products. Its spread leads to an increasing differentiation of upland people between landlords and landless and between landlords and sharecroppers. These observations raise the question of whether Vietnam’s uplands will witness a similar spread of capitalism now that the central government has privatized production and liberalized markets.1 They direct scholarly attention to the processes of market formation and relations characterizing markets for upland products in Vietnam. They also call for analyses of the social relations governing production in Vietnam’s uplands, in particular the ways in which producers gain access to land and labour. In Chapter 7 Nghiêm Phương Tuyến and Masayuki Yanagisawa take a close look at product markets in a commune of Lào Cai. They observe that village producers sold a larger amount of their products in the early years of the twenty-first century than under socialism, and that they had gained a choice as to whom they sold cassava to. At the same time, the authors find that Kinh and Dao engaged in cassava production and trade in different

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ways. Dao households produced less cassava on average than Kinh and tended to be worse off than the latter. Dao producers generally sold to Dao collectors only, whereas Kinh households sold to Kinh collectors, traders and wholesalers. In addition, the relations between sellers and traders were more exploitative of the former in the case of Kinh, even in cases where a Kinh producer sold to a fellow villager. Nghiêm Phương Tuyến and Yanagisawa’s account thus suggests an increased commercialization of upland production. Nevertheless, the writers also note the influence of ethnically differentiated social norms on the relations of production and exchange (Sikor and Phạm Thị Tường Vi 2005). Just like the previous two researchers, Jennifer Sowerwine documents the powerful force of product markets in her study of cassava production in another Dao village (Chapter 8). Demand for cassava rose strongly in the 1990s, as it served as raw material in the production of human food and animal feed. Yet villagers’ production of cassava depended on their ability to gain access to upland fields located in the neighbouring national park. The park administration had granted reforestation and forest protection contracts for the land to a small number of village elite. Nonetheless, a tight labour market and the scarcity of agricultural land enabled regular villagers to gain access to the land through what Sowerwine calls the “politics of xin” (favour asking). This ethic of access to land effectively worked to mediate the incipient commodification of land driven by the state concern for efficient land use. Sowerwine, Nghiêm Phương Tuyến and Yanagisawa therefore attest to the influence of product markets as forces transforming the uplands. The commercialization of agricultural production and commodification of upland produce affect productive practices in the uplands in Vietnam just as in other parts of Southeast Asia (Hefner 1990, Walker 1999). At the same time, both analyses also speak to upland people’s agency in taking advantage of new market opportunities and negotiating the relations of production and exchange. Upland people are not the passive victims of commodity markets penetrating the uplands but are often active participants in the processes of market formation. Some may display a striking ability to take up long-distance trade within Vietnam and across the border (Sowerwine 2004b, Turner and Michaud 2008) or to carve out a niche in local and regional markets (Sikor and Phạm Thị Tường Vi 2005). Many others may not become traders but actively negotiate the terms of their involvement in markets. Their market practices reflect the significance of people’s ethical considerations as part of overall “market regulation” (Walker 1999). Even though agricultural production may

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become more commercialized and upland produce commoditized, there is no automatic transition to commodified land and labour. Nonetheless, the absence of an automatic transition does not negate that access to land and labour may become increasingly commodified in parts of the uplands, as indicated by Tô Xuân Phúc in Chapter 9. Tô Xuân Phúc inquires about villagers’ motivation to sell land and the effects of sales on household economies in a Dao village. In his case, it is not agricultural trade that connects uplands with lowlands but villagers’ desire for new houses, consumer goods and lifestyles. Villagers sold land in a desire to become “modern”, seeking to leave behind some of the negative public connotations associated with their past livelihoods and acquire membership of modern Vietnamese society. The land sales created wealth in the village but also generated social differentiation. Some households became dispossessed of land and ended up in a downward spiral of desire and debt. The land sales thereby led to a rapid commoditization of land that transformed access to land. Tô Xuân Phúc’s account thus serves as an important counterweight to Sowerwine’s emphasis on the ethics of access, as it highlights the presence of powerful economic and cultural forces that may override ethical considerations. The contrast between their stories is particularly striking when one realizes that Sowerwine and Tô Xuân Phúc actually look at the same Dao village at the foot of Ba Vì Mountain. The remaining two chapters look at the nature of labour relations in upland production. Alexandra Winkels examines the livelihood strategies of migrants from the Red River Delta to the Central Highlands (Chapter 10). Winkels finds that migrants were engaged in smallholder agriculture in the uplands even though the associated risks had increased due to a variety of factors, such as volatile coffee prices. Migrants responded to increased risks by maintaining close links with their home communities. In other words, they “stretched” livelihoods by investing resources in both origin and destination. The stretching afforded migrants more opportunities, allowing them to continue smallholder production despite increased risks. “Hedging their bets” at the places of origin and destination, these migrants not only dissolved the upland-lowland divide but also counterbalanced the forces driving rural-urban migration. In Chapter 11 Dương Bích Hạnh traces how Hmông reacted to increasing tourist arrivals at Sa Pa, the small upland town that figures so prominently in Vietnam’s advertising for international tourists. Her focus is on how economic and labour relations changed in a Hmông village in response to the villagers’ intensifying contact and integration with Vietnamese society at large. In the early years, tour guiding by Hmông girls and handicraft selling by Hmông women was supplementary to

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agricultural and household work. Yet by the first decade of the twenty-first century, an increasing number of girls found stable work with hotels and travel agencies. The girls’ employment reflected broader changes in the gendered division of labour within Hmông families and the emergence of new forms of labour division. It may even have heralded the first signs of the commoditization of labour. Nevertheless, Dương Bích Hạnh’s account offers plenty of clues about how Hmông girls actively sought out new opportunities in tourism and continued to influence the terms of their employment in an assertive manner. Thus, the five chapters in this section provide evidence for the commodification of products, land and labour in the uplands. Upland people sell an increasing amount of agricultural produce, engage in agricultural trade, exchange land on commercial terms, and seek salaried employment outside agriculture. At the same time, the chapters indicate the significance of countervailing forces, in particular ethical considerations, customary institutions and people’s visions of a desirable life. Upland people actively negotiate larger-scale forces of production and exchange. They influence those through their practices and strategies, as illustrated by the ways in which Hmông girls lure tourists to Sa Pa and coffee producers’ practices have given Vietnamese coffee a special reputation (Tan and Walker 2008). As a result, it would be premature to conclude that capitalism is the new economic order in Vietnam’s uplands, or that capitalism enrolls upland people in the form of passive victims. Nevertheless, the larger forces unleashed by Vietnam’s economic reforms have proven very powerful, in particular those associated with urban areas and non-agricultural sectors. It may be there, and not in agriculture, where capitalist relations make the strongest inroads into the uplands. A New Plateau for Future Research The contributions to this book establish a new plateau for future research on Vietnam’s uplands. They demonstrate the benefits of shifting attention to the social processes constituting the uplands. The processes constituting upland livelihoods and ecosystems involve an interplay between upland people’s practices and larger forces operating at regional, national and transnational scales. They are conditioned by historical processes, such as the development of trade relations and the creation of uplandlowland imaginaries. The processes constituting the uplands implicate dynamics by which authority is established, consolidated, weakened and unravelled. They are also about expansions, modifications and reductions of production and exchange. In addition, they involve the creation,

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continuation and decline of ethnic identities, as pointed out in parallel research (Salemink 2003a, Taylor 2008b). By implication, it is no longer useful to consider the forces affecting upland livelihoods and ecosystems as external to the uplands—as if they could be kept out by closing the borders between uplands and the rest of the world. Contemporary upland transformations are not due to the impacts of external forces on a previously isolated region. Neither do current changes in upland livelihoods and ecosystems result from upland people’s adaptations to external forces. The forces transforming the uplands are not external, for the simple reason that people living in the uplands react to and interact with these forces, moulding them in return (Scott 2009). An increasing number of these very uplanders originate from lowland locations or have moved between upland regions across long distances. Thus, instead of considering the forces transforming the uplands as external, it appears much more useful to interrogate these forces critically and, more than anything, investigate the relations of power driving them. Such an approach may reveal stark inequalities of power between upland people and social actors associated with other places. It may also generate original insights about the reasons motivating different kinds of social actors to pursue their interests at different scales. For the same reasons, research conducted at upper elevations can make significant contributions to key themes in Vietnamese studies. As studies located at upper elevations move beyond a primary concern with ethnicity and environment, they open up new avenues for fruitful exchange with broader research on Vietnam. For example, studies on land allocation, forest protection, sedentarization and colonization indicate a surprisingly variable and sometimes changeable nature of authority, adding to debates about the Vietnamese state (Tan and Walker 2008). Research on the dynamics of production and exchange illuminates the heterogeneous trajectories of rural transformations in Vietnam, challenging accounts of a uniform transition to capitalism (Taylor 2007). In addition, studies on the livelihoods of people living at upper elevations demonstrate the significance of spatial processes in producing social inequality in Vietnam (Taylor 2004). The shift in attention to the social processes constituting Vietnam’s uplands also opens up new possibilities for fruitful exchange with research in other Southeast Asian countries (and beyond). Research on Vietnam offers special comparative insights to the study of rural transformations for the country’s distinct precolonial, colonial and postcolonial history. In particular, central government control did not extend into Vietnam’s uplands in a systematic manner until the mid-twentieth century, when

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the uplands became a major location of two wars for national independence. In addition, Vietnam’s party-state continues to adhere to a socialist ideology, maintain a strong political base in the peasantry, and express a commitment to social equality as manifested, among other outcomes, in land policy. These are conditions that are likely to set upland transformations in Vietnam apart from those taking place in other countries. The contributions to this book offer some clues in this regard, yet the comparison with other countries would need to be made in a more systematic fashion than what is possible here. Finally, research on constitutive social processes needs to reinvent the very term “uplands” as an analytical category. Scholarship has reified “the uplands” (vùng cao) for too long—as if the apparent social differences between uplands and lowlands were due solely to variation in altitude. This book shows that elevation difference between uplands and lowlands may serve as an indicator of spatial variation but should not be construed as a cause of such. The time has come to replace the naturalized conception of the upland-lowland dichotomy with one that pays attention to constitutive social processes. In other words, research needs to re-focus on the social processes producing marginal places and marginal people. Spatial and social marginality emerges in upper elevations as the result of multiple social processes conditioned by biophysical factors. The same processes also produce marginality in low elevations, as we find out quickly as soon as we lift the conceptual boundary. Moreover, attention to these processes reveals that the very production of marginal people and places in upper and lower elevations is intimately tied to Vietnam’s muchheralded economic miracle over the past two decades. Acknowledgements This book has benefited tremendously from numerous conversations with Nghiêm Phương Tuyến, Jenny Sowerwine and Jeff Romm about the ways we conceive of the uplands and conduct research on upland livelihoods and ecosystems. I thank them for the intellectual exchange and their friendship. The work has also profited from comments by Oscar Salemink and two anonymous referees as well as discussions with the contributing authors. Note 1. Tania Murray Li posed this question at the workshop that this book is based on.

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1

A View from the Mountains: A Critical History of LowlanderHighlander Relations in Vietnam

Oscar Salemink1

Introduction In the summer of 1996, when I worked as programme officer for the Ford Foundation in Vietnam, I met with Dr Hoàng Xuân Tý, who wanted to discuss a project proposal about “indigenous technical knowledge” among Upland minorities in Vietnam. A soil scientist working for the Forest Science Institute of Vietnam in Từ Liêm, Hanoi, Dr Tý explained why he had become interested in the concept of “indigenous knowledge”. Up until that point, (Highland) ethnic minorities were generally seen as backward (lạc hậu), primitive (nguyên thủy) and steeped in superstitious beliefs (mê tín dị đoan), and their “slash-and-burn” agricultural practices (phá rừng làm rẫy) were regarded as the main cause of deforestation (Jamieson et al. 1998). From that perspective—widely shared by Vietnamese scientists, government officials and media—development consisted of bringing science, technology and the superior civilization of the Lowlander Việt to the Highlands. Dr Tý recalled his years fighting for his country, when he and his fellow soldiers could survive in the mountainous jungles only because local people taught them how to. After his studies in Hanoi he went back to the mountain areas and was involved in dozens of projects with the aim of lifting local ethnic groups out of their backwardness and poverty. But, Dr Tý insisted: “All of our beautiful science and technology projects failed, while local people were successful in what they did. The trees that we brought died within one year, but the trees that local people planted still stand. Their local knowledge is much better than our so-called 27

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scientific knowledge; it is time that we come to the Highlands to learn instead of to teach.” In the face of suspicion from scientists and other experts, the project was implemented with funding from the International Development Research Centre (Canada) and the Ford Foundation, and it resulted in a number of publications and other projects in “indigenous knowledge” in Vietnam (see Hoàng Xuân Tý and Lê Trọng Cúc 1998). This anecdote serves to illustrate the complex and contradictory relationships between Highlands and Lowlands, between Upland ethnic minorities and the majority Việt, through history. Much international colonial and postcolonial scholarship on Highland ethnic minorities in Vietnam emphasizes a fundamental cultural difference between Kinh or Việt Lowlanders and minority Highlanders. According to this view, in precolonial times Highlanders were politically, culturally and economically largely autonomous and lived undisturbed lives until they were “pacified” by the colonial state. The fundamental divide, then, runs along ethnic and geographic (Highlands-Lowlands) lines. Eager to deny the cultural divideand-rule implications of colonial scholarship, Vietnamese historiography and ethnology tend to emphasize perennial political solidarity and unity between Lowland and Upland ethnic groups within the frame of the Vietnamese nation, while acknowledging and celebrating cultural diversity. In this view, the state border is the most relevant dividing line. That said, efforts to stress national solidarity and other connections between ethnic groups are predicated on prior distinctions between Highlands and Lowlands, between ethnic minorities and ethnic majority, between ethnic(s) and nation. However, the relations between Lowlander Việt—who affixed their ethnonym to the country’s name—and ethnic minority Highlanders within the national borders are in both discourses also classified along a temporal axis (of advanced and backward, civilized and primitive, centre and periphery), thus connoting a denial of coevalness to minorities (Fabian 1983). Remote areas are discursively conceived as the “natural” abode of ethnic minorities, despite a historical reality of travel, mobility, migration and resettlement, including migration of Việt people into Upland areas. Although recent critical scholarship has tended to debunk cultural essentialism by looking at the role of the (post)colonial state in ethnic classification (Keyes 2002; Koh 2004; Pelley 1998, 2003; Salemink 2003a; Taylor 2001), the net effect of the action of the state—as a vehicle of the Việt-dominated nation—is to stress the essential difference between Lowlanders and Highlanders. In present-day “development-speak”, this notion of a cultural and geographic gulf to be bridged is brought out in

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expressions such as “remote areas” or vùng sâu, vùng xa and underlies much of the current thinking and policy regarding Uplands and minorities, resembling a benevolent, postcolonial mission civilisatrice.2 In this chapter, however, I would like to zoom in on historical relations between Lowlanders and Highlanders in the literal sense, meaning the relations connecting rather than dividing ethnic groups, population groups and geographic areas. Assuming that formal ethnic identities were weak where local identities were strong in fluid situations, I shall argue that local identities were profiled as a result of religious, political, economic and cultural exchanges during the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial eras. I shall especially focus on the effects of these exchanges in terms of leadership. Contrary to the view that local or ethnic leadership closed off “ethnic boundaries”, I shall argue that local leadership was actually produced through economic, political and ritual exchanges, akin to Arjun Appadurai’s notion of the “production of locality” (1996) against the backdrop of constant change, transformations, threats—in brief: globalization avant la lettre. Only with the colonial and postcolonial eras did the governmentalization of exchanges and the territorialization of governance “produce” not just the “hard” ethnic boundaries through the classification processes that Charles Keyes (2002) speaks about, but also the impermeable borders that James Scott (1998) speaks of. By debunking both the nationalist historiography and culturalizing discourse in this manner, I hope to open up space for new, critical insights into assumptions concerning Lowlander-Highlander relations in the present age. The main body of this chapter is devoted to the argument that the historical relations between lowland polities and various Upland groups in precolonial times and at the time of the French conquest have been more substantial for the economic and political situation of these Lowlands than is usually acknowledged. The second section is devoted to the LowlandUpland dynamics and international maritime trade in Đàng Trong (southern Vietnam, seventeenth to eighteenth centuries) and Đàng Ngoài (Tonkin, seventeenth to eighteenth centuries), in which I argue that successful maritime trade in Đàng Trong was linked with riverine and overland trade with the mountainous hinterland. This insight about the mountains as a trade and contact zone leads me to draw an analogy with the South China Sea, which has often been seen as a bridging rather than dividing water—a sea of commerce (Reid 1988a, 1988b); as a cultural crossroads (Lombard 1990); as an Asian Mediterranean (Lombard 1998, Sutherland 2003); or as a porous border (Tagliacozzo 2007). The third section looks at the relations between Lowlands and Uplands during the nineteenth

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century under the Nguyễn Dynasty. In this section I argue that political and ritual leadership in the Highlands of what is now Vietnam was very much connected with the position of such leaders in long-distance trade networks. The fourth section zooms in on the Northern Highlands and the role of the Đèo lineage during the early and latter days of French rule and their interest in the opium trade. In the fifth section I offer some more general reflections on the nature of Highlander leadership in precolonial times, arguing for a realization that Highlander leadership was largely based on connections with the Lowlands; and that Lowland polities were also dependent on trade and alliances with Highland leaders. Finally, I shall conclude that—akin to the “view from the sea” proposed by Li Tana, John Whitmore and Charles Wheeler—the historiography and ethnography of Vietnam require a “view from the mountains” in order to redress the nationalist and developmental notions about backwardness, remoteness and isolation produced by the modern state and eagerly supported by NGOs and other development donors. Historical Trade Relations between Tây Nguyên (Central Highlands) and Đàng Trong (Southern Vietnam) Many authors insist that the Vietnamese Highlands, surrounded by “Indianized” and “Sinicized” states on all sides (Coedès 1948), constitute one “culture area”, contiguous with and similar to the Uplands stretching to Northeast India, Bangladesh and Burma on the west; Yunnan on the north; and Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia on the south and east (Kirsch 1973; Wijeyewardene 1990; Michaud 2000b, 2007; Jonsson 2005). In order to move the focus away from area studies specialisms that tend to project present-day subcontinental boundaries into the past, Willem van Schendel (2002) gave this region a proper name—“Zomia”—in order to denote an area stretching across three subcontinents (South Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia). James Scott (2009) recast this Zomia region as a zone of refuge from state impositions. Other authors were more modest in their geographical ambitions, just arguing against nationalist narratives in historiography and ethnography by speaking of “hill tribes society” (Kirsch 1973), the South-East Asian Massif (Michaud 2000b) or Montane Mainland Southeast Asia (MMSEA; see the series of international conferences taking place in Chiang Mai and elsewhere since the 1990s). While these authors convincingly debunk the nationalist narratives that lock up ethnic groups within national states by pointing at cross-border connections and commonalities, the emphasis on a common cross-border

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geographic and culture area has the unintended effect of emphasizing difference and distance from Lowland states and civilizations, thereby exoticizing Uplanders as ethnic “others” vis-à-vis Lowlanders. In earlier work I showed that historical cultural differences between and among Lowlanders and Highlanders and misperceptions of Highlander culture do not mean that this difference is absolute, nor that Lowlanders and Highlanders are naturally antagonistic, as was and is often assumed by outsiders (Salemink 2003a). It does not mean that there was no contact or commerce, as trade has linked Highlands and Lowlands alike with international trade networks. Long-distance trade connected Lowland and Highland places and populations, with important political and cultural effects in both the Highlands and Lowlands. This is evident from the lists of (Upland) forest products exported by Lowland states—elephant tusks, rhinoceros horns, beeswax, aloe, eaglewood and cinnamon—as recorded, for instance, in old reports and records of the Dutch East Indies about mainland Southeast Asia (Muller 1917, Buch 1929, Van Wuysthoff 1987). It is equally evident from the range of “imported” prestige items such as bronze gongs from Burma and jars from China, which played a critical role in denoting political and ritual prestige in Upland areas all over mainland (Maitre 1912a; Bourotte 1955; Dournes 1970, 1977; Condominas 1980; Hickey 1982a) and insular Southeast Asia (Harrisson 1986, Li Zhi-Yan et al. 1993), but especially (sea) salt, a necessity for survival in the Highlands (Salemink 2003a). Despite the perception of perennial antagonism between Lowlanders, who were organized in states, and Highlanders, who remained marginal to Lowland state centres, there has been a rich history of political contacts, especially between Cham and Central Highlanders (Po Dharma 1987). Until its defeat by the Vietnamese in 1471, Champa was a powerful “Indonesian” Hindu state on the coast of Central Vietnam, and it maintained well into the eighteenth century a reduced presence in the principalities of Panduranga (Phan Rang) and Kauthara, located in the present-day provinces of Ninh Thuận/Bình Thuận and Khánh Hòa. However, before its incorporation into the expanding Vietnamese state and later the French colonial empire, Champa consisted not only of the coastal Lowlands, but also parts of the Central Highlands area as well—what Jacques Dournes has called “Haut-Champa” (1970). Around the turn of the nineteenth century many ruins, statues and other vestiges of this Cham presence still existed in sites such as Kon Klor and Kodo/Bomong Yang (near Kontum), Yang Mum (near Ayun Pa, in present-day Gialai province) and Yang Prong (north of Buôn Đôn in Dak Lak, close to the Cambodian

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border) and in the form of “treasures” of Cham princes among Churu and Roglai groups in present-day Lâm Đồng (Dournes 1970; Hickey 1982a: 91–107). Étienne Aymonier (1890), Adhémar Leclère (1904), Henri Maitre (1912a), Bernard Bourotte (1955), Jean Boulbet (1967) and Gerald Hickey (1982a) all recorded legends among Highlanders about the Cham and their overlordship. In a recent article Andrew Hardy (2009) draws attention to the “political economy of eaglewood” in Champa and Vietnam and the importance of trade between Highlands and Lowlands for the Lowland polities. Two decades ago Po Dharma surmised that the Nguyễn lords and emperors kept an autonomous Cham polity alive in order to use the Cham cultural and trade networks for the extraction of precious forest products through trade (1987-I: 174; 1987-II: 64 ff., 181), and pointed to the interdependence and mutual influence—economic, political, military, ritualistic—of Lowland Cham and (Roglai, Churu, Koho) Highlanders (1987-I: 181). When the Việt replaced the Cham as overlords in the Lowlands (1832), they soon became the dominant population through a process of systematic colonization by the establishment of military colonies, đồn điền. However, they usually did not venture as deep into the Central Highlands as did the Cham, and hardly attempted to settle in the Highlands. When the first Europeans arrived in Asia, they were not very interested in the peoples living in the mountainous areas of mainland Southeast Asia. Commerce and conversion being the main motivations for their ventures, the Europeans contacted the better-accessible Lowland states, where the political forms of principalities and kingdoms and civilizations based on wet-rice cultivation in a way mirrored the European state of affairs. If the populations living in the mountainous areas bordering Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam (Cochinchina) and, still, Champa were mentioned at all, it was in passing only.3 When, for instance, the Portuguese Jesuit missionary Christoforo Borri in his “Cochin-China in Two Parts” spoke of “a ridge of mountains inhabited by the Kemois”, it was only in order to describe the borders of Cochinchina (Borri 1811: 773). Similarly, when the Dutch East India Company merchant Gerard van Wuysthoff reported on his voyage in 1641–42 to the kingdom of Lauwen (Laos), he mentioned a place called Phonongh, to the east of Sambor and Sambock on the Mekong River in Cambodia. Chinese merchants would venture there in order to acquire gold, elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns (Muller 1917: 157).4 Borri described the Highlanders as a “savage people, for though they are Cochin-Chinese, yet they in no way acknowledge or submit to the King, keeping in the fastnesses of the uncouth mountains,

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bordering on the kingdom of Lais [Laos]” (1811: 773). Van Wuysthoff, on the other hand, maintained that the Phonong were dominated by the Cambodians and the Cham (Muller 1917: 157). This difference of opinion may reflect the divergent goals of missionaries and traders: while the former tended to emphasize the Highlanders’ political autonomy from the courts in order to claim political space for missionary work, the latter would simply observe that they were part and parcel of the trade networks that connected the interior with the coastal ports. Nevertheless, European observers were hardly interested in the mountain peoples of Indochina, for although the Highlands procured many of the trade items for the Asian commercial networks at the time, their produce was collected by the several courts and pedlars in the region, and shipped from ports in the Lowlands. Thus, until the middle of the nineteenth century, there were hardly any first-hand accounts by Europeans of the people inhabiting the mountainous parts of mainland Southeast Asia. Thus, Jérome Richard, in his “History of Tonquin”, could write in 1778 that “travellers have never penetrated into the interior of the country [of Champa]” (Richard 1811: 768); and John Crawfurd, relating of his embassy to the courts of Siam and Cochinchina in 1823, would mention the Moi in Cochinchina, “of whom little is known but their name, and that they are an uncivilized but inoffensive people” (Crawfurd 1967: 468). At this point it is interesting to focus on the new historiography about the two Vietnamese polities of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that fought each other while formally recognizing the authority of the Lê emperors. The northern part, known as Đàng Ngoài or Đông Kinh (Tonkin), was dominated by the Trịnh lords.5 The southern part, known as Đàng Trong or Cochinchina, was ruled by the Nguyễn lords, and it gradually expanded southwards from the former Cham lands of Thuận Quảng into the Mekong Delta. Inspirations for the new historiography can be found in the synthesizing work by Anthony Reid (1988a, 1988b, 1999) and Heather Sutherland (2003, 2004), who look at Southeast Asia as a trading zone in which polities and economies are connected through maritime trade; in Victor Lieberman’s work (1993, 1997, 2003) on structural parallels in trade and state formation in (mainland) Southeast Asia and Europe, which looks at mutual connections between states; and in Eric Tagliacozzo’s (2002, 2004, 2007) and Willem van Schendel’s (2002) work on border areas as zones of contact, trade and smuggling. These scholars move away from the “statist” perspective adopted by nationalist historiographers or historians, who almost exclusively focus on one country. Instead, they emphasize how political centres can

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become centres in a wider field of contact. Rather than zooming in on the political centres, they bring the “margins” into starker relief to the point that these do not seem to be so marginal after all. In his article “Surface Orientations”, Keith Taylor (1998) argues for the recognition of the geographic, cultural and political diversity of historical Vietnam and interprets key events in Vietnam’s history in terms of regional competition. With these insights about political fragmentation, cultural diversity and trade as unifying factors at the back of our minds, recent work on the role of maritime trade in Vietnam’s history acquires new relevance for the argument in this chapter. A thematic section in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 37, 1 (2006) highlights the role of the sea and the coast in various episodes and various places in Vietnam’s history, in articles by Li, Whitmore and Wheeler. In various ways, all three articles show how maritime trade influenced political and military balances. Whitmore (2006: 121) shows how by 1400 “the old core of Đại Việt in the mid-river zone became integrated with the downriver coastal zone, and the cultural forces of each merged”, underpinned economically by trade and culturally by the wellknown myth of the “Upland fairy” Âu Cơ and the water dragon Lạc Long Quân. Wheeler draws attention to the littoral character of Thuận Quảng beyond the Lowland “bamboo pole” connecting two baskets (agricultural deltas). It was trade that sustained Đàng Trong against the odds when fighting a much more fertile and populous Đàng Ngoài. Wheeler (2006: 137) suggests that seaports such as Hội An connected the maritime trade—of European powers as well as other Asian lands—with the inlands through a river-based transportation system that linked downriver commercial centres with the Uplands (see also Woodside 1995). In their contributions to the 1990 International Symposium on the Ancient Town of Hoi An, the Vietnamese historians Đỗ Bang (2006) and Phan Đại Doãn (2006) described how the maritime trade from Hội An was connected with riverine and eventually overland trade with the hinterland (read: the Highlands), listing products such as sandalwood, eaglewood, cassia, ivory and gold, which were procured in the mountains. In other words, many of the goods that were exported from centres such as Hội An were products of Highland regions—usually forest products. In her contribution to the thematic section, Li builds on her monograph Nguyễn Cochinchina (1998) in order to present “a view from the sea” that emphasizes trade between and within riverine polities consisting of a religious centre in the mountains, a political centre in the alluvial plain, and a port city, all linked by waterways (Li 2006:

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99).6 Contrary to “the simple black-and-white story of nationalist historiography” (2006: 102), Li sketches “a different map of ethnicity” (2006: 100): Situated among the different peoples along the Sino-Viet border areas, the Việt must have experienced both intensive and extensive ethnic mixing. These relations and interactions cannot be summarized in the simplistic nationalist paradigm of “Việt” or “Han” versus mountain peoples, but must have resulted from a long process of intensive interpenetration and absorption, after which more solid and rigid identities took shape in the modern period.

In her earlier monograph, Li also paid attention to the exchange of goods taking place between Việt and Uplanders (1998: 119–38), sometimes assuming the form of regular trade, sometimes assuming the form of tributes, tax collection or raids and piracy. The trade objects that Việt traders brought to the Uplands included ceramics, metalware and fabrics, but also (sea) salt (a much-needed commodity for survival in the Highlands), fish sauce and dried fish, while forest products (rattan, precious woods, wax, honey, cotton cloth), animals (oxen, buffaloes, horses, elephants), animal products (elephant tusks, rhino horns, hides) and spices (cassia and cardamom) were traded downstream. Much of the trade in forest products was taxed, constituting almost 50 per cent of the tax receipt for Đàng Trong in 1768 (Li 1998: 136). Another lively trade was the slave trade—usually associated with the slave markets in Phnom Penh and Bangkok, but according to Li equally important in Đàng Trong.7 Much of the forest produce was traded overseas, generating profits that could buy military hardware and technology for the struggle against the Trịnh lords of Đàng Ngoài. Thus, mutual dependence not only produced rituals among the Việt of Đàng Trong that referred to the various ethnic groups that made claims to particular places, but it also produced shared experiences that led Li to argue that the origins of the Tây Sơn rebellion up in the mountains near An Khê lay among a coalition of Việt, Cham, Bahnar and other groups who resisted the tax increases as a result of the failing trade in the second half of the eighteenth century. In the meantime, the situation in Đàng Ngoài was vastly different. In his recent study Silk for Silver, about the trade between Đàng Ngoài and the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) between 1637 and 1700, Hoàng Anh Tuấn (2007) shows how the Trịnh tried to emulate the commercial successes of the Nguyễn in Cochinchina by inviting the then dominant trading power to open up trade lodges (“factories”) in Phố Hiến and

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Hanoi in the Red River Delta in order to acquire military hardware and know-how, and silver and copper in exchange for silk and ceramics. In contrast with Đàng Trong, then, the maritime trade with Đàng Ngoài did not involve Highland products but commodities produced in the delta. For a few decades the VOC was Đàng Ngoài’s major trading partner, until the VOC factories closed down by the end of the seventeenth century. Trade was no longer profitable for the VOC, who turned to competing regions, but Đàng Ngoài had also become less hospitable to trade because of the attitude of the Trịnh lords who tended to close Đàng Ngoài off from international maritime trade. In conclusion I would suggest that it was the demise of trade—not just maritime trade but also inland trade via riverine and overland routes—in both Đàng Trong and Đàng Ngoài that weakened both Việt states to a point that they could surprisingly easily be overrun by a rebel army. In other words, it was maritime trade—and by implication the connections of the Lowland polities with the Highlands—that determined the fate of Lowland Vietnam. The Nguyễn Dynasty and the Hinterland of “Annam” Vietnam was reunited by the Tây Sơn rebellion (1771–1802), and once again it successfully pushed back a Chinese intervention. The Tây Sơn regime, however, was eventually defeated by a surviving member of the southern Nguyễn clan, Nguyễn Ánh. Nguyễn Ánh sought Siamese and French support against the Tây Sơn brothers, and he was successful because of his clever coalitions. After his final victory in 1802 he changed his name to Gia Long, crowned himself emperor and founded the Nguyễn Dynasty. His attempt to regularize and systematize his governance according to neo-Confucian doctrine was followed rigorously and rigidly by his successors Minh Mạng (1820–41), Thiệu Trị (1841–47) and Tự Đức (1848–83), who began to make attempts to “pacify” the Highlands by incorporating them into the Vietnamese polity. One example of such “pacification” policies was the Sơn Phòng or “mountain defense” programme in Quảng Ngãi and Bình Định provinces, which was started in 1863 under Emperor Tự Đức by the mandarin Nguyễn Tấn. The latter recorded his strategy in 1871 under his title, le Tiễu-Phủ-Sứ (Officer in Charge of Pacification of Minorities), and published it in French as “Phủ man tạp lục, la pacification de la région des Moï” (1905). The Sơn Phòng—which continued an eighteenth century Vietnamese mountain pacification scheme—combined the establishment of a strong military

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presence in strategic locations with the political incorporation of local chiefs in the Vietnamese administration, with the establishment of trade monopolies, and with tax collection by các lại or thuộc lại (subordinate officials assisting higher-ranked mandarins in the execution of their tasks). Local chiefs were respected and often given a formal role in the administration of a territory as lower-rank mandarins. The state supervised, monopolized and taxed trade, including items that Highland populations needed (salt) as well as highly lucrative Highland forest products such as cassia (Nguyễn Xuân Linh 1973; le Tiễu-Phủ-Sứ 1905; Hickey 1982a: 182–4). After the establishment of their “protectorate” in Annam, the French started to dismantle the Sơn Phòng in 1898 (Brière 1904, Durand 1907). According to French sources, in the latter part of the nineteenth century the Sơn Phòng degenerated into a system of corruption and legalized swindling, creating unrest among Highland populations (Aymonier 1885). But a more likely reason for the dismantling was the use that the fugitive king Hàm Nghi made of the Sơn Phòng infrastructure to hide and resist during the Cần Vương (Save the King) movement in the early years of French colonization. In years to come, any unrest among ethnic groups in the hinterland was conveniently attributed to the Việt các lại, who were depicted as unreliable and cruel swindlers. Another example of incorporation was the tributary relationships that the Huế court established with various groups in border areas, mirroring its own tributary relationship with China’s suzerain authority. For instance, the Jarai Patao Apui (King of Fire) and Patao Ia (King of Water) offered triennial tribute to the courts of Phnom Penh and Huế. These two “kings” were powerful shamans with a religious and ritual status that was recognized by surrounding populations (Dournes 1977). As their authority was recognized by more distant Lowland courts, the Patao acquired a political importance there that they did not possess within their own societies. They are mentioned as two “kings” in various Vietnamese annals and manuscripts as the Hỏa Xá and Thủy Xá, rulers of the small “kingdom of fire” and “kingdom of water”, who exchanged gifts with the Nguyễn lords of southern Vietnam before the Tây Sơn Rebellion (1771–1802), which occasioned the reunification of the country (Lê Quý Đôn 1977). For our purpose it is interesting to note that around 1820, under the second Nguyễn emperor, Minh Mạng, “diplomatic relations” between the King of Water and the court of Vietnam were re-established with a tribute and gifts of elephant tusks, perfumed wood and other forest products. In 1831, a triennial tribute by the two Jarai “vassal kings” was institutionalized in Phủ Yên province, with the Emperor returning

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gifts of cloth and other valuable or ceremonial items. The exchange of gifts continued through the reigns of Thiệu Trị and Tự Đức, until the French took over the management of relations with Highlanders from the court of Huế (Nghiêm Thẩm and Voth 1972; Dournes 1977: 109–22; Hickey 1982a: 121–89). This exchange of gifts institutionalized in the tribute not only had a political character—as the two Patao were given the title of mandarin—but carried an economic aspect as well, given the economic and ritual value of the objects for the receiver. In other words, the exchange shored up prestige within their own contexts for both the Emperor and the two Patao. How the political relations between the Patao and the court in Huế worked out in practice became apparent in the attempts by Mgr. Cuénot, bishop of Qui-Nhơn in Annam, to establish a mission station in the Central Highlands, out of reach of the Lowland mandarins, at a time when Christianity was persecuted. In 1841 he gave a short description of the Cham, the Rhadé and the Jarai, which focused on the Patao Apui (Master of Fire), who reportedly enjoyed unlimited prestige among the Jarai and entertained tributary and commercial relations with the court of Annam in Huế. The Vietnamese traders, whose rights were acknowledged by both the Jarai Patao and the court, were thought to be the main obstacle for missionary activity among Highlanders (Cuénot 1841: 139–45). Cuénot’s analysis turned out to be correct, as the first attempt in 1842 to establish a mission station in Jarai territory failed when Vietnamese traders arrested the priests Duclos and Miche while their host, the Patao Apui, did not intervene. Those Highlanders who had let them pass, reportedly Êđê, were rebuked by the Vietnamese authorities. The missionaries were brought to Huế, where they were held in prison, accused of rebellion with the help of Laotian soldiers. Sentenced to death along with three other French priests, they were released in 1843 because of the military action of the French Navy. Duclos and Miche’s report reached Mgr. Cuénot, who published it in the Annales de la Propagation de la Foi (Duclos and Miche 1844). This example (there are many more) tells us that there were extensive economic, political and cultural contacts between Highlanders and the Vietnamese state in precolonial times, and that Việt officials and traders exerted a distinct level of authority in the Highlands. When Annam (Trung Bộ) and Tonkin (Bắc Bộ) were turned into French protectorates in 1883, the Vietnamese administrative system had already been crumbling in many regions, first of all in those Highland areas where the court only had tenuous authority. This is clear from the reports based on a number of expeditions by military officers and others

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mounted from the colony of Cochinchina, beginning with the great expedition of the Commission d’Exploration du Mekong of 1866–68, headed by Doudart de Lagrée and Francis Garnier (De Villemereuil 1883, Taboulet 1970, Valette 1969). From the 1880s until the killing of Henri Maître in 1914, a series of expeditions into the “hinterland moï” region were mounted from Saigon, under the leadership of military officers such as Lieutenant Septans, Lieutenant Amédée Gautier, Captains Cupet and De Malglaive (who were members of the famous Mission Pavie, which followed the Mekong upstream in search of a navigable route to southern China and managed to secure Laos as a French protectorate), and Henri Maître, or medical doctors such as Paul Néis, Jules Harmand and Alexandre Yersin.8 These explorers usually hired local guides who took the footpaths that were used for long-distance trade by both Highland traders and Kinh pedlars, the thuộc lại or các lại. In many Upland areas they found Kinh and/or Cham influence in the remains of a rudimentary administrative system or of the Sơn Phòng “mountain defense cum trade system”, e.g., among the Cau Maa, who used to pay tribute to the Emperor in Huế via the Cham but shifted allegiance to the colonial administration (Gautier 1882, 1884, 1902–3). These footpaths also led them to the most successful traders, who coupled economic success with political and ritual prestige. One example is the person known as Patao, whose fame as “king of the Cau Maa” had reached Saigon by way of các lại.9 Patao turned out to be a trader of Lao descent who had settled down and gained influence in the area, and who was interested in trade with the French (Néis 1880: 22, 28). This Patao dominated the surrounding area and sought French protection against villages under Vietnamese rule. Later explorers described the same person—alternatively known as Mesao—as a slave trader; the protection he sought against other villages turned out to be a scam to use French force against competitors as well as against relatives of slavery victims (Gautier 1882: 48–50; Cupet 1893; Yersin 1893; Pavie 1900, 1902; Maitre 1909: 56–61). During the confused and effervescent times marked by the collapse of Vietnamese rule; the contraction of Cambodia; the incursions by Lao and Thai traders, slavers and soldiers; and the incursions by French missionaries and explorers, French observers noted the existence of influential traders who acquired high status by virtue of their economic success in the long-distance trade and their—related—military prowess, especially in the capture and trade of slaves and elephants. In my 2003 monograph on the Central Highlands of Vietnam I called such local

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leaders “big men”, who were often in-migrants from Laos or Lowland Vietnam (Salemink 2003a). For instance, Gautier interacted with local leaders of Lao, Vietnamese, Chinese and mixed descent living with Highlanders but still maintaining a rudimentary Vietnamese administrative infrastructure that had been more elaborate in the past (Gautier 1882, 1884, 1935; Maitre 1912a: 463–4; Dubourg 1950). Usually, such “big men” were very influential in one or even several villages by virtue of their position in the trade networks that linked Uplands with Lowlands and Highlanders with Vietnamese, Laotian, Siamese and Chinese traders and polities. Their political and ritual status depended on their wealth, their military prowess, and their capacity for organizing feasts, which would ensure their ritual primacy within their village. Their status was not hereditary, and hence it was temporary—limited to one lifetime—and did not evolve into a formal ruling class, thus effectively creating the system of social oscillation and feasting that A. Thomas Kirsch described (Kirsch 1973, Hickey 1982b). Thus, contrary to the French view of the Montagnards, the latter had not been “isolated” before European contact. Rather, it was the French themselves who isolated the Central Highlands in order to establish their own influence in the area. In this respect, it is significant that the French forbade the—very rapid—transmission of messages through fire or sound signals (drums), with the suppression of the Sơn Phòng, thus effectively cutting off communication (Salemink 2003a). This had to do with the fact that a number of the “big men” had been the most outspoken opponents of French colonial penetration, as their political power was threatened or destroyed by the French. The same happened with their economic power as a consequence of French efforts at controlling the long-distance trade in the region (Maitre 1909: 161–2). The career of Khun Jonob, aka Ma Krong, is illustrative in this regard. Of mixed Lao-Mnong descent, Ma Krong controlled the capture and trade of elephants in the region surrounding the local centre of Buôn Đôn (Bản Đôn), which is still a centre of elephant domestication. At the time of the Mission Pavie, Ma Krong served as an officer in the Siamese army, which penetrated east of the Mekong River into the Central Highlands, earning him the Siamese title (not name) of Khun Jonob. Ma Krong initially opposed French penetration, because of his Siamese connections. French colonial administrators such as Léopold Sabatier tended to suppress local “big men” as rival contenders for power and as obstacles to colonial rule, but Sabatier made an exception for Ma Krong, who became his ally as Sabatier eventually became Ma Krong’s son-in-law when Ma Krong’s

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daughter gave birth to their daughter H’Ni (Annie) in 1923. Sabatier used Ma Krong’s influence over the Mnong and Rhadé (Êđê) to improve the collection of head tax. This tax, together with the considerable tax levied on the elephant trade, enabled Sabatier to establish an administrative infrastructure in the Highland province of Darlac, financially independent from the colonial centre. As the drawing and closing of the colonial border effectively diminished the international trade in elephants and other Upland “products”, Ma Krong changed his career. In a twist of irony, as an ethnic Lao in-migrant in a Mnong village, he became the head of the (Êđê) customary law tribunal in Buôn Ma Thuột and thus became a French official, dependent on a salary for his income. The Northern Uplands In a recent article Emmanuel Poisson (2009) shows that in the northern part of Vietnam the Vietnamese emperors from the fifteenth century onwards were obliged to rely on local, ethnic minority chiefs because of the lack of suitable Kinh mandarins willing to live in the “unhealthy” mountains. Over time, these chiefs assumed hereditary positions within the bureaucratic hierarchy of the Việt state and later—in an ironic historical continuity—in the colonial state (Poisson 2004). After taking possession of the Red River Delta in the 1880s, French colonial officers tried to pacify the Highlands of Tonkin as well. These areas were in great turmoil because of invasions by Chinese bands such as the “Black Flags” and to a lesser extent by in-migration of Hmong settlers (McAleavy 1968; Culas 2000; Culas and Michaud 2004; Michaud 2000a, 2007). It is useful to take a closer look at the policy that Galliéni and Pennequin developed in the territoires militaires of Tonkin, a very heterogeneous area from an ethnic point of view. Their “oil spot method” (tâche d’huile)—presently a widely used tactic by the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan10 —combined military repression of the rebellion with the political and social organization of the region. First a fort would be constructed in a strategic site in the refractory region, from which the surrounding population would be militarily pacified. Then the infrastructure would be developed—roads, military posts and supervised markets would be constructed. When this area was entirely controlled, a neighbouring area would be pacified. Thus, this “structural pacification” would spread like an oil spot. The political leadership in the area would be more or less respected if the local leaders formally submitted to French authority. Local potentates would be left in power if they agreed to submit nominally and

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not bother the French. Colonel Pennequin defined the role of the French authorities as a restricted one, granting each race its autonomy and keeping a balance between the different interests of each race (De Lanessan 1895: 56–112; Galliéni 1941; Boudarel 1976: 137–40). Let us take a closer look at two such local power wielders: Đề Thám (aka Hoàng Hoa Thám) and Ðèo Văn Trí. In Vietnam’s nationalist historiography Đề Thám was an anti-colonial hero who resisted and outwitted the French in his home base of Yên Thế (Bắc Giang province) until his assassination in 1913. This account fails to mention that for most of the time after the French conquest of Lowland and Upland Tonkin, Đề Thám had an agreement with the French that he would leave them alone if they left him alone. Đề Thám was a Vietnamese general who in 1883 heeded King Hàm Nghi’s call to “save the King” and resist the French. In 1894, and again in 1898, Đề Thám struck an agreement with the French, who ceded him an area that he could rule as a feudal lord. When he broke that agreement in 1908, the French army went after him in Yên Thế and finally killed him in 1913. Đề Thám may have been a patriot and an anticolonial resistance leader, but he was also a feudal leader who ruled over an area of 22 villages populated by different ethnic groups. In other words, political mobilization did not follow ethnic boundaries, and political leadership was not linked to national affiliation but to feudal conceptions of vassalage,11 which sooner or later had to clash with modern colonial forms of statecraft. The case of Ðèo Văn Trí is still more instructive. Ðèo Văn Trí was a Thái feudal lord who—in the words of Charles Fourniau—“extended his domination over a vast zone around Lai-châu largely flowing over into the traditional border between China and the empire of Annam” (Fourniau 1989: 87). It was, after all, a normal practice under the Nguyễn Dynasty that “marginal groups [were subjected] to tribute while the control by the mandarinal administration was exercised via the intermediary of customary chiefs” (Nguyễn Thế Anh 1989: 186). The prelude to Ðèo Văn Trí’s rise to power was the incursion of the “Black Flags”, remnants of the Taiping rebels in China who crossed into Tonkin in the 1860s and doubled as “pirates” and as mercenaries for the Vietnamese court in their dealings with refractory ethnic groups in the mountains (McAleavy 1968). This cemented Ðèo Văn Trí’s position as vassal ruler of Mường Lai (the Lai fief), with his seat in Lai Châu. After the French imposed their protectorate over the remainder of Vietnam (Annam and Tonkin) in 1883, the regents of the Huế court revolted against them in 1885 but were defeated. The young Emperor Hàm Nghi sought refuge in Cam Lộ and other mountain

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districts in central Vietnam until he was betrayed by his bodyguard and exiled to Algeria in 1888. Regent Tôn Thất Thuyết went to Tonkin and sought refuge with Ðèo Văn Trí in Lai Châu, but after he tried to poison Ðèo Văn Trí he had to flee to China while the Lai Châu ruler shifted allegiance to the French. The French colonial regime continued the system that they had inherited from imperial Vietnam, and shored up the political power of Ðèo Văn Trí, who was left free to rule a vast, multi-ethnic area that included Lai Châu, Điện Biên Phủ and Phong Thổ. Although beyond the direct control of the Vietnamese or French authorities, this area was not beyond trade—and a lucrative trade at that. Since the Chinese empire had legalized opium trade under British pressure, large portions of the “Golden Triangle” region had been planted with poppy (McCoy 1972: 64–5). This highly lucrative crop connected this part of the Uplands of Tonkin with the rest of mainland Southeast Asia, with the Ðèo Văn Trí family reaping much of the profits. In his reinterpretation of the battle of Điện Biên Phủ (1954), John McAlister argues that the stakes were not just territory and population, but the profits of the opium trade (1967). The French defeat at Điện Biên Phủ in 1954 was tantamount to the toppling of the feudal grasp by Ðèo Văn Long—Ðèo Văn Trí’s son and successor—in a new form of politics that pitted ethnic groups rather than feudal masters against each other. In their respective articles on Thái/Tai feudalism, Georges Condominas (1976) and Jacques Lemoine (1997) analyze the development of rigid political hierarchies—based on surplus extraction of labour through taxation, corvée labour and exclusive usufruct rights for the Thái chiefs—also visà-vis other ethnic groups that were subjected to the overlordship of the Thái chiefs. After a new chief had been named, a delegation was sent to the Lowlands to seek approval from the Vietnamese court, which usually bestowed the chief the mandarinal title of chi châu (Lemoine 1997: 205–7; see also Ngô Đức Thọ, Nguyễn Văn Nguyên and Philippe Papin 2003). Within the châu or mường fief, the chief’s paramount position as guardian of the land on behalf of the tutelary spirit of the land and as an intermediary with the spirits and (clan) ancestors was regularly buttressed in rituals and feasts. The hierarchical, quasi-feudal system of the Thái/Tai (Condominas 1976, Lemoine 1997) bore a resemblance with the hierarchical, autocratic gumsa pole of Kachin society as described by Sir Edmund Leach (1954), which inspired such lively debate about the political and economic characterization of Upland societies and about the nature of ethnicity. The oscillation of Kachin society between hierarchical gumsa and more

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egalitarian gumlao poles had an equivalent in Thái society. The rise of the Ðèo family during the effervescence in the Northern Highlands at the time of the Black Flags and the extension of their power during the early decades of the French protectorate (read: colonial rule) could be seen as a swing to the gumsa pole, while the rise of the Việt Minh in the 1940s culminating in the French defeat in Điện Biên Phủ (1954) can be cautiously interpreted as a swing to the gumlao pole of a more egalitarian ideology. Kirsch (1973) extended Leach’s theory of social oscillation to what he called “hilltribe society” in Upland Southeast Asia, linking it up with the notion that the authority of chiefs was accepted as legitimate through ritual feasts. In an article commenting on Leach and on Jonathan Friedman’s System, Structure and Contradiction in the Evolution of “Asiatic” Social Formations (1979)—but ignoring Kirsch—David Nugent (1982) drew attention to the economic underpinnings of such feasts in the long-distance trade that linked the economies of Upland societies with Lowland states and markets. The “oscillation” between gumsa and gumlao poles in Upland society can then be reinterpreted as a political struggle over economic resources and their redistribution. It is precisely such a struggle that John McAlister (1967) describes in his analysis of the ethnic dynamics leading up to the battle of Điện Biên Phủ (see also Culas 2000). According to McAlister, it was the competition over opium, as a valuable commodity economically linking Upland Vietnam with the Lowlands and the rest of the world, that financed not only the Upland feudal class but part of the war effort on both French and Việt Minh sides—an analysis that was expanded chronologically as well as geographically by Alfred McCoy in The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (1972). The lessons that I would like to draw from these brief vignettes are four-fold. First of all, in precolonial times ethnic identities did not naturally translate into political allegiances, and conflict did not necessarily follow ethnic lines. Second, the areas that were often portrayed as remote, uncouth, barbarous, etc., were in fact connected with the Lowland courts and ports through numerous overland and riverine trade routes. Such connections were often vehicles for the exercise of political, ritual and sometimes religious authority. Third, where Li, Whitmore and Wheeler propose to adopt a “view from the sea” when looking at Vietnam’s history, I suggest that it would be equally rewarding to adopt a view from the mountains. The comparison of the trade histories of Đàng Trong and Đàng Ngoài would suggest that maritime trade—and its relevance for the military and political success of these polities—can work well only if the seaport connects the maritime trade with a hinterland that

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must be largely upland. Finally, then, it may be interesting to speculate about the importance of such trade connections both with overseas lands and with the mountainous hinterland for the enduring viability of the Lowland states. In the next section I would like to sketch a picture of political, military and ritual leadership in Upland areas in connection with economic exchanges. Reflections on Highlander Leadership A common assumption on the part of outsiders regarding the political organization of the Central Highlands holds that the local populations are made up of clearly distinct tribes, distinguishable by their language, traditional costume, architecture, and—more in general—“manners and customs” (moeurs et coutumes, phong tục tạp quán) (Keyes 2002, Khổng Diễn 2002a, Salemink 2003a, Scott 1998). In precolonial times, such tribes usually lacked central institutions of political authority. It is often assumed that daily life among Central Highlanders was ruled almost absolutely by old men, be it in the guise of village chiefs, shamans or village elders. At the time of the early French explorations, however, explorers into the Central Highlands often complained about the absence of supra-village political organizations that could give them a key to this politically fragmented society. In fact, political life in the Central Highlands was pretty much “decentralized”, if not fragmented, except in those places where a Vietnamese mandarinal administration still existed (Maitre 1912b). However, there were supra-village institutions that did not have a political character. Some villages shared a common territory for shifting cultivation, requiring common ritual guardians of the land. Some religious institutions commanded respect in a wide area, such as the Jarai Patao, shamans who held a privileged position with regard to the elements of fire, water and wind. The word Patao (also P’tau or Pötao) is of Cham origin and is employed to designate politically and/or religiously superior persons, such as kings, princes and local leaders, but also influential priests or shamans. Other local leaders who rose to positions of affluence and influence adopted the title of Patao or Mesao. Commonly, the word was translated as “king”, hence the confusion among Western observers, who searched for kings with the habitual pomp and regalia but found minor chiefs or ritual leaders instead. Most important, however, were the “big men” who rose to positions of prominence because of their descent, their military prowess, their

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economic success and their ritual prestige, which was associated with their (economic) capacity for feasting. Such big men often had many slaves, either captured or from households that were indebted. Captured slaves were mostly sold to the slave traders from Laos, Cambodia and as far as Thailand, while indebted slaves were added to their household and were practically indistinguishable from other household members. The big men usually were cunning in their dealings with outsiders, which gave them leverage over their fellow villagers, but they were never absolute masters—not even within their own village or family. During their early explorations, the French often dealt with such big men by either making allies or making enemies out of them. The political and ritual position of the big men required enormous investments in the form of “feasting” (Kirsch 1973), the staging of ritual feasts during which buffalo and other livestock had to be sacrificed, other food consumed and rice wine drunk. Most of these resources had to be invested by the big man, who then enjoyed the ritual and political prestige associated with the feast. In other words, in order to be recognized as a big man one had to have access to considerable economic resources. In an economy that was mostly subsistence as far as staple and other everyday foodstuffs (except salt) were concerned, wealth did not come from internal exchange or appropriation of surplus, but from external trade. Such big men enjoyed high status because of the trade in forest products, livestock and—sometimes—slaves or opium. The forest products could include precious wood (eaglewood, scented wood, hardwoods), rattan, wax, honey, spices such as cassia or cardamom, elephant tusks, rhino horns, etc. Their commercial acumen tended to be personal rather than hereditary, the reason why it was difficult to institutionalize such high status. One often saw that such individuals possessing an extraordinary trade network were recent in-migrants (often Lao or Việt) or people of mixed descent who came to live among a particular local community, for instance, Khun Jonob or Patao, “the king of the Cau Maa”. In the Northern Highlands the example of the Ðèo Văn Trí lineage shows that the valley-based small-scale hydraulic societies of the Thái were more suited for hereditary, feudal systems of overlordship. This example also shows that this brand of feudalism was not an exclusively Thái affair, but that the overlordship extended over a territory where various “ethnic” groups lived side by side. Moreover, it had to be backed up by support from an outside military power (Lao, Chinese, Vietnamese, French). Most important, it had to be sustained economically by longdistance trade, in this case opium. In other words, local forms of political

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domination were related to the location of the area in the economic and political geography of the region, and the positioning of the elite in larger networks of economic and political influence. As Arjun Appadurai (1996) reinterprets the existing ethnographic record in terms of the production of localities through ritual, notions of belonging, and what he calls “neighbourhood” against the backdrop of continuous change, of flux and flow, so can we reinterpret the ethnographic and historical record of places such as Lai Châu or Điện Biên Phủ as particular forms of localization that are necessarily linked to the wider environment—Vietnam, Southeast Asia, the world. In this context it is interesting to note that in the past, all over upland Southeast Asia wealth was not only linked to political and ritual status, but to the possession of particular objects as well. Such objects were usually believed to have ritual significance. Sometimes such objects were manufactured locally, but some kinds of objects were traded from afar. As an example I would like to mention the Chinese ceramic jars that one finds in upland societies all over Southeast Asia, and which had to be transported over great distances to reach their destinations. Early visitors to the Central Highlands of Vietnam or the Uplands of Borneo or the Philippines often marvelled at the size, beauty and antiquity of such jars (Harrisson 1986, Li Zhi-Yan et al. 1993). Other precious objects were often made of metal, e.g., the sets of bronze drums—resembling gamelan—that one finds in upland Southeast Asia. In the area that Jean Michaud calls the Southeast Asian Massif (which includes the Central Highlands of present-day Vietnam and adjacent areas in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma and Yunnan) the bossed gong sets that used to be manufactured in Burma were the most prized ones. These objects, which had ritual qualities and could be used to indicate wealth and status locally, could be acquired only through long-distance trade. In other words, local discourses on wealth and political/ritual status and related practices were tied up with economic exchanges over long distances. In such a world, there were no remote, isolated places. Conclusion: Remote Areas Just like religion as a category emerged along with notions of the secular (Asad 2003), the notion of “primitives” appeared along with notions of civilization and evolution. “Backwardness” and “remoteness” are tropes that are used to shore up discourses of development, usually mingling spatial (centre-periphery) and temporal (modern-traditional) axes for

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denoting difference. In this chapter I have argued that Highlanders played an important role in the history of the Vietnamese Lowlands—a historical role that reached its apotheosis with the battles of Điện Biên Phủ (1954), An Khê (1954) and Buôn Ma Thuột (1975). The main body of this chapter was devoted to the argument that the historical relations between Lowland polities and various Uplands in precolonial times and at the time of the French conquest were more substantial for the economic and political situation of these Lowlands than is usually acknowledged. This had historical and cultural effects for the political and ritual leadership in the Highlands of what is now Vietnam, which was very much connected with the position of such leaders in long-distance trade networks. Rather than postulating a radical difference and separation between Highlands and Lowlands, Highlanders and Lowlanders, it is instructive to look at the exchanges connecting the two cultural and geographic zones. In Vietnam as elsewhere, such physical and classificatory separations were in fact products of the modern colonial and postcolonial states. The French enacted policies of dismantling Vietnamese governmental structures in the Highlands, and zoned the land so as to keep populations apart. The consequences of such forms of governmentalization and territorialization are still with us today. In a recent issue of the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (2006), Li, Whitmore and Wheeler proposed a new vista on the history and historiography of Vietnam dubbed “a view from the sea”. I suggest that the historiography and ethnography of Vietnam also require a view from the mountains in order to redress the nationalist and developmental notions about backwardness, remoteness and isolation produced by the modern state and eagerly supported by NGOs and other development donors. Notes 1. Research for this paper was made possible by grants from WOTRO Science for Global Development of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the workshop on “Montane Choices and Outcomes: Contemporary Transformations of Vietnam’s Uplands”, held in Hanoi on 4–6 Jan. 2007; and at the workshop on “Revisiting the ‘Frontier’ in the Southeast Asian Massif”, held in Singapore on 12–13 Dec. 2007. I would like to thank the discussants Janet Sturgeon and Craig Reynolds, as well as Peter Boomgaard, Thomas Sikor, Cao Xuân Tứ, and the organizers and participants of both conferences for their insightful feedback. A greatly truncated version of this chapter was published as “Trading Goods, Prestige and Power: A Revisionist History of Lowlander-Highlander Relations

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in Vietnam”, in Linking Destinies: Trade, Towns and Kin in Asian History, ed. Peter Boomgaard, Dick Kooiman and Henk Schulte Nordholt (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2008, pp. 51–69). The Vietnamese translation of an earlier version was published as “Một góc nhìn từ vùng cao: Phần lịch sử quan trọng về mối quan hệ giữa đồng bằng và miền núi ở Việt Nam”, in Thời kỳ mở cửa: Những chuyển đổi kinh tế: xã hội vùng cao Việt nam [Era of Opening Up: Socioeconomic Changes in Vietnam’s Uplands], ed. Thomas Sikor, Jenny Sowerwine, Jeff Romm and Nghiêm Phương Tuyến (Hanoi: Science and Technology Publishing House, 2008, pp. 11–36). Although I have benefited from comments, all mistakes are my sole responsibility. 2. For comparative work on China, see Harrell (1995) and Gladney (2004). 3. The official chronicler of the Société des Missions Étrangères, Adrien Launay, mentions an attempt by P. Vachet to baptize Montagnards inland of Faifo (present-day Hoi An), but fever forced him to go back to the plains (Launay 1894-I: 199). Jean-Dominique Lajoux (1977: 124) mentions an unpublished manuscript by the Portuguese Jesuit priest João Loureira, De nigris Moï et Champanensibus (1790), which is preserved in Lisbon. No published accounts, however, exist of these ventures. 4. Van Wuysthoff probably referred here to the Phnong, as the Highlanders were generically known by the Khmer, bearing connotations of “slave” and “savage”. It is possible, but not necessary, that he was referring to the Mnong groups. 5. For the purpose of this paper it would be interesting to elaborate on the presence of the Mạc pretenders in their Northern Mountains base of Cao Bằng, but this is not possible here due to space constraints. 6. Li Tana was not the first scholar to propose looking at mainland Southeast Asian history from the vantage point of the sea; in 1999 Alain Forest’s introductory essay “L’Asie du Sud-Est continentale vue de la mer” appeared in Commerce et navigation en Asie du Sud-Est (XIV e–XIX e siècle) [Trade and Navigation in Southeast Asia (Fourteenth–Nineteenth Centuries)], ed. Nguyễn Thế Anh and Yoshiaki Ishizawa (Paris: l’Harmattan, pp. 7–29). 7. This is also noted by Ursula Willenberg (1972) in her study of inter-ethnic economic relations in southern Vietnam (in German), based mostly on French sources. 8. For a more in-depth account of these expeditions and references to documentary and published sources, see Hickey (1982a) and Salemink (2003a). 9. This person is not related to the three Patao/P’tau of the Jarai, who entertained tributary relations with the courts of Cambodia and Vietnam. The word Patao is of Cham origin, employed to designate politically and/or religiously superior persons, such as kings, princes, local leaders, but also influential priests or shamans. The Patao referred to here used this “title” with the connotation of “king” in order to impress both his subjects and interested outsiders (see Yersin 1893). 10. See Salemink (2008). 11. The geographic situation of Đề Thám might be compared with the position of the Mạc throne pretenders in their struggle against the Lê Dynasty in the

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seventeenth century, as analyzed by Keith Taylor in his seminal article “Surface Orientations in Vietnam” (1998), in which he reinterprets parts of Vietnam’s history in the light of regional affiliations and competition. Both Đề Thám and the Mạc had strongholds in the Northern Mountains, in a “multi-ethnic” environment, and staked claims to political authority over the Red River Delta as well. In different parts of what is now Vietnam and in different historical eras, Lê Lợi and the Tây Sơn brothers started their successful campaigns against Lowland rulers from multi-ethnic strongholds in mountainous areas.

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2

The Politics of Highland Landscapes in Vietnamese Statecraft: (Re)Framing the Dominant Environmental Imaginary

Jennifer Sowerwine

Introduction Since colonial times, the highlands of Vietnam have been characterized in varying degrees as remote, isolated and barren, inhabited by “backward” and “uncivilized” people, in contrast to the fertile, “civilized” plains inhabited by the “advanced” Kinh civilization. 1 This lowland:highland discourse or environmental imaginary is not unique to Vietnam but exists in much of the academic and development literature as well as in popular consciousness in Southeast Asia (Fortune 1939; Leach 1960; Kunstadter 1967, 1969; Wallace 1970; Walker 1975, 1995; Hirschman 1995; Bernard and De Koninck 1996; Li 1999a; Winichakul 2000; Scott 2001; Vandergeest 2003).2 While there are certainly physical, biological and cultural differences between the lowlands and the highlands, this chapter draws attention to how negative attributes ascribed to the highlands, in opposition to the lowlands, have become naturalized, with real political economic consequences. This elevational discourse has, as I will show, been central to the constitution of state authority in the highlands, and to Vietnamese state-making processes more broadly. Such topographic categories, which appear mundane, are, indeed, heavily invested in shifting relations of power along multiple axes over time; they at once mask the evolutionary trope that infantilizes and locates the highlands as a uniformly marginal domain, and subjects the region to various “controlling processes”. 3 In this chapter, I intend to demonstrate how the lowland:highland binary is a highly politicized form of knowledge, marking particular people 51

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and landscapes as “marginal”, legitimating intervention, incorporation and extension of state power. It is rooted in a hierarchical, evolutionary discourse that emanates from Enlightenment notions of progress and modernization borrowed and adapted from France (under colonialism), the Soviet Union (during the revolutionary and socialist period) and Western development discourse (beginning in the early 1980s). It locates the highlands, socially and environmentally, at the base of an imaginary development trajectory, with the lowland civilization representing the most advanced stage of modern development. Its formation can be attributed to struggles around defining Vietnamese nationhood. That is, through territorial and national struggles for independence, the highlands were strategically imagined (or represented) and managed in diverse ways for political control.4 This hegemonic lowland:highland binary operates in powerful ways, influencing thought, institutions of governance, and flows of knowledge. It constitutes intertwined processes of place and people-making in ways to create social and landscape meaning and stability. These hierarchical notions of difference are bolstered by other powerful binary discourses of difference embedded within the lowland:highland imaginary, which include, among others, discourses of culture (civilized:backward), ecology (fertile-virgin:barren-degraded), administration (state:local), power (dominant:oppressed), wealth (rich:poor). These categories of knowledge and the mechanisms that constitute them fail to capture the diverse realities within each category as well as the ways in which the boundaries of the categories are mutually constitutive and often blur under scrutiny. Recent historical and ethnographic studies provide evidence that challenges the dominant discourse. In contrast to long-held assumptions about the power of state authority in the highlands, recent scholarship suggests greater agency among highland peoples (this volume, Caouette and Turner 2009, Taylor 2008a), as well as increased linkages between the lowlands and highlands and beyond.5 Innovative responses to new market opportunities and the emergence of new social, economic and ecological relations within, between and beyond the so-called highlands and lowlands appear to operate beyond—or in spite of—state policy (Chapters 5, 7, 8, 10; Turner and Michaud 2008). Evidence shows that deforestation in the highlands is caused more by exploitation by the state, Kinh settlers and illegal loggers (of all ethnicities) than by minorities practising swidden cultivation (De Koninck 1999, McElwee 2004). Emergent research focusing on the micropolitics of economic transformations in both the

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central and northern highlands of Vietnam reveals surprising patterns of land use, trade relations, and increasing flows of goods, ideas, people and services across the landscape.6 Yet despite increasing evidence to the contrary, the dominant lowland:highland discourse and associated declensionist narrative of the highlands persist, continuing to legitimate state interventions in the highlands. In order to better understand the logic, practice and limits of Vietnamese statecraft as they relate to the highlands, one must look not only at material practices and lego-political relations on the ground, but also at the ideological and technological underpinnings of Vietnamese statecraft itself, as well as the very limits of our own bimodal lens(es) of analysis. While it is impossible to avoid using the words “highlands” and “lowlands” when studying Vietnam, it is important to be mindful of the political saliency of those terms and associated categories of knowledge, and their effects both materially and symbolically. This chapter seeks to explore where the naturalized or “commonsense” understanding of the lowland:highland difference comes from, how it is discursively constructed and imagined over time, and how, despite ample evidence to the contrary, it endures. 7 Specifically, it explores how this dominant imaginary and its system of meanings developed during the colonial period, and how it subsequently became embraced and circulated by lowland Kinh institutions and more recently adopted and reinforced by international conservation and development organizations. It has become at once an agent and a by-product of statecraft. By unpacking and historicizing the lowland:highland construct and its relation to state-making processes, this chapter seeks to contribute to a nuancing of the dichotomy (see Introduction) and a reorientation of future studies of the spaces we call “the highlands”, “the lowlands” and the spaces in between. In other words, it explores an alternative framework that moves beyond binary analytics, interrogates dominant categories of knowledge, and examines situated spatial practices through an ethnography of process. This combination of ethnography and discourse analysis allows a vast diversity of alternative environmental imaginaries to emerge, with profoundly different spatial, political, cultural and ecological orientations. The Basis of the Lowland:Highland Imaginary The processes or mechanisms through which states exert power and achieve control over “men and things” have been referred to in several ways: by Michel Foucault (1991) as governmentality, by James Scott

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(1998) and Krishna Sivaramakrishnan (1999) as statecraft, and by Peter Vandergeest and Nancy Lee Peluso (1995) as territoriality. By “government rationality” or “governmentality”, Foucault refers to “the ensemble of institutions, procedures, calculations and tactics that allow for the exercise of a specific kind or ‘complex form’ of power whose object is population in the sense that it seeks to regulate the relationship between people and things” (Foucault 1991: 102). This regulation can not only be achieved through administration, economic exploitation and coercion, but can also be educative and formative (Gramsci 1971) through the exercise of symbolic power (Hall 1997). Cultural or symbolic power includes the power to represent someone or something in a certain way within a certain “regime of representation” (Hall 1997: 259). Representation and difference are vital in influencing how central ideas take hold and in constituting the basis for authority and sovereign power (Hall 1997). It is precisely these representational practices, which constitute new objects of knowledge, marking cultural and landscape differentials, that I will focus on. The lowland:highland divide is a powerful discourse that has shaped domestic and foreign knowledge of and interventions into the highlands since colonial times. It defines and produces the objects of our knowledge; it governs the way a topic can be meaningfully talked about; and it influences how ideas are put into practice and used to regulate the conduct of others and conceptions of “truth” (Foucault 1972, 1977, 1978, 1980; Hall 1997). The ways in which power is implicated in the construction of knowledge are what Foucault calls practices of power/knowledge; it is the power to mark, classify and regulate premised on the authoritative basis of science and scientific knowledge claims. Embodied in this lowland:highland binary is a whole set of assumptions about landscape and cultural attributes that reflect the values and norms of the dominant society.8 This rhetorical polarity has been assembled by a series of powerful representational practices over time, which has become codified as real. I will demonstrate how state authority in relation to governance of people and resources in the highlands is predicated on the production and circulation of idealized images and models of “appropriate practice” that come from historically specific ideologies and three intersecting technologies of power: ethnography, cartography and forestry. These ideas and representations come to circulate in multiple arenas, including various branches of the state, international institutions, and civil society.

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Ideology Dominant ideologies of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries— orientalism, modernism and scientific rational management—laid the foundation for how the highlands are envisioned and managed bureaucratically. In his book Orientalism, Edward Said (1978) illustrates the ways in which Europe’s imaginative and material relations with the Orient positioned the latter as the inferior opposite of the Occident and thereby subjected it to varying modes of domination, rule and incorporation. Like the Orient for the West, the highlands became a kind of laboratory for the ethnic Kinh to “examine and substantiate the evolutionary theories of social Darwinism, Marxism and Modernism” (Said 1978).9 Reflecting on the social history of the Vietnamese, themselves subjected to and trained under French colonial mission civilisatrice, it comes as no surprise that the Vietnamese cast the oriental gaze towards the highlands. Similar to China, the logic of “internal orientalism” “was discursively cross-cut by imported modes of orientalist ‘knowledge’ production, from Western anthropology to Soviet ethnology to transnational advertising” (Schein 2000: 194). In addition, the fields of cartography and forest conservation, sharing similar scientistic epistemological origins, reinforce the orientalist discourse. “Scientific forestry”, imported to developing countries, originated in the West under vastly different political, economic and ecological conditions and reflects Western notions of productivity, resource values and conservation ideology (Fortmann and Fairfax 1985, Peluso 1992a). The elaboration and spread of the doctrine of science, with its rationale and modern tools, facilitated the enumeration of both peoples and landscapes as the “other”, creating the “scientific” basis that legitimized orientalizing claims to forests, territories and bodies. Technologies of Power: Bounding Cultural and Landscape Difference It has often been noted that the construction of difference is fundamental to cultural meaning and stability (Hall 1997). In a similar vein, representation of landscape difference through the classification and mapping of topographical, forest and land-use categories plays a fundamental role in envisioning and sustaining territorial meaning and national integrity (Moore 1998, Vandergeest and Peluso 1995, Peluso and Vandergeest 2001). States arguably rely on representational practices to mark and link landscapes and people, in order to achieve stability. Marking of cultural and landscape categories can be characterized as part

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of a broader “matrix of intelligibility” (Butler and Scott 1992) in which complex, “illegible” social practices are reduced into a standard regulatory grid that can be centrally recorded, monitored and transformed (Anderson 1991, Scott 1998). Much has been written on the power of cartographic technology in the creation of territorial meaning (Harley 1992, Peluso et al. 1995, Sivaramakrishnan 1997). Representations of the natural and social worlds in maps carry with them a certain authenticity and authority, an assumption of “truthful” depiction of an objective “reality” based on “scientific” measurements and recordings. Maps, however, are not mere passive representations of an abstract scientific reality; they embody idealized social, physical and imaginative worlds and serve to “project, order and arrange”, shaping common-sense ways of seeing and knowing particular spaces (Cosgrove 1999; Harley 1988a, 1988b; Winichakul 1994). Ethnic identities based on “scientific” parameters become fixed to a specific territory under colonialism—what Said (1989: 218) calls the “geographical disposition” of ethnography (Salemink 2003a). As such, spatial boundaries take on racial meanings as the production of particular spaces contributes to the formation and exclusion of naturalized identities (Vandergeest 2003: 22). Maps and their implicit claims towards spatial and cultural stability persist as central communicative tools in the construction of the lowland:highland imaginary and assertion of state authority. The introduction of “scientific forestry”, in concert with cartography and ethnography, was central to the creation of a new way of thinking about and managing the highland landscape. The French created what Peluso and Vandergeest call a “political forest”, which involved the legal and institutional bounding and demarcation of forests and creation of rules and regulations governing access and exclusion (Peluso and Vandergeest 2001). This process created new modes of authority, obscuring other claims, made “forests” legible (through classification and mapping), and prioritized certain species and management regimes. Legal strategies to control access, yield and species circumscribed the forest according to “appropriate management models” and criminalized behaviour that did not conform. “Forests” as a “natural” category and associated assumptions regarding “appropriate” (and “inappropriate”) management assume a sense of normalcy. I will demonstrate how the discourses of cartography, ethnicity and scientific forestry circumscribed the mosaic of cultures, polities and environmental practices that constitute the landscape of Vietnam and were central to the constitution of state authority in the highlands and Vietnamese state-making processes more broadly.

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Constructing the Lowland:Highland Imaginary Precolonialism Difference was not always imagined topographically but emerged over time in relation to shifting geopolitics. Throughout the precolonial period, the Vietnamese imagined difference along axes of culture, politics and geography—much more fluid and contextual than the way it was conceived during the colonial period and is conceived today. Notions of difference were largely processes of cultural self-definition in relation to dominant China in the north, and internal efforts at establishing monarchical and regional authority (Woodside 1971, Li 1998). Civilizationalist and evolutionist discourses existed, but they had not yet been systematically defined and encapsulated into distinct notions of ethnicity and territory. In fact, dominant spatial constructions of difference were oriented longitudinally rather than elevationally. Vietnam’s history prior to the nineteenth century has been characterized as dual processes of Bắc cự (Vietnamese resistance to the north, i.e., China) and Nam Tiến (Vietnamese expansion to the south) (Li 1998: 19). The Vietnamese Nam Tiến movement, or southern territorial expansion, which began in the tenth century, attempted to incorporate and “civilize” the diverse peoples encountered, some in the plains, others in the midlands or mountains (Woodside 1971, Li 1998). While the Vietnamese in their southward expansion did tend to avoid the highlands, which they believed were filled with evil spirits and unfavourable to wet-rice farming (Hickey 1982a: 146), they did not systematically refer to the people living in the highlands as the “other”. Rather, they subjected them to a variety of situational labels that bore resemblance to Chinese referents. Similar to Chinese typologies of “barbarian”, in which some people were viewed as more civilizable than others,10 a distinction was drawn between highlanders who accepted Vietnamese authority and those who did not. The former were referred to as mọi thuộc (savages who know) or, in the case of highlanders engaged in trade with the lowlands, mọi buôn (commercial savages) (Hickey 1982a). Ironically, Khmer and Cambodians were often labelled as “upper barbarians” or cao man, while other upland-dwelling peoples were considered “savage” (mọi), much like the “raw barbarians” in the Chinese system, or those who had not yet begun to be civilized (Hickey 1982a, Woodside 1971). Derogatory cultural references were highly variable. The term Mán, for example, was used by Nguyễn bureaucrats both to classify the “barbarian” Cambodians, in the Chinese fashion, and to refer to the

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actual Mán highlanders who lived in the mountainous areas north of Hanoi (Woodside 1971: 240). Colonialism: Constructing Topographical Difference Early depictions of highland populations by French missionaries, explorers and subsequently colonial officers contain language and images associated with civilizationist and orientalist discourse prominent at the time (Sowerwine 2004a). The following statement found in L’Indochine Française, a 1919 publication of the Governor General of Indochina, is characteristic of this discourse: One would ask nothing better than to wander through this country where the progress of civilization is so slow that only those who live close to nature and listen attentively can hear the faintly beating heart of the Spirit of the Past. Wherever you go you see traces of this past mixed with the improvements of civilization and with the benefits of French protection.

We also see the beginnings of elevational determinism in which ethnicities become associated with or naturalized to certain elevations in a number of publications. “The fact that [the Meos] cannot acclimatize themselves to an altitude under 2,500 feet has saved them from absorption by surrounding peoples” (Thompson 1937: 382). 11 The book Ethnologie de l’union Française by Andre Leroi-Gourhan and Jean Poirier naturalizes the relationship between elevation and culture as well: “While climate is relatively unimportant in the geographic distribution of the population, this distribution is clearly determined by elevation … it is the topography that has determined the distribution of the Indochinese ethnic groups” (1953: 1–2). Similarly, Pierre Gourou (1929: 14) states, “The topography and the particular nature of the inhabitants explain the formidable opposition we have seen between the population of the plains and the populations of the mountains.” As the need for political allies grew, colonial interventions in the highlands became geared towards “facilitating closer relations between the various tribes and bringing them into contact with elements of a more advanced civilization” (Abadie 1924: 7). The characterization of the colonized, especially the peripheral peoples within the colony, as ancient and timeless appealed to the fascination of French and other colonial powers with “consuming” the other through travel, observation and representation. It lent further force and coherence to the colonists’ mission civilisatrice, to “enlighten” such “ancient” peoples.12

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In combination with this discourse, cartography, ethnography and forestry played a critical role in the classification, bounding and representation of landscape and cultural difference, sedimenting the binary and establishing state authority. While cadastral systems and maps existed prior to the nineteenth century,13 it wasn’t until the French arrival that cartography was extended into the highlands in a systematic way, fixing borderlands (Kunstadter 1967) and ascribing naturalized identities. A comprehensive “scientific” surveying and mapping of the country took place, producing the Indochina 1/100,000 map series (Đặng Hùng Võ and Lê Quý Thuc 2001). By 1909, the first attempt at representing Indochina’s forests could be found in the general atlas of Indochina by Chabert et Callois (Thomas 1999). In 1937 Georges Taboulet created the first ethnographic map, which was published in colour by the Société des études Indochinoises in the publication Groupes ethniques de l’Indochine Française (Malleret and Taboulet 1937). The cultures of Vietnam were mapped again in 1949 under the auspices of the École Française d’Extrême-Orient and published as the Carte ethnolinguistique, printed by the Service géographique de l’Indochine. This highly detailed ethnographic map of Indochina reflects a kind of power/knowledge that became central to the lowland:highland discourse. Colonial forestry institutions in Vietnam played a critical role in circumscribing the landscape and concentrating the power of the state as well. Cartographic technology enabled the state to “exact precise definitions, locations, and harvest regimes of forest lands” (Peluso 1995). In 1931, the Section de l’agriculture, de l’élevage et des forêts created a Map of the Principal Species of Wood of Indochina. The forest service effectively made the highland forests legible for exploitation and direct management through their classified inventory and visual representation. Forestry maps also contributed to derogatory assumptions about swidden agriculture. The map created by Paul Maurand in L’Indochine forestière (1943), indeed, is often used as a reference point from which to examine the rapid destruction of forests wrought by “slash and burn” agriculturalists since 1943. The map depicted in Figure 2.1, originally produced by the National Forest Inventory and Planning Institute, utilizes Maurand’s map as its 1943 reference point. This map, which illustrates rapid depletion of highland forests, continues to inform and legitimize state Định canh định cư (fixed cultivation and settlement) policies and sets the template for a kind of “origin forest” to which the state aspires to return. The power of Maurand’s map, however, is faulty, as the baseline data used to make the map date from 1930 (Thomas 1999: 242) and thus

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Figure 2.1 Changing forest cover in Vietnam

fail to account for the colonial degradation that occurred between 1930 and 1943. Based on surveys and maps of forestland, forest reserves were established in 1891. Swidden agriculture was banned, and local villagers or “indigenes” subsequently came under increased scrutiny by the state, as they were seen as a threat to maximizing the broader colonial mission of mise en valeur (economic exploitation). By the 1930s, swidden farming was identified as the most lethal threat to the forests. According to the bulletin of the Section de l’agriculture, de l’elevage & des forests, Indochine Française (1931: 3): … of the 300,000 square kilometers of forestland, not all is covered by veritable forests due to “le rays” [swidden fields]. [This] “burning of forests by the people according to their culture”, or abusive exploitation has ruined the grand expanses of the rich forests, which have been reduced to grasslands and bush, invaded by bamboo and degraded vegetation, thus the reconstitution of the forest lands will require a long time and important financial means.

This declensionist narrative was promulgated by scholars beyond Indochina as well. Virginia Thompson (1937: 111) singles out minority exploitation of the forests as the single greatest threat: “Natives have abused these forests since time immemorial. … the primitive mountain peoples have been the most destructive in burning the forests to fertilize

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the ground … nowadays this lack of forest land is being keenly felt, for the new industries and towns have an ever-increasing need of wood.” Auguste Chevalier, one of France’s premier colonial botanists, had a different view. According to him, it was the colonial administration that was destroying the forests with wanton logging and export to the metropole. Between 1904 and 1917 the protectorate of Tonkin received a net revenue of 1,031,288 French francs from the forests, yet very little was reinvested into the forests’ renovation (Chevalier 1919). By 1929, luxury woods were becoming scarce. Aside from a temporary dip during the economic crisis of the 1930s, the forests of Indochina continued to be exploited at an ever-increasing rate. Yet it is the narrative of the destructive, primitive mountain peoples, rather than the colonists, to whom responsibility for highland degradation is attributed that gets picked up, circulated and reified as “truth”. As the forests were bound and classified, ethnography and cartography contributed to the spatialization of ethnic identity and associated ethnic policy, in an effort to make the highland peoples and terrain “legible” in order to achieve strategic alliances (Salemink 2003a). During the colonial and early revolutionary periods, the lowland Vietnamese and colonial states struggled to achieve territorial control through competing discourses of ethnicity. The northern Vietnamese regime proclaimed the unity of all nationalities, describing the relations among all ethnic groups as “brotherly”, with the lowland Vietnamese symbolizing the elder brother who would guide his younger siblings towards modernity and development (Salemink 2003a: 147). The French, on the other hand, declared all ethnic minorities “civilizations” that were to be granted autonomous territories so as to avoid extinction under Vietnamese sovereignty (Salemink 2003a: 156). Despite ongoing shifting political alliances, the discourses of forestry and ethnography had laid the foundation for powerful transformations in the political-ecological landscape of Vietnam. The Revolutionary Period (1946–75): Boundary Anxieties and Shifting Alliances During Vietnam’s wars against the French (1946–54) and the Americans (1961–73), control over the forests (McKinley 1957, Kernan 1968) and the people of forest regions (Jackson 1968: 313; Salemink 2003a: 129) was vital to achieving political control.14 As General Giap noted, “to seize and control the highlands is to solve the problem of South Vietnam” (Wickert 1959: 137, in Jackson 1968: 328). This created the demand for

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even more accurate knowledge about the highland peoples and terrain for both the northern and southern regimes, contributed to the alignment of forest and ethnic policy, and heightened division between the lowlands and highlands, albeit separated into north and south. Ethnic and forest policy in both regions thus aimed to create political allies, yet their strategies and ultimate outcomes varied tremendously. Forests and forestry played an important strategic role during the revolutionary period, both in terms of battlegrounds and in terms of attempting social and territorial integration.15 It was perhaps during the revolutionary period that for the first time explicit linking of forest and ethnic policy as a means of social control was apparent. The southern regime, with significant support from the US CIA and AID, established a Directorate for Highland Affairs in 1964. This later became the Ministry for Development of Ethnic Minorities (Salemink 2003a: 205). In the same year, the influential book detailing the comprehensive ethnic classification of “highland peoples” sponsored by the US Human Relations Area Files titled Ethnic Groups of Mainland Southeast Asia and the accompanying Ethnolinguistic Map of Southeast Asia (LeBar, Hickey and Musgrave 1964) was published. Similarly, the (northern) Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam launched a nationwide project in 1958 to determine the customs, habits, religious practices and land practices of all the ethnic groups of Vietnam (Đặng Nghiêm Vạn 1998). In 1959 a Division of Ethnography was established as part of the newly created History Institute, and a Department of Ethnography was founded in Hanoi University (Evans 1985: 120).16 It was through the systematization and creation of 53 distinct “ethnic minorities” that the category of “national minorities” was born (Đặng Nghiêm Vạn 1998: 10). South Vietnam’s minority and land policies were informed by the desire for social integration based on principles of modernization and rationalization. The goals were assimilation, population resettlement, and confiscation of tribal lands (Jackson 1968: 326). Agricultural and forestry projects served as political tools to win the hearts of (or build a front against) the local populations and thereby consolidate state power and authority. In an important policy document outlining the future of the “Forests of Free Vietnam”, prepared by US Operations Mission Forest Resources Adviser Thomas W. McKinley, the underlying premise of creating stable, productive forests is clearly political: to achieve “country homesteads occupied by a people happily engaged in gainful occupation who have no time for political unrest; people who strive to blend their

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behavior pattern in concord with their neighbors rather than conflict” (McKinley 1957: 1). 17 Modernism, embraced by both US military intelligence and South Vietnam’s leadership, justified the settlement of “nomads” to overcome “superstition”, “ignorance” and “backwardness” and to arrest deforestation attributed to those characteristics (Montgomery 1959: 354–5, in Salemink 2003a: 188). In contrast to the often-antagonistic relationship between the southern Vietnamese state and the Central Highlands populations, the northern government’s approach to northern minorities was based on an ethnic policy of “unity in autonomy”: a discursive strategy aimed at making the north seem more minority-friendly to minorities in the south. Hồ Chí Minh established semi-autonomous zones for the Population Montagnards du Nord—Northern Mountain Population—in 1946, following the Soviet model, in exchange for military and other support during the First Indochina War (Jackson 1968).18 The ultimate goal, however, was to consolidate power and control over these strategically important border areas for both political and economic reasons (USIA 1964). During the period 1954–75, the policy on nationalities was to “gradually transform the uplands into new and comprehensive agricultural areas, to turn the uplands autarky economy into an economy with commercialized products, capable of improving the living conditions of the people and serving the cause of socialist industrialization of the country” (Nguyễn and Nguyễn n.d.: 7). By 1960 the constitution declared Vietnamese society, for the first time, as “a unified state made up of many nationalities”, paving the way for a unitary approach towards the highlands and a future platform of integration under socialism. Forest policy and programmes in the north also aimed at social integration. All land with a slope greater than 25 degrees was declared forestry land and was to be managed by state forest enterprises (SFEs) for the purposes of production, protection and reforestation. SFEs were to play an important role in social and community development as well, providing employment, education, health care, housing and basic food needs (Jackson1968: 73). In effect, SFEs served dual functions: forest management and ideological indoctrination. Lending support to this alignment of forest and ethnic policy was the establishment of the Department of Fixed Cultivation and Sedentarization (Định Canh Định Cư) in 1968, under the auspices of the Ministry of Forestry. The primary goals of this programme were to settle itinerant agriculturalists into permanent settlements with the assistance of state subsidies for housing, infrastructure, tax exemption and short-term food supply (Sikor

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1999: 20–1). Around the same time (beginning in 1960), the northern government launched the khai hoang, or “clear the lands”, programme, designed to facilitate the settlement and foster the civilizing of the highlands by encouraging lowland Vietnamese to settle in the highlands. This programme was extended to the Central Highlands with unification (Hardy 1998). Socialist Period Pre-Dổi Mới (1976–86): Imagining Unity, Consolidating Difference Having defeated the French and Americans, the Vietnamese state was faced with the daunting task of erasing heterogeneous histories from the north to the south, between the borders and the centre, to create an imaginary national community based on a fictitious common heritage (Anderson 1991, Keyes 1997). The Vietnamese government set out to construct a shared history and promote “unity in diversity” using socialist and evolutionist rhetoric borrowed from the Soviet Union. Paradoxically, it simultaneously replicated hierarchical notions of difference established under colonialism. Systematic efforts to invent a shared tradition (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) included subjecting highland populations to Vietnamese cultural heritage, values, and a civilized way of life through the resettlement of lowlanders into the highlands; modern-style education in the Vietnamese language; propaganda via mass media, including radios, flyers and loudspeakers; the circulation of books, newspapers, photos, engravings and other “cultural items”; as well as new administrative regulations (Sowerwine 2004a).19 Semi-autonomous regions were abruptly dissolved. Individualism was supplanted with collectivism, as all people, knowledge and natural resources of Vietnam became the property of the state. The “motley crowds”, to use James Scott’s (1998) term, became citizens of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The goal of Vietnamese Communist anthropology was to study social change and ethnicity not only in order to understand it, but to induce change along the lines of socialist development based on “scientific” engineering (Evans 1985). The government thereby stepped up its efforts to systematically survey, classify and enumerate all dân tộc (people), culminating in the 1979 ethnic classification system that not only belies the ambiguity inherent in such distinctions (Kahn 1999) but also draws attention away from the political relations involved in the construction of ethnic difference (Taylor 2001: 28), such as the erasure of the Montagnard ethnicity. The Communist Party of Vietnam’s policy on nationalities

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exemplifies the evolutionary sentiment constitutive of the lowland: highland binary (Nông Quốc Chấn 1978: 57–8): The Party’s policy on nationalities consists in practicing full equality in all respects between various ethnic groups, in creating conditions for the complete eradication of all differences in economic and cultural levels between small and large ethnic groups, in making the mountain regions catch up with the plains, the highlands with the lowlands, in securing to all ethnic groups … a plentiful, civilized and happy life, and in making all of them develop in every respect, united in helping one another to progress and to exercise collective mastery over the independent, unified and socialist motherland Vietnam.

Forestry and cartography reflected the dominant ideology and played a critical role in the state-building project as well as consolidating the lowland:highland binary. For the first time in history, “the highlands” were imagined and mapped as a discrete, contiguous geographic and cultural region extending 1,400 kilometres from the Đồng Văn plateau in the north to Nam Bộ in the southeast, including mountain systems of the northeast and northwest as well as the Trường Sơn Mountain Range in the Central-Southern region (Nguyễn Trọng Diêu 1995: 15). Concerns over stabilizing populations in volatile border regions intensified efforts to settle “nomadic” highlanders for the purpose of “developing their intellectual and moral character”, creating a strong and stable economy, arresting deforestation, stabilizing border regions, and fostering solidarity among all “nationalities”. 20 Without the threat of war, state forest enterprises intensified their logging, decimating the forests at an annual rate of 15 million cubic metres (Sikor 1999), yet “the issue of [ethnic minorities] using forest resources to live, … has not been resolved in an appropriate manner that conforms with reason and sentiment” (Mạc Dương 1986: 97). Economic Liberalization (1986–Present): Unwitting Alliances Bolster Imaginary The opening of the economy in the late 1980s resulted in a large influx of international monetary aid as well as the importation of Western development and conservation discourses. A series of reforms, ostensibly aimed at decentralizing state control over forests and agricultural lands, in fact subjected the peoples and resources of the highlands to greater degrees of surveillance and state control. Still concerned with stabilizing border regions and monitoring the populace, the Vietnamese government

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embraced foreign aid and established a number of institutions and programmes to carry out its goal of assimilation. In tandem with global environmental discourse, the government established a plethora of new national parks and engaged in extensive forestry programmes to “regreen barren lands” (Sowerwine 2004c). Coinciding with the influx of international aid, the Committee for Ethnic Minorities and Mountainous Areas was established in 1990 to facilitate the “stabilization” of ethnic minority populations and to improve the conditions of the highlands as a whole.21 Continued advances in cartographic, GIS and census technology with support from the World Bank and UNDP facilitated the production of a new ethnographic map of Vietnam, the production of the first “poverty map” of Vietnam in 1997, and the establishment of a nationwide land administration in 1994. The land administration had responsibility for land classification, topographic mapping, and the management of land records and registers. Such technological displays of the socio-ecological landscape commanded great authority, despite wide acknowledgement that the data source was questionable. It is extraordinary how in such a relatively short amount of time, the availability of technological and financial means allowed the regulatory gaze of the Vietnamese state to reach into the remotest highland communes at the touch of a keyboard. Representational practices marking the distinction between the lowlands and highlands have acquired new meaning as well. Despite nationalistic rhetoric hailing the unity of all nationalities, the deep division between the highlands and lowlands has become further institutionalized and circulated more broadly with improvements in media. Not only Vietnamese ethnographers but also international development agencies unwittingly continue to replicate historical stereotypes in their research and publications on the ethnic minorities. Vietnamese institutions continue to attribute highland degradation to the “backward customs” and “roving life” of the “nomads”. Tourism companies, travel ethnographers, as well as the Museum of Ethnology represent highland peoples as timeless, exotic and other, replicating the orientalist discourse of the early 1900s. Critics of assimilationist policies unintentionally reproduce assumptions about ethnic minorities as subjugated, “left behind”, disciplined and poverty stricken, thereby reifying the dominant discourse. Most surprising is the role of Western development discourse. Despite discussion about the need to incorporate diversity into highland development programmes (Jamieson 1991, Rambo 1997, Baulch et al. 2002), both domestic and international development institutions perpetuate the myth of homogeneity and marginality of the highlands—either directly, through language, or

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indirectly by creating grand-scale projects devoid of attention to the intralocale specificity.22 Large sums of money invested by these institutions, with the intention of enabling the highlands and ethnic minorities to “catch up” with the lowlands, inadvertently reinforce regional stereotypes. A United Nations bulletin on poverty elimination (UNDP/UNFPA/ UNICEF 1995: 24–5), for example, implies that ethnic minorities are poor because they are not assimilated with the rest of Vietnamese society: Some [ethnic minorities] are relatively assimilated with the larger society and tend to have incomes similar to those of their Kinh neighbors. Others have not assimilated and are often much poorer … They tend to live in remote areas … have little contact with the national economy … are subsistence farmers who practice swidden agriculture …

In another case, while calling for a radical shift in highland development agendas in their publication The Development Crisis in Vietnam’s Mountains, Neil Jamieson, Le Trong Cuc and A. Terry Rambo (1998) inadvertently reinforce the distinction between the highlands and lowlands as well as the stereotype of the highlands as victim. They do this by focusing on gross poverty indicators that show an overall “crisis” in the highlands, rather than ethnographic observations that would pick up variability in experience. In fact, as Thomas Sikor (2000) points out, a similar report produced around the same time by Deanna Donovan et al. (1997), utilizing more ethnographic methods, suggests that highland development trends are improving. In yet another case, a quantitative statistical report published by the World Bank (Baulch et al. 2002) based on data from the Vietnam Living Standard Survey suggests that geographic and cultural remoteness determines poverty. The report states that prosperity for ethnic minorities can be achieved largely by “closing the cultural gap” between them and the lowland Kinh, or, in essence, assimilating. This response bears a striking resemblance to earlier colonial assumptions. Replicating stereotypes of highland peoples as collectively remote, poor and “in crisis” has the unintended effect of reinforcing the very distinctions these peoples are trying to erase.23 Conclusion: Imagining Alternative Lines of Inquiry This chapter demonstrated how processes of statecraft over time produced a lowland:highland dichotomy through the employment of specific categories of power/knowledge, regimes of representation, and shifting modes of governance. It examined how orientalist/evolutionist ideologies

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and certain “technologies of power” associated with the institutions and practices of cartography, ethnography and forestry contributed to assembling and normalizing the lowland:highland binary and continue to frame and drive upland research and development initiatives today. Millions of dollars are spent on upland development projects to help the highlands “catch up” with the lowlands, to reforest “barren lands”, to “settle the nomads” and to reduce poverty. Yet decades of state efforts aimed at assimilation and rational forest management have had little sustained effect on highland processes. Rather, there is increasing evidence of the “failures of development”, citing inequity, increasing poverty, environmental degradation, corruption and resistance. Efforts to understand why states fail to achieve uniform territorial hegemony often rely on bimodal analytics of domination and resistance (or structure and agency). This approach assumes that dominant actors wield ultimate power and create structures that those of lesser power either comply with or consciously resist. Practices that run counter to the dominant order are characterized as various forms of agency, ranging from outright revolution (Moore 1966, Paige 1975, Scott 1976, Wolf 1969) to scattered violent protest (Guha 1990, Peluso 1992a) and everyday forms of resistance (Colburn 1989; Guha 1990; Peluso 1992a; Scott 1985, 1990; Scott and Kerkvliet 1986). Much of the theory on social movements adheres to this vision of deliberate forms of resistance to a dominant authority, presuming that in order to undermine the dominant power or to shift control, there must be an active, conscious competing or oppositional ideology—be it “onstage” or “offstage”. Other approaches draw on Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault’s more nuanced notion of relational power, in which power is neither held nor monopolized by a dominant force but is constantly shifting, relational and uneven (Abu-Lughod 1990, Bourdieu 1977, Butler and Scott 1992, Caouette and Turner 2009, Gupta and Ferguson 1997, Mitchell 1990). These suggest that resistance can be understood only in relation to a “strategy of power”, and that such strategies are shifting, mobile and multiple. Even as they highlight the conjunctural aspects of resistance, they do so through the idioms of “struggle” and “strategy”. This stance naturally assumes a conscious acknowledgement on the part of individuals or groups of some kind of oppression that mobilizes people to resist, in a variety of both active and passive ways. Drawing on either the bimodal or more nuanced literature on domination and resistance, one would expect to see in Vietnam either compliance to the dominant order (or acceptance in a hegemonic kind of way), rebellion (in the form of a collective social

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movement) or protest (either actively, or passively through the forms of everyday resistance). While the above theoretical literature helps to explain punctuated moments of revolt and resistance that have characterized shifting relations of power over territorial sovereignty in highland Vietnam, its emphasis on conscious or intentional resistance to authority, albeit in non-linear ways, fails to account for the myriad forms of non-intentional situated spatial practice that profoundly shape the contours of the highland socioecological landscape today. Rather than “struggling” against or opposing the dominant order in either passive or aggressive ways, many people in Vietnam operate as innovative constructive agents. Such agents articulate their actions not as resistance to domination, but as a logical or obvious response to new opportunities, whose actions are often built on the historical continuity of their own sedimented livelihood practices. It is these everyday practices—cultural, political, relational and ecological—to which I would like to draw attention. Borrowing from Michel DeCerteau’s (1984) attention to such “tactile dimensions of social practice” and Andrew Vayda’s (1983) notion of progressive contextualization, we can begin to understand the limits of state authority in the highlands in new ways. Beginning on the ground, this approach explicitly focuses on what people say and do, especially around their interaction with the environment, and then explains this behaviour by placing them within progressively wider or denser contexts (Vayda 1983). It also borrows from Sara Berry’s (1989, 1993) notion of ethnography of process called “methodological processualism” that allows for flexibility of analysis where “no condition is permanent”. Berry suggests chronicling people and resources in motion through the use of participant observation, ethnographic study of those movements, and an analysis of social networks across space and time. Moving beyond assumed boundaries of analysis, this approach opens up new lines and flows of interpretation. It highlights the often mundane, diverse and productive ways in which people talk about and lead their lives, which constitute profound forms of “anti-discipline” that greatly shape social and environmental landscapes. This kind of “territorial disorder” intimates a sort of interstitial, hybrid or alternative space in which the spatial practices of social actors mediate powerful forces in ways not necessarily envisioned by the state or by the acting agents (Sowerwine 2004a). Examining flows of capital, resources and individual action at multiple scales can illuminate a vast diversity of alternative environmental imaginaries, which are always actively configured along multiple localized

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axes of power that are at once mediated by the circulation of global forces, including markets, capital, commodities and ideologies. As such, this mode of inquiry shifts the analytical lens beyond binaries (state: local, domination:resistance, lowland:highland) and critically examines associated categories of power/knowledge. Practices of power/knowledge frequently remain hidden, as everyday categories of knowledge (such as landscape categories, criminality, poverty indicators, maps, education, ethnic categories), and are often accepted as “truths” rather than critically assessed as to where they came from, how they became codified as real, how they persisted and became institutionalized, what their political or economic impact is, and whether alternative conceptualizations exist. This is not to suggest that socio-economic or ecological categories should be done away with as indicators of well-being, but that they should be explicitly examined in a more nuanced fashion. Some recent scholarship is beginning to take this on. For example, rather than taking state authority as a given, Thomas Sikor (Chapter 6) “traces practices and processes forming, expanding, modifying, reducing and abolishing authority, thereby making the authority attributed to the central government a result of the analysis instead of a founding premise”. This approach shifts attention away from “state policy” as the place of departure from which to examine people’s “response”, by starting at the local level and then studying what exists as well as the boundaries and flows that emerge out of the local context. Others have critically examined dominant conceptions of ethnicity (Salemink 2003a, Taylor 2001, La Công 2001), borderlands (Turner 2010), forests and barren land (Chapters 3 and 8), and illegality (McElwee 2004). “Barren land” has been shown to be a politically charged category, masking and undermining productive common lands (Chapter 3), swidden fields (Chapter 8) and medicinal gathering grounds (Sowerwine 2004b). National borders, with their symbolic territorial meaning, are found to be extremely porous as “borderline citizens” negotiate their meaning and very existence (Turner 2010). Local people explain their “illegal” actions in terms of social justice, poverty alleviation and local control, rather than in the state’s terms of illegality (McElwee 2004). As we begin to lift various binaries and dominant categories off the map, we begin to see very different cultural landscape values, meanings and orientations emerge. This combination of ethnography and discourse analysis lays the groundwork for alternative values and rules to be heard and possibly govern new ways of thinking, speaking and acting in relation to or in constructing knowledge about the highlands, the lowlands and beyond.

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They illuminate how diverse practices on the ground negotiate authority not only over material objects (such as land, trees and labour) but also over the symbolic authority of dominant categories of knowledge, including state authority itself. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Thomas Sikor, Jeff Romm and the anonymous reviewers for productive feedback on earlier versions of this chapter, as well as Emma Tome for her excellent cartographic work. I would also like to acknowledge that the research that led to this publication was made possible with funding from the Fulbright-Hays DDRA Program and the Social Science Research Council IDRF Program. Notes 1. The Kinh are the dominant ethnic group of Vietnam, comprising roughly twothirds of the population. 2. Environmental imaginaries are the beliefs, discourses and environmental practices that are grounded in the social relations of production (Peet and Watts 1996). 3. Controlling processes are “The mechanisms by which ideas take hold and become institutional in relation to power … [they] allow the incorporation of the full panoply of key concepts—ideology, hegemony, social and cultural control—in the study of both invisible and visible aspects of power working vertically through ideas and institutions …” (Nader 1997). 4. Hardy (1998) and De Koninck (2000) demonstrate how settlement policies of ethnic Kinh into the highland areas were an integral part of statecraft. 5. See Chapter 10 of this volume, Tan (2000), Michaud (2000a), Salemink (1995), Li Tana (1998), and even earlier studies: Hickey (1982a), Evans (1992), Jackson (1968), McAlister (1967). 6. This includes research by Stan Tan Boon Hwee, Andrew Hardy, Jean Michaud, Sarah Turner, Oscar Salemink, Thomas Sikor, Pamela McElwee, Dương Bích Hạnh, among others. 7. I borrow from the Gramscian sense, in which common sense refers to the way in which we live our everyday lives, which includes the ensemble of everyday associations and practices that support the dominant views as well as those that express dissent (good sense) (Gramsci 1971: 330n). 8. See Taylor (2008a) for an excellent summary and critique of assumptions. 9. Notions of Oriental backwardness, degeneracy and inequality were born out of nineteenth century ideas about the biological bases of racial inequality operationalized by systems of racial classification founded on “scientific” validity. It is no coincidence that the Vietnamese adopted this, as the French were leading proponents of this advanced/backward binarism (see Saussure 1899).

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10. Fiskesjo (1999: 151) provides an excellent discussion of the distinction between “raw” (sheng) and “cooked” (shu) barbarians, the latter having submitted to Chinese rule whilst still remaining culturally different, while the former remained “unready” for civilization. 11. Interestingly, Gourou (1936) conversely claims that the Kinh will never be able to adapt to life in the highlands. 12. A notable exception to this dominant approach was Leopold Sabatier, résident of Darlac in the Central Highlands, who actively excluded lowland Vietnamese influence and opposed colonization among the Rhade in the 1920s (Salemink 1991). 13. The first cadastral system in Vietnam was established under the Lê Dynasty and delineated in the Hồng Đức Law in 1490. This cadastral system became a central tool in land administration and the collection of agricultural tax in the lowlands (Đặng Hùng Võ 1997: 1). The Nguyễn Dynasty expanded and revised the cadastral code between 1805 and 1836, and 10,044 volumes of land records covering 18,000 communes across the country were established (Đặng Hùng Võ 1997: 1; Nguyễn Đình Đầu 1996). 14. For further discussion about the dates of the First Indochina War and the Second Indochina War, see Karnow (1984) and Turley (2008). 15. For further discussion on territorial integration, see Evans (1992), De Koninck (1996, 2000) and Déry (2000). 16. The division was upgraded to the Institute of Ethnography under the Committee of Social Sciences of the DRV (Evans 1985: 121). 17. In 1954, the United States proposed aid support for forestry development and rehabilitation. 18. The Thái-Mèo zone was established on 29 April 1955 in the areas west of the Red River, followed by the Việt Bắc zone on 10 August 1956 corresponding to the northeastern region, and finally the Lao-Ha Yên zone on 25 March 1957 comprising the upper Red River provinces of Lào-Kay and Yên Báy and the mountains of Hà-Giang (Jackson 1968: 320–1). 19. From 1960 to 1992, 5.4 million inhabitants from the lowlands were moved to the highlands for establishing new economic zones (Nguyễn and Nguyễn n.d.: 8). For more discussion on migration as part of the state-making project, see De Koninck (2000) and Hardy (1998). 20. This followed Government Resolution No. 38/CP to provide guidance on implementing the sedentary farming and life scheme (Nguyễn Duy Thiệu and Nguyễn Sỹ Tuấn n.d.: 13). 21. From 1993 to 1996, the programme budget increased more than four-fold (CEMMA 1995). 22. Since the 1990s, there have been some efforts by international aid organizations, the Germans in particular, to create development strategies and programmes that incorporate intra-highland diversity, and more of a “bottom-up” approach. Nevertheless, most continue to target development programmes at a multiprovincial level, following the government’s directive. 23. Jayati Lal makes similar claims in “Situating Locations: The Politics of Self, Identity and ‘Other’ in Living and Writing the Text”, in Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork, ed. Diane L. Wolf (1996).

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3

Who Should Manage the Land? Common Property and Community Responses in Vietnam’s Shifting Uplands

Pamela McElwee

Introduction Changing concepts of ownership and usufruct rights to land can have profound consequences for efforts to improve agricultural productivity, redistribute agrarian wealth, and conserve land-based resources such as forests—all problems that state planners of Vietnam’s uplands have had to deal with in recent years. In Vietnam, changing rules over landownership, particularly during the twentieth century, have created a highly variable understanding of local rights, national laws, and the marginal areas in between. In this chapter, I look at the implications of the country’s shift to a market-oriented land tenure system on collective management of natural resources. I argue with evidence from the North Central region that in the rush to privatize land rights and replant forests on “bare hills” and “waste lands” that are found throughout the midlands and uplands, a number of locally constructed common property systems of land management have been overlooked and are under threat. A vast literature has arisen to define and explain the existence of common property regimes (CPRs). A CPR is often defined as land held by an identifiable community of users who can exclude others and regulate use of the resource (McCay and Acheson 1987: 4). Much of this literature arose in critique of Garret Hardin’s famous model of the “tragedy of the commons”, with its premise that commonly owned or used property becomes degraded because there is no incentive for individuals to contribute to its collective protection (Hardin 1968). As the CPR literature 75

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since has made clear, Hardin actually confused open access with common property regimes, and many case studies have shown that commonly held or used property can be protected by the many for the good of the many, provided that there is proper incentive and structure in which to do so (Bromley and Cernea 1989, Bromley 1992, Ostrom et al. 1992, Agrawal and Chhatre 2006). Yet the international attention to CPRs has not been mirrored by equal attention to CPRs in Vietnam. Rather, the Vietnamese state has focused in recent years on the de facto privatization of agricultural land and forestland to households through new land laws, and has been supplied with financing for this process from multilateral and bilateral lending institutions. This focus on privatization is all the more surprising given that common property management has a long history in Vietnam, as I discuss below. However, many lands that were long managed as CPRs have become threatened with appropriation since the reform of land laws. These threats include environmental “regreening” plans to reforest much of the uplands with small-scale timber plantations. Such processes are not new, of course; indeed, the enclosure of the commons was a major theme in Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, where he noted that enclosure in pre-industrial England amounted to parliamentary “robbery” (Marx 1887). Similarly, in twenty-first century Vietnam, I argue that a lack of attention to the scope and diversity of CPRs is resulting in a slow erosion of the power of collective decision making over land and the enclosure of commons, with concomitant effects on land management and social relations, particularly in rural uplands. The importance of this topic in relation to the themes of this book has several aspects. First, this case study highlights the similarities between uplands and lowlands in land management, in that collective ownership and use of land can be found across the country in many ecologically different environments. As Jennifer Sowerwine points out, many essentialist “characteristics” of uplands have been pointed to as highlighting differences with lowlands, particularly in terms of ecology, livelihoods and ethnicity (Chapter 2). Yet commonly managed lands were once found in both rice-growing deltas and forest-covered mountains, as a review of French colonial sources undertaken for this chapter reveals. Thus, there were often close similarities between uplands and lowlands throughout history, rather than distinct differences in land management. Second, this chapter points out the shifting definitions of “uplands” in Vietnam, and notes that what is mapped as uplands at one point in time can shift in later periods. The site of research for this chapter is

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Hà Tĩnh province, a coastal province that was considered during the French colonial era to be firmly in the realm of lowlands and is populated primarily by Kinh people, not minorities. Yet by the time of my field research, this area was officially considered “poor and mountainous” under a new poverty reduction programme that allowed residents to access government funds for reforestation and land allocation; and residents often referred to themselves as “mountain people” (người miền núi) to distinguish themselves from related Kinh who made a living in nearby coastal areas and who did not have livelihoods dependent on forest farming. Finally, my chapter points out that state attempts to remake the ecology of upland areas through land allocation and tree planting have had very mixed results in different areas, and that such centralized state plans are unlikely to be effective in other areas of the uplands unless local conditions are better understood, a theme highlighted by Hoàng Cầm, Thomas Sikor, and Nghiêm Phương Tuyến and Masayuki Yanagisawa (Chapters 4, 6 and 7), among others. Cultural Histories of Land Tenure Commons have long been one of the most important land tenure categories for villages in Vietnam. One of the earliest and most important strategies for the expansion of the Vietnamese imperial dominion was to give land grants to loyal feudal lords to organize control of vast but remote areas, in a southward movement known as the Nam Tiến (Hickey 1982a). The lords would mobilize peasants to move to new lands, and give them collective property rights in return for working and clearing the new fields (Nguyễn Khắc Đàm 1962). Besides this, any lands not belonging to a village, or to an individual in a village, were considered to belong to the emperor. This included forests and uncultivated lands (Ngô Kim Chung 1987). Under imperial edict, the royal court at Hue and local lords and mandarins could share out these land rights to cooperative individuals as private lands (ruộng tư). Or the king could grant public lands to villages for their local management; these lands were called cộng điền (public rice fields) and cộng thổ (public “other” lands, which could be dry fields, pastures, residences or forests) (Hendry 1959, Nguyễn Đình Đầu 1992). The public common lands available for a village’s collective management could also be acquired in several other ways: through a set-aside at the time of the founding of the village; through donations from individuals (such as those without heirs); and through the village working collectively to clear or claim new lands (Thomas 1924, Nguyễn Đình Đầu 1992). These public

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lands on average comprised 5–15 per cent of a village’s total land area, and were managed by the collective for raising money for taxes, feasts and celebrations. They could also be parcelled out for use by poor villagers and those without sufficient land of their own (Vũ Huy Phúc 1966; Minh Quang Đào 1993: 85). Villages often leased out portions of their communal lands to wealthier individuals to raise money, or submitted parts of the communal lands to public auction and used the proceeds to pay taxes (Vũ Văn Hiền 1955). In some areas of Annam, all the village lands were treated as communal (in other words, there were no inalienable private lands), and these village holdings were reallocated periodically in equal amounts called khẩu phần to able-bodied men over 18 listed on village membership rolls (Cao Văn Biền 1987: 123). The commons were considered so important in precolonial Vietnam that the punishment for usurpers of public commons was more severe than for violators of private property laws under the Lê emperors’ legal code (Nguyễn Cảnh Quý 2000). Land in Colonial Vietnam Under the French colonial administration, which began in the second half of the nineteenth century, new systems of land tenure were introduced to replace the previous imperial system. Concerned with the need to match the droit annamite (what we would today call Vietnamese customary law) with French juridical concepts, the colonial administration focused on establishing rules for property ownership, taking it out of the social realm of village affairs and passing it firmly to individuals in a contract with the state (Gil 1926, Boudillon 1927). As John Bassford (1987: 89) notes of the transition: Vietnamese property rights were familial and were embodied in village custom. Customs were unwritten and uncodified, yet were specific and generally acknowledged. Rights were protected by the importance of custom in the social fabric. Conflict resolution was the domain of the Confucian scholar-bureaucrat and council of elders … By contrast, French property rights were personal and clearly spelled out in the body of civil law. The law was universal and standardized. Justice was rendered by a stranger who interpreted the law to ensure that the individual’s rights were preserved.

In addition to the individualization of property rights, the promotion of a land market was a major goal of the French, who saw it as a way to regulate land prices and land use. Formerly, land sales were almost unheard of in Vietnam, as it had been villages, not individuals, that

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controlled who could live and use land within their boundaries (Bienvenue 1911). Village land rolls, known as địa bạ, were taken as evidence of landownership by the French and used as the basis of land judgements, even though the rolls usually listed only the privately held lands in a village and were almost always vague for purposes of tax evasion (Bassford 1987: 90–2). What was not on these rolls (much of the village commons) was considered “unused” land by the colonial administration, and was often granted as concessions free of charge to any Frenchman in return for a promise to put the land into cultivation and pay land taxes (Morel 1912, Tạ Thị Thủy 1996). The Fate of the Commons By 1930, the area of new French agricultural concessions amounted to 104,000 hectares in Tonkin, 168,400 hectares in Annam, and 606,500 hectares in Cochinchina. It is difficult to know how much of this land had previously belonged to villages, but by 1939, while communal lands still made up 20 per cent of the cultivated land of villages in the north, they amounted to only 3 per cent of lands in the south, where concessions were most widespread (Gourou 1945). In addition to the loss of common lands to make agricultural concessions, many cộng điền lands had also been alienated by villages themselves in order to pay the heavy tax loads that the new French regime imposed upon them (Ngô Vĩnh Long 1990). Some have speculated that in the 1930s, 75 per cent of the farming families in the Mekong Delta were functionally landless, due to the loss of village common lands to concessions and the difficult conditions of farming under sharecropping (Ngô Vĩnh Long 1991). The loss of the commons was not tolerated quietly, and in many areas the alienation of commons sparked revolutionary efforts. For example, “in the 1920s court cases involving communal land were so extensive in the central Vietnamese provinces of Nghệ An and Hà Tĩnh that a Vietnamese historian later concluded that ‘this form of struggle was so widespread that it could almost be considered a movement’” (White 1981: 28). With landlessness and poverty seen as possible causes for the widespread agrarian unrest in the early 1930s, most notably in the Nghệ Tĩnh uprising of 1930 (see Scott 1976), many colonial administrators began to view the communal lands as potential buffers against more rural protest: “In the 1930s, in response to rising peasant unrest, the French made further moves to increase communal land and ensure its redistribution … A decree was passed in 1935 stipulating that provincial heads were to make sure

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that villages redistributed their communal land every three years” (White 1991: 149). We can see the role of commons, and the forces that threatened their existence, from a look at data from the 1930s dealing with Hà Tĩnh province (where my contemporary fieldwork took place). There, commons were an important land tenure system that guarded against individual risk in a hostile and environmentally uncertain land vulnerable to drought and floods (Gourou 1945: 289). In Hà Tĩnh, although there were complaints that the French had appropriated some common lands, most districts still had significant areas (see Table 3.1). The strong retention of common lands was likely a result of the relative lack of rice plantation concessions in the province as compared with other parts of the North Central Coast (Roule 1931: 241), as Hà Tĩnh shared with more characteristically “upland” areas a base of poor, thin topsoil, extensive forest cover inland from the coast, and rocky slopes unsuitable for farming. But while commons still existed in many areas, the table also shows that few of them were put into productive use each year; the rest were held in fallow, or were held for potential sale or rent to raise money for the village at a later date. However, these lands were often at risk of being considered “empty” or “uncultivated” lands by French authorities. Land Tenure in Revolutionary Vietnam The changes in landownership that were begun by the French were a major factor in the discontent and rural unrest that led to the Vietnamese Revolution in 1945. When Hồ Chí Minh’s Việt Minh front challenged Table 3.1 Common lands held in districts of Hà Tĩnh Province in 1932 District

Fallow common lands (mẫu)*

Cẩm Xuyên Hương Khê Hương Sơn Kỳ Anh Thạch Hà Can Lộc Nghi Xuân

2,082 1,068 1,655 2,167 3,113 1,920 1,920

Productive in-use common lands (mẫu) 252 489 19 156 1,471 543 543

Note: * 1 mẫu = 0.5 hectare. Source: Henry 1932, pp. 124–5.

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French colonial rule, one of the former’s first major demands was for the reform of land relations (Moise 1978). In 1953 the national government passed laws for overall land reform, which were aimed at collaborationist and wealthy landlords, and lands were given to poor people to implement the policy of “land to the tiller” (người cày có ruộng). Overall, approximately 700,000 hectares of land were redistributed to poor and landless peasants throughout North Vietnam at this time (Moise 1978). However, it was always understood by Communist Party leaders that land reform was just a first step towards the collectivization of land, and in 1957 the government declared that all productive land was under the ownership of the socialist state and was eventually to be managed by collective farms (SRV 1990). The fate of village commons in the northern part of the country during the collective period is relatively unknown. While lower-level cooperatives of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which were organized around villages, likely continued or mirrored rules on collective land management from the past, by the late 1960s the consolidation of villages into larger and larger cooperatives likely began the erosion of local control of many lands (Kerkvliet 1997). Indeed, some Vietnam scholars have seen the late cooperative era as more akin to state management, as quotas for production often came from centralized bureaucracies (Cương Phạm 1964). In the case of forest management, there were even clearer signs of centralized state management in the form of state forest enterprises (SFEs, or lâm trường). All forestlands were nationalized and considered as belonging to the state post-1960s, and hundreds of SFEs were used to “manage” these forests, primarily through heavy logging and replanting. By the time the Vietnam-US war had ended in 1975, problems that had remained relatively hidden during the patriotism and sustained struggle of the war years emerged in the cooperatives. Shirking collective duties, foot-dragging and cheating were all common strategies to get out of cooperative work or to exploit it to one’s advantage (Kerkvliet 2005). There were also increasingly clamorous voices calling for private incentives for production. Cooperative members had all along been occupying unused land and raising private crops on it (sản xuất riêng), and they called on cooperatives to formalize this de facto practice (Kerkvliet 1995). Eventually, these trends towards private production were officially recognized when the national Communist Party leadership approved Resolution 100 in 1981, the first official sanctioning of a household production contract system, which sent the signal that cooperative control was eroding (Kerkvliet 1995).

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Tenure Changes under Đổi Mới The establishment of long-term leasehold rights to agricultural land for individuals was an important part of the Đổi Mới transition, and was first officially promulgated in 1988 in a new national land law. According to the 1988 Land Law, the state was “entrusting” (giao) land to households and organizations for long-term use. At this time, however, no rights of transfer or sale were given to households for land, particularly forestland, indicating that there was not yet a complete confirmation of the concept of privatizing land (Hayami 1993). However, the Land Law was significantly revised in 1993, further strengthening the processes of privatization. Under the 1993 revisions, individual land-use rights (quyền sử dụng đất) and land tenure certificates (LTCs) (giấy sở hữu đất), also known as “Red Books”, were to be issued to households, with five fundamental rights—the right to exchange, lease, transfer, mortgage and inherit the land (SRV 1994, Castella et al. 2006). Landholders could receive 20-year renewable tenure rights on land for annual crops and 50-year rights for perennial crops and forestland; for all intents and purposes, as these 20- and 50-year “leases” were renewable, transferable and inheritable, land was essentially becoming privatized in actuality, if not yet officially in law. What was not addressed in the 1993 Land Law revision was the fate of collectively managed land. That is, would there be a role for commons in a Đổ i Mớ i Vietnam, or a complete legal retreat from collective management? While many lands previously considered commons were folded into agricultural cooperatives in the socialist era, in some areas commons had remained strong. For example, in some places, agricultural cooperatives administered only wet-rice fields; other agricultural lands (such as shifting cultivation land and forests) were freely exploited by private households or managed in clan, family or community groups (Vương Xuân Tình and Hjemdahl 1997, Sikor 2004a). Many people thus were able to maintain their traditional land management practices even under socialism, making it difficult to estimate the amount of resources that were still managed communally. Perhaps as a result of this lack of attention to CPRs, the 1993 Land Law changes had nothing to say about them. In fact, in the explicit definitions of who would be allowed to manage land, communities were left off the list (World Bank 2004). This put many CPRs in legal limbo; while they may have continued in practice, in reality—because they were not included in the land law changes—new levels of ambiguity

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were introduced, as groups could not officially apply for LTCs for land collectively (World Bank 2004). While the land law was revised again in 2003 to finally include communities as legitimate landowners, the rate of community landownership of LTCs remains very low because of legal unfamiliarity and slow implementation (World Bank 2009). The legal environment for forest allocation has been even more challenging than that for agricultural allocation (Mellac 2009). Forest allocation ostensibly had several goals. The major objective was to create incentives for better protection of forest resources by local villagers by either paying them to take care of lands or by encouraging investment in forestry at the household level. Another goal was to “regreen” the grassland and scrubland that covered much of the midlands and uplands (MARD 2001). The programme also had an explicit component to try to eliminate swidden agriculture among minority communities in forest areas (Sowerwine 2004c, Castella et al. 2006). A massive funding project, the national Five Million Hectare Reforestation Programme (5MHRP), has been in place since 1998 and is often promoted in conjunction with forestland allocation. However, the implementation processes and consequent outcomes of forest allocation and reforestation have been mixed. To date, most “forest” allocation has largely been confined to poor-quality bare hills, land that has almost no forest cover. Households have been the primary targets of allocation, not communities, with an emphasis on developing smallholder plantations of exotic timber and pulp trees (Đinh Đức Thuận 2005). Further, even in areas where community allocation of forested lands has taken place, the results have been mixed: allocation programmes have introduced new forms of exclusion into local areas as user groups are defined and some previous users excluded (Mellac 1998, Sikor and Trần Ngọc Thanh 2007). To a certain degree, some of these land tenure changes might be characterized as “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”, in that the spectacular failures of collective agriculture in the 1970s and 1980s resulted in a complete retreat from collective land management without recognition of when such a system might be beneficial (i.e., in forest management in heterogeneous landscapes where individual land rights are hard to enforce) (see Mellac 2009). However, evidence from fieldwork presents a more ambiguous story in that privatization of commons appears to be a function of a lack of official policy support for CPRs, a lack of research on local land management practices that might have highlighted the importance of CPRs, and economically well-off people pressing

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claims for private land, all of which have conspired in the case at hand to diminish the importance of CPRs over time. Empirical Consequences of Land Tenure Changes In this section, I look at the implications of the lack of recognition of commons by the legal system in Vietnam in one particular area, where I assessed the management systems for non-forested “bare hills” (đồi trọc) and wastelands (đất trống) that comprise much of Vietnam’s midlands and uplands. These lands are often treated as valueless, ownerless, abandoned and in need of rehabilitation (FAO 1992). A major goal of programmes such as 5MHRP has been to transform these bare hills into smallholder forestry plantations. I argue that this process has inadvertently alienated a number of lands that in actuality are CPRs, managed collectively and often providing benefits to the poorest individuals in villages. My empirical findings come from research on land and forestry in 2000–1 in Hà Tĩnh province’s Cẩm Xuyên District, where I lived and worked for nearly a year and conducted interviews and surveys with several hundred households. Although populated entirely by ethnic Kinh, and thus ethnically different from many uplands discussed in this book, Cẩm Xuyên highlights a number of the problems that uplands face. Six communes in Cẩm Xuyên were officially classified as “mountainous” by the Ministry of Labor (MOLISA) and were thus eligible for aid under the “mountainous and difficult areas development programme”, also known as Programme 135 (P135). However, demonstrating the unreliability of such broad classifications as “mountainous” is the fact that these communes in Cẩm Xuyên are no more than 700 metres above sea level at the highest peak, with average slopes on agricultural lands of 5–10 per cent, and there are no ethnic minorities resident in most areas of Hà Tĩnh. However, because Hà Tĩnh province on its western border straddles the Annamite (Trường Sơn) mountain chain, and has a high percentage of people living in poverty, the MOLISA category of uplands was applied to this area, even though such a classification seems somewhat arbitrary. In this way, an area that the French cadastral surveys noted earlier had considered lowland plantation area was officially turned by the late 1990s into the “uplands”. Such classifications were also internalized by the residents of this area, as people in Cẩm Xuyên often referred to others not from the district as “those from the lowlands” (người miền xuôi), and stated that they themselves were “highlanders” (người miền núi), a distinction they made primarily to identify the more difficult livelihoods facing people living in

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forested areas. A final characteristic of the Cẩm Xuyên area that is broadly comparable to other upland areas discussed in this book is that much of the land estate was both forested and state managed. Cẩm Xuyên District had a very large state-managed nature reserve (the 35,000 hectare Kẻ Gỗ Nature Reserve [KGNR]), and the district had been targeted for reforestation through the 5MHRP due to the extensive numbers of lands classified as bare hills that surrounded the KGNR (see Table 3.2). However, I argue Table 3.2 Classification and size of “bare hill” land in C ẩm Xuyên Type of “bare hills” Total hectares Bare hills: grass and short trees Bare hills: grass and tall trees Bare hills: grass and bushes Rocky outcrops Sand dunes Eroded land Non-sloping non-used land River banks

5,106 4,168 3,825 2,692 1,391 795 553 111

Total bare hills of district (%) 28 22 21 14 7 4 3 1

Source: Unpublished district statistics for 2001.

Figure 3.1 Ha Tinh province, indicating site of fieldwork and topography

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here that these “bare lands” surrounding villages in Cẩm Xuyên had been CPRs managed collectively, a distinction that the legal system and the Forest Department in charge of funding the 5MHRP ignored. The Social Management of the Commons The nebulous classificatory category of “unused land” identified by state authorities hid the fact that local communities did, in reality, manage many of these lands. While this varied by village, there were some shared management regimes. One was the exclusion of outsiders from the economic use of these lands. The second was the establishment of village rules on types and seasons in which bare hills could be used, particularly for pasturage. Finally, the third was the active management of village land funds for allocation to village households who requested their use (this distributional aspect was strongly reminiscent of the common lands in the imperial era discussed earlier). These aspects of land management echo what Edella Schlager and Elinor Ostrom (1992) define as necessary elements of CPR regimes. Exclusion of Others: The right of exclusion, as defined by Schlager and Ostrom, is the right to determine whether others will be allowed to access and withdraw resources. In the case of several villages in Cẩm Xuyên, locals were enforcing exclusionary access to bare hills for the limited use of those resident in the village, and not outsiders. For example, those in Village B continually complained that they were told by Village A residents that they could not use the bare hills around Village A for collecting fuelwood. Village B had few places in which to collect fuelwood, as there were limited amounts of non-agricultural land in the vicinity of the village. While officially the lands surrounding Village A were bare hills under the government classification, Village A residents were taking it upon themselves to exclude outsiders, one of the central tenets in a common property regime. However, the right of the village to exclude others was tenuous in law, and some villages felt they had no legal rights to do so. Furthermore, even in areas where exclusion rights are inherently promised as part of land allocation, there are not always efficient systems in place to allow individuals or groups to enforce exclusion, particularly where social or cultural customs may conflict (Trần Ngọc Thanh and Sikor 2006). The problem of exclusion and enforcement was particularly clear for lands that the Forest Department had declared as state land, namely, the forests of the KGNR. Outsiders from coastal villages often came through the villages ringing the KGNR to extract timber, and the locals, who might have been

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given incentives to stop the outsiders, were completely uninterested in playing the role of enforcer. As the headman of Village A said, “Why don’t we stop people from going into the nature reserve? We could—they pass through our village every day. But the government tells us again and again, that is the government’s property. Then the government ought to stop people from going in, not us.” Restrictions on Use: All five study villages had local “village customary compacts” (known as hương ước) that included some restrictions on land-use practices, such as where buffalo could be grazed in bare hills, and the seasons in which grazing could be done. Hương ước is often translated as “village codes” or “village customary laws”, and they have long existed in Vietnam’s history, particularly in lowland Kinh villages; one scholar defines them as “the legal constitution of a village including the civil and criminal codes and other articles on preserving the ethics, customs, and habits related to the social organization as well as to the life of the villagers” (Ninh Viết Giao 2000). Prior to 1945, a village hương ước might have included information on landholdings and acreage; a list of patrilines in the village; temples and pagodas and their care and customs; the conduct of village rites and ceremonies; rules on land use within the village; protection of village roads and buildings; conventions on election of dignitaries and notables; and rules on public security, guests and conduct of outsiders in the village (Phan Đại Doãn and Bùi Xuân Định 1999). After the 1945 revolution, such codes were often ignored or thrown out during the heyday of land reform (Lương 1992, Malarney 2002). In recent years, however, hương ước laws have been revived, strongly encouraged by the state as part of policies set down at the Eighth Party Congress in 1998 to encourage “Cultural Villages and Cultural Families” (làng văn hoá và gia đình văn hoá) (Ninh Viết Giao 2000). The new hương ước that have been adopted in villages in Cẩm Xuyên, all since 1998, often include references to local problems with land management. Some villages had a problem with buffalo being left to graze freely, so compacts included lines about punishments for violating local restrictions on buffalo grazing (usually a monetary fine of some kind). One village had a code about protecting village forests by not setting any forest fires; another village had a specific rule that no one was to roam the village lanes after 10pm, in an attempt to cut down on general theft, including of forest goods from common lands. These local regulations, enshrined in the hương ước that attempted to set some restrictions on the withdrawal of resources from common lands, were one important aspect of considering these lands as managed as CPRs.

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Collective Management of Lands: Finally, nearly all villages held on to what they called a village land fund, often demarcated on what the government considered bare hill land, that included a category called “contingency lands” (đất dự phòng). These lands were held by the village collectively, and could either be rented out to households that needed more land or else allocated permanently to newly formed households separating from their parents. These lands were strongly reminiscent of the old cộng điền lands, as the village headmen in consultation with residents decided how these were to be used for the benefit of the village and in what amounts they would be apportioned and for how long. These village contingency lands served an important redistributive role as household sizes contracted or expanded. Because villages did exert some control over bare hills around their homes in varying ways, as noted above, we can argue they were governed under CPRs, rather than open access regimes as has been largely assumed by the state land classification and reforestation projects. It is important, too, to note that these commons arrangements were not an ancient relic of the cộng điền system, but were informal rules that had been worked out in the relatively recent past when there was ambiguity around cooperatives’ management of lands as well as during decollectivization. Indeed, several of the villages studied were composed of migrants who had moved to the uplands in the 1960s and 1970s as part of government-sponsored migration programmes, so they did not have long-standing social ties or laws regarding commons when they arrived. Yet they had worked out fluid and informal rules on exclusion and regulation of resource use locally in response to local situations and environments and social dynamics, which is why each village’s hương ước was slightly different and why each village had different amounts of land in a contingency fund. Yet with the changing de jure rules on bare hills, and the aggressive government attempts to privatize such land, these locally derived rules were increasingly tenuous and unclear in terms of their legality and enforceability. Even the hương ước, which were strongly encouraged by the ruling party after 1998, are officially always supposed to be subordinate to national law in cases of conflict (Ninh Viết Giao 2000). Threats to the Commons While the above evidence makes clear that commons remained important in Cẩm Xuyên, local villages were faced with increasing claims on these lands, both from inside the village as well as outside. The new land

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allocation programmes were having a significant effect on access to commons, as the village CPRs were not recognized by the state cadastral agency and hence put in the category of bare hills to be allocated to individual households. Strong evidence for how management regimes changed as commons were allocated to households came from visits to the hill and forest farms of those in a 104-household survey in 2001 who had been allocated the new privatized bare land (13 total households had allocated land). In every case, the land received had been replanted with exotic trees, including acacia and eucalyptus, as it was a requirement of the households having received land to replant it. The households were also held responsible for protecting these trees from exploitation by others; I found in interviews that people who were not allocated the bare hills were then usually prohibited from harvesting there by the new owners. One 42-year-old woman I interviewed in Village A said, “It is getting harder and harder to find fuelwood on bare hills (đồi trọc), because people are now planting eucalyptus there and won’t let me on their lands.” Such processes of exclusion have been commonplace in many other areas in which forest allocation has taken place (Sikor and Trần Ngọc Thanh 2007). While some localities have resisted forest or bare land allocation to private individuals for fears of these exclusionary processes occurring (Sowerwine 2004c), the residents of Cẩm Xuyên largely saw the process as inevitable. They had witnessed the changes in land tenure brought about by state claims very clearly when the KGNR was established and the nature reserve’s boundaries were increasingly enforced by armed rangers. Thus, most villages willingly accepted the appropriation of much of the bare hills for forest allocation contracts, fearing they had no other recourse. Further, because the land contracts came with ample reforestation money, there was intense interest among households in getting in line for these financial packages. Village headmen in particular received generous bare hill land allocations in all study villages, due to their access to the political process, and thus were not likely to protest the enclosure of the commons on their villages’ behest. The result of the enclosure was a clear bias against the poor, who had been the main users of the commons but were least likely to receive private forestland allocation. Not a single household classified as poor had received any private forestland in the household survey that I conducted (see McElwee 2009 for detailed data). This was a consequence of the requirement put in place by the SFE and Forest Department that in order to get land, families had to have labour and some capital to replant it;

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although tree-planting seedlings were often given free, it took time, water and fertilizer to plant them, and time and effort to protect them. The poor were perceived to be unable to properly reforest land because of their presumed capital and labour constraints. Even in other areas of Vietnam where forest allocation has been more explicitly targeted to the poor, the poor have not necessarily benefited, as such allocations have inevitably been embedded into local power and economic relations that often disadvantage the poorest (Sowerwine 2004c, Castella et al. 2006, Nguyễn Quang Tân 2006, Sikor and Nguyễn Quang Tân 2007). Conclusion: Implications of Changing Land Tenure Regimes Many authors around the world have noted that commons are often under threat: “formal invisibility and non-recognition of contributions of common lands to rural economy and ecology have led to their neglect by the welfare and production policymakers and planners, analysts and even rural society” (Qureshi and Kumar 1998: 342). In Vietnam, the general neglect of commons has been further complicated by the country’s history of collectivized agriculture. When agricultural cooperatives were abandoned in the early Đổi Mới era as failures, many Vietnamese policymakers and international donors paid even less attention to the idea that collective management of property might be desirable. While some voices called for attention to community forestry as an antidote to this emphasis on privatization, there was a long delay in the legal changes that would be necessary to recognize communities as legal recipients and managers of land. Thus, despite both historical and contemporary evidence of large amounts of land having been managed collectively, the legal recognition for common property in contemporary Vietnam has been very weak since decollectivization and many common property systems continue to be in danger of being appropriated throughout the diverse areas we call uplands. The threats that CPRs and de facto tenure regimes face due to changes brought about by the legal and financial biases towards individual private property are significant. Previously CPRs served as highly redistributive instruments for collective welfare and as safety nets for the poor. Widows, orphans and the destitute all benefited from the village cộng điền commons in the precolonial era. These were some of the main groups of people most likely to still be depending on commons in the twenty-first century. Yet as forestland allocation in Cẩm Xuyên has progressed, the poorest households have not been the recipients of this land. Unless these

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trends towards unequal distribution and misappropriation of commons resources are reversed, CPRs in Vietnam may go the way of the commons in pre-industrial England that were lamented by Marx, disappearing as victims of negligence and misuse. Given the difficulties in food production and wealth accumulation that are faced by many households in uplands and mountainous areas, as highlighted by other contributions in this book, the loss of these common lands adds yet another burden to these households’ livelihoods.

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4

“Forest Thieves”: State Resource Policies, Market Forces, Struggles over Livelihood and Meanings of Nature in a Northwestern Valley of Vietnam

Hoàng Cầm1

Introduction: “Forest Ranger: A Dangerous Job” “Forest Ranger: A Dangerous Job” was the title of a talk show broadcast on the Vietnamese national television station VTV1 on 12 September 2005. It was part of the series Người đương thời [Contemporary People], in which celebrated Vietnamese people are invited to talk about their roles in solving ongoing issues in contemporary Vietnamese society. The special guests on this particular episode were two women: Lê Thị Hoà, the long-time head of the Forest Protection Unit (FPU) of Phù Yên District, Sơn La province; and Phạm Thị Mỵ, a Thái forest ranger working under the supervision of Hoà. The central focus of the show was issues relating to lâm tặc2 (forest thieves) operating in Phù Yên District, and the difficulties and dangers that Hoà and her fellow foresters encountered on the “battlefield” in fights against illegal loggers. According to both Hoà and Mỵ, over the last several years they had been attacked a number of times by “forest thieves” who would not hesitate to use whatever weapons they had to resist state foresters if their illegal encroachment was discovered and their timber was confiscated. However, when the moderator of the show asked whether they were scared, both said no, adding that they were willing to sacrifice their life to stop any illegal forest intrusion as they were foresters whose responsibility was to keep the forest in the area green. 92

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Hoà and Mỵ did not exaggerate the contemporary “forest thieves” problem in the area in question. When I was conducting my field research in the region in 2003–4, this emerging social phenomenon became one of the greatest concerns of local authorities and national conservationists. It was also a daily topic of conversation among local villagers. Nor did Hòa and Mỵ overstate efforts made by local authorities to stop illegal encroachment on the forest. In fact, since early 2000 local authorities have mobilized (in addition to foresters such as Hòa and Mỵ) a large number of cadres, including police officers and staff members of many departments in the district bureaucratic system, to fight on the “battlefield”. However, what Hòa, Mỵ and the moderator of the show did not mention—or avoided discussing—was that regardless of efforts made by the district authorities to prevent forest thieves, thousands of trees in the forest under their control had still been cut down and transported to lowland markets every day for years. When I made a brief return visit to the valley in late September 2005, after the TV programme was broadcast, the overexploitation of timber in the forest was continuing unabated. This explains why the local people whom I interviewed during my visit reported that the forest area under Hòa and Mỵ’s control had almost disappeared. Forest thieves are not a new phenomenon; they are quite well known in the history of the valley. What is new and important in terms of the social and ecological transformation of the region is the multiplicity of social actors involved in this illegal activity and the aggressive acts of those whose activities are uncovered, especially when their timber is confiscated. How, then, can we understand this rising phenomenon and its new characteristics? It cannot be explained as the direct result of population growth, poverty or local people’s “ignorance” of conservation values, as official and conventional discourses tend to portray. The question becomes even more intriguing when the ethno-history of the contested forest and customary local values of the timber species therein are taken into consideration. Unlike other forests in the region, neither the forestland nor the contested timber species was a primary concern of the local people in their pursuit of everyday livelihoods before the 1990s. This was for two reasons: the forest was a sacred watershed for the local people in the valley, and the timber was not customarily used for house construction or for everyday firewood. What, then, are the new forces that motivate thousands of people, including local people and outsiders, to go to the forest? Based on data collected during field research undertaken in 2003–4, this paper argues that the recent emergence of forest thieves in the area

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in question is a result of and response to two policies and strategies implemented and promoted by the modern state of Vietnam. One is the state resource policy, first implemented in the early 1960s and pursued continuously until recently, to replace customary rights and management institutions over resources of upland people by a state control model. The elimination of local rights and customary management institutions has created antagonism between the local people and state management agencies. The second reason stems from the state policy of economic liberalization (Đổi Mới) that was implemented throughout the country in 1986. This policy led to forest resources becoming highly valued commodities and created competition among local people and nonlocal forest users who were no longer bound by customary management institutions. The crucial dynamic in these tensions was the interplay between different systems of resource ownership and rights over access to the valley’s resources and meanings of nature among different interest groups (Blaikie 1985; Escobar 1999; Neumann 1998; Peluso 1992b; Moore 1993; McElwee 2003, 2004). It is, then, this historical shift in resource ownership and management and meanings of nature resulting from the intervention of state and market forces, and acted upon by different local resource users, that makes the jobs of Vietnam’s forest rangers “dangerous” and brings about the loss of much forest in the valley. Contextualizing the Contested Landscape The setting within which thousands of people are struggling for timber lies at the northeastern margin of Sơn La province, about 170 kilometres northwest of Hanoi. At the centre of the valley is 660 hectares of flat and fertile wet-paddy field. Surrounding the valley is a mountain range covered by forests, which has long functioned as the principal source of water for the valley’s paddy fields and has provided supplementary forest products for local people’s livelihood. My vantage point from a mountaintop on a sunny day in 2003 revealed thousands of houses either organized into clusters or dispersed among the green paddy fields. The majority of these houses still belong to native populations. Many others, however, are offices built and owned by state administrative agencies. And many others belong either to lowland immigrants who were sent by the state to “clear the wilderness” (khai hoang) of the region from the early 1960s, or to other ethnic minorities who arrived in the valley in the early 1980s as environmental refugees from the nearby Hòa Bình Dam.3 Regardless of whether they are pioneers or newcomers, under the

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territorial and resource laws of the postcolonial state all the people living in these houses now have rights to share both the valley paddy fields and the forests. The local people call the valley Muang Tấc. In the Thái language, muang means the sociopolitical unit or polity of the Thái, and Tấc is the name of the biggest river running through the region. As its name suggests, before Muang Tấc was shared by other ethnic people and state administrative agencies, the valley was an autonomous polity of the White Thái.4 The migration of the Thái into the valley is a controversial issue in scholarly debates—in terms of their ancestors’ arrival date as well as the original place from which their ancestors came. Regardless of exactly when their ancestors first arrived or precisely where they came from, the Thái claim to be and are proud of their status as the first to develop and rule the valley. Among the proofs that local people use to support their claim are certain place names in the Thái language, as well as rituals related to land and forests performed by the Thái. Many people also cite as evidence their recollections of the time when other ethnic groups first came to the valley. Today, when the local name of the valley, together with the sociopolitical landscape and ethnic composition, has undergone dramatic changes, both old and young Thái still prefer to call the valley by its Thái name—Muang Tấc—and identify themselves as Tay Tấc, or owners of the Tấc polity. The valley, in other words, has become a source of their social identity. Besides the symbolic importance of Muang Tấc as an ancestral homeland embedded in the Thái ethnic identity, the valley landscape is also a great source of natural resources for the livelihood of the local people. Under the muang polity, both natural resources and human labour were under the management of the Thái phiia, the hereditary muang ruler. In Muang Tấc, as in other Thái communities in the northwest of Vietnam, to exercise his power the phiia demarcated his own geographical boundaries with neighbouring muang to make his own muang’s resource territories (Ban Chấp Hành Đảng Bộ Huyện Phù Yên 2001, Cầm Trọng 1978). The boundaries between the muang were clearly marked by mountains, rivers and trees, and were orally transmitted from one generation to the next. Outsiders were strictly prohibited from using resources within the territory of the muang. They had to ask for permission to use the community forest territories or rice fields or to gather forestry products. If outsiders used the community’s natural resources without the permission of the phiia, they were regarded as thieves. Besides returning stolen products to the phiia, the thief had to pay a fine, usually in cash,

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and in some cases to perform a ceremony to ask for the forgiveness of the muang’s soil spirit.5 The boundaries between the muang were fixed, and outsiders’ access to the muang’s resources was exclusively controlled, whereas property relations among the people of the muang were temporally and spatially flexible (Sikor 2004a). The territory and all natural resources within the muang boundary were considered common property and were available for all members of the muang to use. In the case of paddy fields, each individual family was allotted a certain part of the muang’s rice fields for cultivating for a certain period of time on the basis of the family’s labour strength and upon fulfilling a number of collective activities and obligations, such as preparing and contributing offerings for communal rituals or serving as soldiers of the principality during wartime, etc. Each family also had rights to cultivate new land and had exclusive use of this land in the muang’s territory if they were the first to clear it. However, they could retain the right to use the new cultivated land for only three or five years. After this they had to return it to the community, and it was given to other members to use by the phiia. In the case of a ruling phiia, he could keep his position as the land ruler of the muang and obtain the most fertile part of the muang rice field for his family. He could also use the customary law to distribute portions of the communal rice fields to the families under his control. Similar to customary rules applied to commoners, however, the phiia could not privatize any portion of land or other natural resources within the muang’s boundary. Neither could he sell land to anyone in the principality or give it to non-muang citizens to cultivate (Cầm Trọng and Hà Hữu Ưng 1973, Condominas 1990). Upland terrain was also considered common property and was customarily under the management of the phiia muang. As in the case of the paddy fields, however, it was the village collective that had the actual right to control it. For swidden fields, every individual household, depending on their labour capacity, had equal rights to clear any suitable forestland for their new cultivated fields within the village territory wherever these lands were not worked or owned by other villagers. Then, when the old fields were no longer suitable for cultivation, the households could move to other abundant forest areas following their rotational cycles. However, as a general rule accepted by the community, the fallow portions were not ownerless or available for others to use. Instead, these fallow lands were an integral part of the farming system and were needed to prevent the erosion of lands and promote the generation of forests. Therefore, while every villager might rotate their swidden fields every 10 to 20 years within

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prescribed territories of the village, customary rules prohibited outsiders from cultivating the swidden plots previously cleared by other villagers. While the swidden plots and crops planted thereon were managed by individual households, they also became the common property of all villagers after harvest. For instance, after swidden crops such as maize or dried rice were harvested, all villagers could come freely into these areas to collect wood for fuel, to collect medicinal herbs or to graze cattle. Likewise, every village also had common land areas that were available for all villagers. In these common property land areas, all village residents shared the rights to gather forest products and hunt wild animals wherever they found them within the muang territory. Their water buffaloes, cows, horses and goats could also wander freely for grass as their owners did. In contrast to wet-rice paddy fields, where all of the land was used for cultivation, not all parts of the upland areas were utilized for cultivation or other economic purposes. At least until quite recently, local people kept some forest areas as ritual grounds to be used only for religious and cultural practices for the whole community. Such forest areas could be either dong sua muang or dong sua ban (forests inhabited by the spirit in charge of the muang, or village soul) located in each village or in very dense primary forests at the main watershed of the area (dong kam). The contested forest area in Muang Tấc, Khau Li (old growth primary forest), in which thousands of people have been struggling for timber, falls in the latter category. Before independence in 1954, this forest area was a sacred watershed for all ethnic groups of Muang Tấc Valley under the management of the Thái’s phiia. Customary rules regulated both locals’ and outsiders’ access to the forest. In addition to material sanction (usually in the form of animal sacrifice in a ritual seeking forgiveness from the forest spirit) and social pressure imposed on those who violated customary rules, the terror of supernatural forces linked to the forest kept people from over-harvesting forest products. According to many people in Muang Tấc, very few exploitative activities occurred in the forest even until the late 1980s. Some older Thái people told me that prior to the rush of outsiders into the forest for pơ mu timber, they also went to the forest for bark (for betel chewing) and rattan, but they never dared go deep into the forest. Indeed, they had to go in groups, as the forest at that time was very dense and they were afraid of being “caught by forest spirits”. Perhaps because of their symbolic importance as a sacred forest under the protection of customary rules of the muang, Khau Li as well as many other sacred forests were kept green until they came under the management of local state authorities.

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Muang Tấc ceased to be an autonomous polity of the Thái in 1952, following the replacement of the phiia as a land ruler of the valley by a new administrative system set up by the Việt Minh.6 The valley and its inhabitants have been integrated into the Vietnamese nation-state ever since. Over the course of more than 50 years since integration, local people have continued to live in the valley; and their agricultural practices still play a significant role in providing the main source of income for their everyday subsistence livelihoods. However, the fundamental difference between their past ecological experiences and what they are doing in the present day is the way in which the natural resources that they have long derived for their livelihood and the forest areas they have kept for their cultural and religious practices are distributed and managed. As citizens of Vietnam, they can still access and utilize part of the valley’s resources for their existence. Nevertheless, as citizens of Vietnam, too, they are subject to the resource laws of the modern state. Under these laws, not only can they be defined as “thieves” or “criminals”—as the resources once their own are now the property of the state—but they are also unable to protect the resources they want for their future supply. The rest of this paper will discuss the emergence of forest thieves in the valley with reference to this historical shift. To understand how the shift has taken place in the valley, how it affects the livelihood practices of the local people, and how it has transformed the meanings of the valley landscape and resources therein, the next section will examine in detail resource management policies and practices of the modern Vietnamese state implemented in Muang Tấc since independence in 1954. Shifting Resource Ownership and Management in Muang Tấc after 1954 Lê Thị Hoà, the head of the FPU of Phù Yên District and one of the special guests on the VTV1 show mentioned at the outset of the paper, is Kinh and was born in Vĩnh Phúc province, in the lowlands of Vietnam. Six months after graduating from a forestry college in 1973, she was sent to Muang Tấc to work as a technical forester. In October 1974 she moved to work for the FPU. She was promoted to vice-head and then became head of the unit in 1988. During the more than 30 years that she worked in the valley, she was awarded a number of certificates of praise by both provincial and national authorities for “The Career and Achievements of Vietnam Forestry Business” (vì sự nghiệp lâm nghiệp Việt Nam). She was, as many local foresters and the national mass media often called her, Nữ Tướng Rừng Xanh (General of the Green Forest).7

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That Lê Thị Hoà, a state-trained forester sent from the lowland area, could be characterized as a “General of the Green Forest” in Muang Tấc underscores the fundamental shift in resource ownership and management in Muang Tấc in the postcolonial context. The shift that Hoà represents is “intimately tied up with the changing roles of land ownership in Vietnam” (McElwee 2004: 109). After Vietnam gained independence from the French in 1954, the modern Vietnamese state declared all land and resources therein to be the property of the state. While paddy fields were put under the management of agricultural cooperatives founded in 1958, the state nationalized all lands mapped as forestland in 1955. The Ministry of Forestry (now the Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Development, or MARD) was established the same year to carry out the government task of “scientifically” managing and exploring all forests within the country’s borders. In the early 1980s, agricultural cooperatives were dismantled and paddy fields were subsequently given back to individual households, yet most forestlands and forest products still remain under the direct control of the state through MARD and its local branches. The FPU that Hoà now heads is one of the management agencies set up by MARD to control forests at the local level. While Hoà was sent to work in the valley in 1974, Phù Yên FPU was set up and a number of state foresters were sent to the valley following independence to control all forests in the valley. This FPU, along with other FPUs established throughout the upland regions of the country, has existed in the valley ever since. Recently, despite the national trend of “devolution” over resources in the upland areas in which individual households and organizations have been entitled to certain forestlands for forest development and protection, the FPU of Phù Yên District, like other FPUs operating throughout the upland areas of Vietnam, still has significant “bundles” of rights, including “the rights to monitor and inspect all forests; to tax and regulate trade in forest products and to determine violations of any national forest laws, even on non-state lands” (McElwee 2004: 116, emphasis added). Given the radical historical shift in rights regarding resource control and management, how has the postcolonial state, through its local management agencies like the one operating in Muang Tấc, legitimized its access to and control of all forestlands and forest resources while delegitimizing the pre-existing rights and management institutions of the local people? How has this process of state territorialization taken shape and been used to exercise as well as legitimize control in Muang Tấc since independence? State practices of access and control of resources, according to Ribot and Peluso (2003), involve the construction of

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categories of knowledge and inscription of these categories into maps of the areas in which the resources lie, and the resultant restriction of local access to the resources. Following this strategy, local management authorities in Muang Tấc, under the guidelines of the provincial authorities of Sơn La and central authorities in Hanoi, have created a number of “categories of knowledge” and enacted a variety of forest regulations since the early 1960s to manage and exploit the resources once controlled by the local people. Similar to many other upland areas, this process of state territorialization in Muang Tấc started in the early 1960s, and the state territorial strategies of control have been intensified gradually, especially after Đổi Mới (renovation) in 1986—with the active and strong support, in terms of both “conservation” ideology and finance, of international aid donors (Sowerwine 2004c). As in the case of other upland areas of Vietnam, since the early 1960s all forests in Muang Tấc have been surveyed, mapped and classified into different types for “scientific” utilization and management. All land with a slope greater than 20 degrees was defined as “forestlands”. During the period prior to the 1990s, all forests surrounding the valley were classified into two types: “productive forests” (rừng sản xuất) and “protected forests” (rừng phòng hộ). In the Forest Resources Protection and Development Act of 1991 (FRPD) (Chapter 1, Article 7), one more type of forest—“special use forest” (rừng đặc dụng)—was added. Special use forests, falling into the category of either “national natural reserve” or “national park”, are protected under the FPU and other state management agencies from any exploitative activities within them, under the rubric of “environmental and biodiversity protection” and “national heritage preservation”. Protected forests are defined as less valuable than special use areas in terms of biodiversity and environmental significance, and therefore certain exploitative activities are allowed in them. The category of productive forests is reserved for economic development. Local people can use parts of these forests for cultivation—but under the guidelines and monitoring of the Forest Protection Unit.8 The state practice of producing “categories of knowledge” and creating new forest laws to access and control all resources in Muang Tấc does not end here. Like in the forests surrounding the valley, all timber species in these forests are classified into a number of “scientific” categories, ranging from group (nhóm) number one to group number eight according to their natural and added values for “sustainable” use and protection. Parallel to and intertwined with this “scientific” classification is a set of rules and regulations set up by the state forest management

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agencies. From the 1960s to the 1990s, local people had access to some types of timber, but they had to ask for permission from the Forest Protection Unit if they wanted to go to any forests in the area to look for timber for house construction or other uses. Once permission was granted, the FPU would give them paperwork, and their timber products had to be stamped (đóng búa kiểm lâm).9 To enforce rules and regulations, forest checkpoints (chốt kiểm soát lâm sản) were built on roads leading to forests and between the valley and other locations. In areas where there were many “illegal” logging activities, local authorities established an “interdisciplinary forest product checking group” (đội kiểm soát liên ngành), which combined staff from the police department, military, and other district organs to control exploitation and the flow of timber in and out of the area. At commune and village levels, together with the district forest protection forces a network of commune forest protection forces (known in Vietnamese as Đội 287 or kiểm lâm xã) was formed. Besides the commune forest protection forces, the district FPU also sent staff (kiểm lâm cắm bản- kiểm lâm địa bàn) to stay and work temporarily in individual villages to assist the commune staff in checking that timber products used by the local people were legally granted and stamped by the kiểm lâm officers. In 1993, then Prime Minister Võ Văn Kiệt signed a decision on an export-logging ban on all “natural forests”. Five years after the decision was enacted, in 1998, the People’s Committee of Sơn La province issued a logging ban on all natural forests within the province. Following the resolution, all “natural” forests in Muang Tấc were officially “closed”. The sacred Khau Li forest, where thousands of people are now struggling for timber, was classified as “protected forest” in 1961 and was placed under the direct control of district management agencies. However, when I visited the forest in 2003, it was categorized as a National Natural Reserve Forest, and its local name—Khau Li—had been changed to Tà Xùa National Natural Reserve. Pơ mu, the main timber species of the forest, was classified as an “endangered timber species” (thực vật quý hiếm). Together with the FPU, a management board was established to protect it “for the purposes of endangered flora and fauna genes protection”. Thus, over the 50 years since independence, state power in Vietnam— through its administrative and bureaucratic practices—has discursively constructed new meanings and new resource laws for all forests in Muang Tấc in order to legitimize its resource appropriation while excluding local use as well as management rights over all forestlands and forest products in the valley. As I have shown, the meanings superimposed

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on the valley’s forests and fauna therein have undergone spatial and temporal transformation, yet the changes serve only to increase the state’s management and control over resources and to exclude local use of forestlands and forest resources. State territorial initiatives in Muang Tấc intensified towards the end of the twentieth century with the closure of all “natural” forests surrounding the valley for “biodiversity and environmental protection”, making the head of the FPU into a “General of the Green Forest” and causing many livelihood practices of the local people to become “illegal” or “criminal”. State efforts to nationalize and institutionalize all forests in Muang Tấc and at the same time eliminate customary management institutions and criminalize the subsistence rights of the local people, however, have posed many challenges for the valley’s forests, local forest users, and state foresters working in the valley. As for management, most forestlands and forest resources in Muang Tấc—including Khau Li since the 1960s—in theory have a new protector, the FPU force. In practice, however, all forest areas under the control of this state management institution, for the first time in their history, as many local people told me, have become ownerless or have turned into a free-for-all regime. This problem stems from the fundamental difference between principles of traditional communal ownership systems developed and practised under the muang polity and those established and regulated by the state management unit. In the customary ownership and management system centred on the muang sociopolitical system and described on the preceding pages, natural resources within the muang boundary were available for all muang residents to use, but they were managed by customary institutions similar to what Peluso calls an “ethic of access” in the case of teak management among the Dayak Galik of Sumatra, Indonesia. The “ethic of access” of the Dayak Galik, as Peluso observes, includes “territory rights, rights derived from tree management, protection or claim, and the rights of common claim to the future village reserves” (Peluso 1992b: 216). In the case of the local people of Muang Tấc, the “ethic of access” includes the ethics of preserving certain forests for religious and cultural practices for the whole community and of regulating outsiders’ access to natural resources in the muang territory. The nationalization of all forests, and the subsequent control and monitoring by the state through its management institution—the FPU— while erasing local management institutions has resulted in all forests of the valley becoming an “ownerless” resource regime. This is because, first, the FPU is unable to enforce the rules and regulations, and, second,

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local people have “felt they have no other choice given state claims to land, thereby contributing to a massive breakdown in local tenure rules and resource allocation” (McElwee 2003: 243). This situation has moved local people to compete among themselves over the extraction of natural resources. The changes in management regimes, moreover, are also associated with competing exploitation of resources between the local people and outsiders. Peluso (1992b: 210–9) has noted a similar situation in the case of competition over the teak forests of the Dayak Galik in Kalimantan, Indonesia: local people were “trying to benefit in whatever way possible before others did”, competing with outsiders who “had no incentive to be concerned about the future of the local supply” since they “were either villagers from elsewhere or people whose economic wellbeing derived from a much broader range of opportunities”. State control of local resources and the criminalization of local customary use rights in the name of managing and protecting “the common goods” have led to antagonism between state management agencies and local people. While competition among locals over forest resources is the direct result of a breakdown of local traditional tenure rules, the antagonism and confrontation between locals and outsiders in Muang Tấc and between the locals and Phù Yên foresters are conflicts over legitimate authority over the valley’s resources. In other words, it is a struggle over rights to the valley’s landscape and resources, since “what may be ‘illegal’ to the government may in fact be seen as not only ‘legal’ at the local level but as a de facto right or privilege” (McElwee 2004: 107). This became clear to me during a conversation with a local person whom I will call Bảng. Like other young people in the valley, Bảng had been going to Khau Li for timber for a few years, first as a woodcutter in the forest, then as a middleman trader. While state foresters such as Hoà have been praised by the state as “national heroes” for their contribution to the protection of “the common goods”, from Bảng’s perspective they might also be “illegal” users of forest resources in the valley. Bảng said, “Now the officials and mass media call us lâm tặc, and we label ourselves lâm tặc, too. But I think we are just lâm tặc con [little forest thieves]; đại ca của lâm tặc [big forest thieves], of course, include many people from the FPU and Kinh traders who are now living in the valley and those who come here to do their timber business.”10 Competition among different social actors over resources as a direct result of state intervention in the livelihood practices of local people has occurred in the valley since the early 1960s. However, the competition became more acute after the central state launched its policy of economic

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reform in the late 1980s. The following section will discuss the ways in which economic reform facilitates and intensifies competition among different social actors over natural resources in Muang Tấc, and how the phenomenon of “forest thieves” has taken shape in the region since the early 1990s. People, Nature and Markets after Đổi Mới and the Emergence of Forest Thieves The clashes that have occurred between local people and state forest rangers and among different non-state forest users within Khau Li since the early 1990s are not only over land for cultivation but primarily over a timber species called pơ mu (Fokienia hodginsii; the Thái name is may vac). As noted previously, by the time the conflict over timber was at its peak, pơ mu was placed on the national list of “endangered timber species”, or regarded as a special natural object for conservation. Lowland traders and many local people also consider timber to be an important natural object. Unfortunately, instead of attributing to the timber the same meaning and value as regional and national conservationists do, the lowland traders and many locals see pơ mu as a very high-priced commodity or a natural resource to be exploited for economic benefit only. When I was conducting my field research in the valley, many local people even compared the value of pơ mu to that of gold. Of course, the commoditization of forest products, including forest timbers such as pơ mu in the Vietnamese uplands, has been going on for at least several decades. However, according to Tình, a Thái born in the valley who had relatively long experience in the pơ mu business, this radical shift towards regarding the value of pơ mu timber in terms of its economic benefits, in the context of the valley, had occurred only over the past ten years or so at the time I conducted my research in 2003–4. Tình recalled during one of our conversations in 2004 that he and his Thái friends first went to the Khau Li forest to extract timber for sale in early 1992. In the modern history of Vietnam, the timing of the shift that Tình alludes to is worthy of consideration. The state policy of Đổi Mới, known in Western literature as “renovation”, had been launched several years before, officially at the Sixth National Party Congress in December 1986. Đổi Mới policy, which shifted the country’s socio-economic structure from a central state planning to a market-oriented or economically liberal model, after only a few years since its launch, has led to remarkable changes in many aspects of Vietnamese society.

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One of the elements of change at the heart of the Đổi Mới transition that directly affects the meaning and value of forest timbers such as pơ mu in Muang Tấc is the development of a new system of goods production, distribution and exchange. During the subsidy period (bao cấp), which lasted from 1954 to 1986, free market exchanges and private commercial activities were made illegal and strictly prohibited. The state, instead, controlled and monopolized all production, distribution and exchange activities. In the sphere of production, all industrial inputs and outputs—producer as well as consumer goods—were regulated by the “production norm” (định mức) system, in which each enterprise, whether private or state-owned, was provided a limited amount of raw materials to manufacture goods and allowed to produce in quantities not exceeding quotas assigned by the state. All outputs were then distributed through a state system of “coupons” (tem phiếu), in which each citizen was given a certain number of coupons enabling access to subsidized merchandise in state-owned stores. Over the 30 years of the operation of the state subsidy system, an informal or black market for goods exchange and private production, including timber products, ran parallel with markets controlled by the state. State restrictions on private-sector commerce and free markets, however, imposed powerful limits on the existence and development of commodity circuits in both exchange and production. The shift from state monopoly over the production and distribution of goods to a new productive and distributive system driven by free markets and primarily governed by private-sector commerce has created an impulse for the development of goods production and commercial exchange. Shortly after the Đổi Mới policy was launched, thousands of private enterprises emerged in response to the new economic opportunities. At the same time, domestic market networks have sprung up throughout the country, both independently and with state support. Within this new economic context, many natural resources in the uplands, especially forest timbers and non-timber products—which for a long period were used only for subsistence needs or had low economic and use values—have been marketized and drawn deeply into national commodity circuits. Another significant aspect of change resulting from economic reform that has contributed to the radical shift in meaning and value of forest timbers is the rapid development of a new bourgeois population, especially in urban settings, with continually rising incomes. A domestic market for forest timbers in Vietnam has emerged in parallel with this new social class. Although no detailed study has yet been conducted on

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the correlation between the two, those who have lived in Hanoi and other urban areas in Vietnam during the past decade will have noted that timber and timber products, together with certain modern electronic items, are at the top of the shopping lists of wealthy urban Vietnamese. A closer look at many of the houses built in the past decade in Hanoi shows that the new elites of Vietnam not only spend a great amount of their disposable income on wooden furniture to furnish their homes but are also especially interested in buying forest timber for house decoration. The decorations appear in the form of wooden floors, wall and ceiling coverings, and wooden staircases in houses built of bricks and concrete. While material demand for furniture production accounts for a huge amount of timber taken from the uplands, this new practice of house decoration requires, without a doubt, still greater amounts of forest timber. This new interest in using timber for home decoration among Vietnam’s wealthy families is, of course, not only an act of consumption for the satisfaction of physical individual and household needs. Rather, houses decorated with forest timber are used as symbolic representations of wealth and social status, or, in Bordieu’s words, indicators of a “mode of self-presentation, adopted in ‘showing off’ a life style” (Bourdieu 1984: 7, cited in Dorairajoo 2002: 117). This is why the purchase of forest timber for home decoration has dramatically increased, to the point that the amount of money spent on timber might be the same as the amount spent on the rest of the house. This also explains why only certain forest timbers are chosen for house decoration. While there are no statistics on the exact amounts of timber that have been used for home decoration since the 1990s, with thousands of houses and villas built in the last decade being fully decorated with forest timber, it is evident that many thousands of hectares of forest timber have been cut down and transported to Hanoi and other lowland settings. Among the tree species produced as raw material to satisfy this new practice of consumption, pơ mu timber from the Khau Li forest of Muang Tấc and other upland areas has become one of the most preferred. This is not only because pơ mu is resistant to termites and other tropical wood-eating insects and fungi, or because its natural veins are visually striking and stunning, but because of consumers’ belief that the aroma emanating from the natural oil of the timber wards off mosquitoes and promotes health. The endangered status given to pơ mu timber by state conservationists has also increased its value. For these reasons, there is now a great national demand for pơ mu as a raw material for furniture and home decoration. And, of course, as demand for it has increased, pơ

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mu has become one of the most expensive tree species on the Vietnamese timber market. The opening of the market economy implemented since Đổi Mới has not only played an important role in the rise in value of pơ mu, it has also resulted in a radical change in the socio-economic life of the Muang Tấc people. With the central government’s policies and efforts at “bringing market economics to the mountains” resulting in rapid changes in physical access to upland areas and the development of domestic markets, there has been an influx of foreign goods from lowland areas to the mountains. As a result, since the 1990s, local people have been able to buy everything they wish for or need in their everyday life. They can also now enjoy almost all the same modern services and goods as their lowland compatriots. However, the increasing penetration of the market economy, with the arrival and availability of consumer goods and modern services into upland communities, has also placed tremendous pressure on many upland people in terms of their struggles to find cash incomes necessary in the new socio-economic environment. Unlike before the 1990s, it has become difficult for many in the region to lead a “normal” life without cash, as Hoàn, a Thái born in the valley, once told me. According to a simple calculation Hoàn made for me in early 2004, for example, his family of four needed at least 350,000 dong (approximately US$20) in cash income a month to be able to lead a “normal” life. Besides having to spend about 70,000 dong per month on food for the whole family, Hoàn had to pay about 60,000 dong in fees for his two sons in the local school. In addition, he had to pay for electricity and other new services. Most of the must-pay items just listed, of course, were alien to Hoàn’s family and most other upland populations before Đổi Mới. The small sum of US$20 might not mean much to many urbanites, but for the locals in Muang Tấc—who by and large are still mainly involved in agriculture, and who live in an area where wage labour markets hardly exist—it can be quite difficult to earn such a sum of cash. As socio-economic conditions at the local level become better integrated into the national market economy, one can expect many local people, including Hoàn, to change their attitude towards the value of timber surrounding the valley. Against this background, many Muang Tấc people welcome the arrival of the timber trade since it offers them a good economic opportunity to adapt to the new socio-economic environment. While it is true that for many local people—both poor and wealthy— the high economic value of timber and the increasing need for cash in everyday life have motivated them to enter the timber trade, these are

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not the only reasons they go to the forest. As in the case of other parts of Vietnam’s uplands (McElwee 2004), the pơ mu and other timber market in Muang Tấc was established and has been run mainly by Kinh traders or “big guys” (ông trùm), including those who came temporarily to the region for the timber business and those who migrated and became permanent residents of the valley through the state-sponsored programme for moving lowlanders to the upland regions from the early 1960s on. These traders first started doing business through “contracts” with non-resident woodcutters who were also Kinh from the lowland areas as well as other ethnic groups coming from surrounding regions to extract timber from the forest and transport it to markets in Hanoi and other lowland provinces. In a situation where the forest was state property, locals found little incentive to prevent the encroachment of outsiders into it. On the other hand, those with the incentive to do so felt helpless without the legitimate authority to oppose the encroachment, since state resource laws did not—and still do not—recognize local customary rights to the regulation of access to the forest, granting authority to catch illegal loggers and confiscate illegally cut timber only to state forest rangers working in the valley. Unfortunately, state foresters who are given legitimate authority to protect the forest on behalf of the local people for the “common good” cannot stop the encroachment. Similar to the observation made by McElwee (2004) in her ethnographic study on “illegal” loggers in central Vietnam, the inability of the Phù Yên foresters to protect the forest is not only due to a lack of personnel but also due to corruption among state foresters. While some state foresters working in the valley, such as Hoà and Mỵ, might be willing to “sacrifice even their life” to protect the forest, the high economic value of the timber, according to many people I spoke to, had “degenerated not only many of our local people but also many state foresters”. The “degenerated” foresters do not only take small sums of money from local “middlemen” who go to buy timber at low prices direct from sawyers in the forest to sell at higher prices to traders back in the valley, but they are also bribed with considerable amounts of money by ông trùm who transfer illegally cut timber from the valley to lowland markets. The corruption is evident to local people, who see timber being transported with relative ease from the forest to the valley and from the valley to the lowlands every day, despite the many forest checkpoints set up both on the main roads leading from the forest to the valley and on the road that connects the valley to Hanoi. The corruption of forest rangers, as observed by locals, is also evident in the high living standards of foresters

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(who own large, beautiful houses and expensive motorcycles, for example) in comparison with other state officers working in the valley, although their monthly salary is just US$80–100. One local person told me: If you want evidence of collusion [thông đồng] between traders and foresters to write a report for newspapers, it is not difficult to find. Just bring your camera and wait at the intersection of the road leading from the forests and the road that leads to Hanoi near Thải village when it starts getting dark today, and you’ll be able to see and take photos of trucks carrying timber to Hanoi. If traders do not bribe the foresters, how can a truck escape from the eyes [qua mặt] of foresters? It is a truck, not a chicken that traders can hide in their pockets. You might also see that many foresters in Phù Yên own expensive motorbikes and beautiful houses while foresters working in areas without pơ mu like Sông Mã and Mộc Châu just ride worthless bicycles [xe đạp quèn] and smoke Du Lịch cigarettes [one of the cheapest brands of cigarettes in Vietnam]. Now we call them [foresters] kiểm mâm [people who are just looking for wealth or something to eat], not kiểm lâm [foresters] any more.11

Because of the negative image of state forest rangers, during my stay in the valley many people wanted to tell me rumours relating to the foresters, rumours that circulated widely among both local people and state officials. According to one rumour, some Phù Yên District foresters gave their “boss” (sếp) money in order to be assigned to work at forest checkpoints far from the district centre, for foresters who worked in these “sensitive” areas had more opportunities to take money from traders than those working at the main office down in the valley. Some locals who labelled themselves forest thieves shared another story relating to collusion between district foresters and big guys to transport illegally cut wood to lowland areas. I was told that because these big guys had bribed the forest protection forces, foresters actually left their checkpoints whenever the former brought timber out of the forest. As one local forest thief told me: Whenever we heard noises from horses or saw many packhorses carrying timber on the road [from the forest to the valley], we knew we did not have to hide our timber since there would not be any foresters at the checkpoints at that time. The horses were owned or hired by bọn cai [the big guys], so they could pass the forest checkpoints very easily. We followed the horses so we too could freely pass the checkpoints without being afraid of getting caught.12

In Muang Tấc, although it is difficult to confirm the accuracy of the information circulated about corruption and collusion—and no one who

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talked to me about these issues had concrete evidence to support their statements—the fact that the rumours are so widespread has seriously tarnished the image of state foresters working in the valley. State forest rangers’ lack of legitimate authority over valley resources has led to tensions between local people and state management agencies. The situation is further complicated by the above-mentioned stories of the corruption of state forest rangers, who are mostly from the majority ethnic Kinh, or “outsiders”—especially the rumours about collusion between the state forest rangers and Kinh traders after Đổi Mới—along with villagers’ unhappy daily encounters with state forest rangers. As in Nuemann’s (1998) study of conflict over resources in Arusha National Park, in Tanzania, and Peluso’s (1992a) study of tensions between local people and state forest rangers in Java, Indonesia, local violations of state resource laws and the resistance of local people to state forest rangers are often explained by the people of Muang Tấc in terms of “local standards of justice” or “social equity”. In conversations with other villagers throughout 2003–4, I heard mention of this sense of “local social justice” or “social equity” not only from those directly engaged in timber exploitation and commune cadres, but also from many older villagers. Older villagers referred to the rights that the Thái villagers should have over access to the forest and other resources in the valley. One elderly villager opined: In the past, if the Hmông, the Mường or others caught any wild animals such as deer, tigers, bears, or wild pigs and foxes, they had to give our phiia the best parts, including the hind thighs and the heads of the animals, as all resources in the valley belonged to the lord of our Thái principality. Now, Mường, Hmông and Kinh from elsewhere come to take the pơ mu. Why shouldn’t our Thái villagers?13

For the last few years, as market demand for timber has increased, as more outsiders as well as local people have come into the forest, and as increasing amounts of timber have been transferred to lowland markets, thousands of locals—men and women from various social strata—have rushed into the forest despite the mobilization by local authorities of hundreds of state foresters and police officials to prevent encroachment. The saddest part of this story about forest thieves in Muang Tấc is that among the thousands of local people going to the forest for timber alongside those who have no “motivation” to protect the forest because of the material seduction of the timber, there are also those who are genuinely concerned about the loss of forests surrounding the valley. This

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latter group sometimes feel they have no choice; as Thuyên, a local who has gone to the forest for timber for many years, succinctly put it: I know that we are contributing to the destruction of the forest very fast and that recently this has led to a lack of water for the paddy fields in the valley. Yet if we did not go for it, others would take it; and the fact is that there have been thousands of people going to the forest for pơ mu every day for years.14

Conclusion This paper has examined the recent conflicts over forest timber among different social actors in Muang Tấc in the context of resource ownership and management changes and the rapid development of the market economy in Vietnam’s uplands after Đổi Mới. My analysis shows that state policies of nationalization and institutionalization of forests in Muang Tấc and the simultaneous elimination of customary local ownership and management institutions have made all forests in the area “ownerless”. The problem lies in the major differences of ownership and management principles between the customary and state-led models. Unlike the ways in which forests were customarily managed and used under muang polity, under the new ownership and management system both local people and outsiders are no longer bound by customary management principles, while state management agencies do not have the ability or “legitimacy” to enforce the relevant rules and regulations. In the new socio-economic environment in which forest products have become highly valued commodities and the economic life of the local people has been shifted from subsistence agriculture towards a market orientation, local people struggle to support themselves and their families by extracting forest resources that have high market value through acts that violate not only state laws but also customary practices. The “forest thieves” story mentioned here resonates with the findings of scholars who have conducted research on social conflict over forest resources in other parts of Vietnam (McElwee 2003, 2004; Sowerwine 2004c), southern China (Sturgeon 2005), Thailand (Sturgeon 2005, Pinkaew Laungaramsri 2000, Forsyth and Walker 2008, Ganjanapan 1998), Indonesia (Peluso 1992a), Africa (Neumann 1998) and India (Sivaramakrishnan 1999, Agrawal 2005). Their findings show that state territorialization, especially the creation of political forests from which local people are excluded, remains an unstable project as it is always contested by the locals. The main source of contestation lies in the

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overlapping meanings that different interest groups attribute to the forest at any point in time, even if one dominant meaning replaces another dominant one. It is also a consequence of the competing access rights resulting from changed policies and market demands. The hegemonic meanings and laws defining and delimiting legal rights over forest created by state resource management agencies—following policies ostensibly based on “scientific” understanding of forests to control upland forest resources—often conflict with those held by other interest groups, especially those whose socio-economic and cultural life has long been tied closely to the forest. The interplay between these different systems of resource ownership and rights over access to forest resources and the different meanings of nature among these different resource users constitutes the crucial dynamics of the tension. In this regard, thus, the story of forest thieves in Muang Tấc echoes concerns of many scholars about the importance of paying attention to both the material and the symbolic nature of social conflicts over resources (Neumann 1998; Schroeder and Suryanata 1996; Moore 1993; McElwee 2003, 2004; Sowerwine 2004c). As summarized by Neumann (1998: 49), “these studies explore how myths, symbolic representations, and interpretations of history and tradition are critical for legitimating material claims of groups and individuals and are therefore subject for contestation.” The conflict among different social actors in Muang Tấc, similarly, did not revolve only around the material claims over access to forestland, timber and non-timber products. The disputes, as I have shown, were also closely related to the competing interpretations of rights, meaning and values that these interested groups attributed to the valley landscape and resources based on their different historical and traditional connections with them. In Muang Tấc, the tensions occurring since the late 1990s between local people and local state management agencies, and the conflict among the locals themselves, over timber and non-timber products have, fortunately, not resulted in any deaths of either locals or state forest rangers, as has happened in other parts of the uplands of Vietnam. The tension has, nevertheless, brought about serious ecological consequences for the future of the valley, as many natural forests have been disappearing. As I have shown in this paper, to solve this social and ecological problem, the local authorities in Muang Tấc have intensified their control by mobilizing not only all district foresters but also many officials from other district departments to stop illegal encroachment of the local people into the forest. At the same time, local and state mass media have also been

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used to “educate” and “awaken” local people regarding the significance of nature preservation. However, the evidence presented in the paper indicates that the management model used by local authorities—in which local ecological practices are strictly prohibited and criminalized while the control of forest resources is entirely in the hands of state management agencies—has not been successful. Under a globalized economic situation where demand for forest products has increased, as I have noted in the case of Muang Tấc, it is almost guaranteed that the current management model and state forest policies will continue to push more local people to engage in illegal forest exploitation. More important, the “progressive criminalization”—to use Peluso’s term—of local ecological practices and forest access rights embedded in the current forest policies will likely create more intensified social conflicts over forest resources at the local level, making the job of state forest ranger, like the positions filled by Hòa and Mỵ, more dangerous. Notes 1. I am grateful to Professor Charles F. Keyes, Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, Thomas Sikor, Pamela McElwee, Pinkeaw Laungaramsri and Chusak Wittayapak for their useful comments on different versions of this paper. A longer version of the paper was published as a working paper at the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development, Chiang Mai University (Aug. 2007). 2. The term lâm tặc, combining the Sino-Vietnamese noun lâm (forest) and verb tặc (to hijack) to denote illegal loggers, has been newly coined in Vietnam and is widely used by state mass media and in official documents. 3. Hòa Bình, or Sông Đà Dam, was built in the late 1970s and until recently was the biggest hydroelectric project in Vietnam. The dam displaced hundreds of indigenous communities in Sơn La and Hòa Bình provinces. Phù Yên District of Sơn La province was chosen to be one of the destinations for resettlement of many of the dam’s environmental refugees. 4. “Tay” is the transliteration of local people’s term for themselves. In Western literature they are known generally as Tai, and in Vietnam they are designated as “Thái”. In this paper, I will use the term “Thái” to refer to the Tay-speaking group in Muang Tấc Valley. 5. For more insightful discussions on the traditional land tenure and customary rules of the Thái in Vietnam, see Cầm Trọng and Hà Hữu Ưng (1973), Cầm Trọng (1978) and Condominas (1990). See also Hoàng Cầm (2000), Ngô Đức Thịnh and Cầm Trọng (2003) and Sikor (2004a). 6. When Muang Tấc was taken over by the Việt Minh liberation forces in 1952, an administrative structure following the model operating in the lowlands was set up in the valley. From 1953, Muang Tấc was divided into many communes

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(xã), all of which came under the administration of Phù Yên District, Nghĩa Lộ province. Since 1976, Phù Yên has belonged to Sơn La province. 7. See, for example, Nguyễn Gia Lâm (2006). 8. For more details on the national criteria for forest classification, purposes, and rules intertwining these classified forests, see Chapter 4 (Articles 26–39) of the FRPD Act of 1991. 9. According to “Regulations on Management and Use of Forest Ranger Hammer” (accompanying Resolution 302-LN/KL of the Ministry of Forestry, 12 Aug. 1991), all cut timber with a diameter exceeding 25 centimetres and length exceeding 1 metre extracted from either natural or planted forests had to be stamped (đóng búa) by state forest rangers before use (Article 1). 10. Interview, Puôi village, Muang Tấc, Sept. 2003. 11. Interview, Puôi village, Muang Tấc, May 2004. 12. Interview, Puôi village, Muang Tấc, May 2004. 13. Interview, Puôi village, Muang Tấc, June 2004. 14. Interview, Puôi village, Muang Tấc, Oct. 2003.

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5

Geographical Settings, Government Policies and Market Forces in the Uplands of Nghệ An

Stephen J. Leisz, Rikke Folving Ginzburg, Nguyễn Thanh Lâm, Trần Đức Viên and Kjeld Rasmussen

Introduction From the late 1970s until 2002, land law reforms in Vietnam focused on the allocation of land rights to individuals and individual households through the distribution of agricultural and forestland certificates. Previous to this, from the time of independence in the north, all rights to land legally belonged to the state. In the 1960s, 1970s and into the 1980s, land resource management took the form of state-run agricultural cooperatives and forest enterprises. By the end of the 1970s it was apparent that these policies had created a situation where agricultural production was deficient and state management of forest areas had led to serious deforestation (De Koninck 1999). Recognizing this, Decree 100 was implemented in 1981; this allowed farmers to use land in return for a fixed amount of the crop produced. Resolution 10 in 1988 emphasized the importance of private property rights, further dismantling the cooperative system, and allowed individuals to have the right to use a plot of land for a period of 15 years, after which the plot would officially revert to the state for possible redistribution. The 1993 Land Law granted expanded private use rights for agricultural land and allowed for the transfer of individual land rights under certain conditions (Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam 1993). The result of land allocation in the lowlands was the dissolution of cooperatives and distribution of land to households for private use, albeit 115

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officially for a limited period of time. The implementation of the land law is credited as being one of the main reasons for the improvement in agricultural production in Vietnam since the mid-1980s (Gomiero et al. 2000, Đỗ Quý Toàn and Iyer 2003). From 1943 through the mid-1990s, the quality of upland forests was degraded and the area was reduced from 43 per cent of the country’s total land area to 16 per cent (De Koninck 1999). During the late 1980s and early 1990s, forestlands and management were reformed. In 1993 the government extended the 1988 Land Law into the uplands (Ahlback 1995, MAFI 1993, Sikor 1995, De Koninck 1999), allocating forestland to upland farmers in the same manner as agricultural land. Also in 1993, the government implemented the Law for the Protection and Development of Forests, formalizing a new process for allocating rights to forestland based on the willingness of households to plant trees (Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam 1994, Gomiero et al. 2000). The 1993 Law for the Protection and Development of Forests was modified by Decree No. 85/1999/ND-CP in 1999, to allow, according to some interpretations, for the allocation of land for agricultural purposes if the land had been used for agriculture in the past (personal communication, Tương Dương District land administration officer, 1 December 2003). In much of the northern uplands, and especially in the upland areas of Nghệ An province where this study was carried out, the effect of the implementation of these regulations has been more ambiguous than in the lowlands. The allocation of individual rights to forest and agricultural land in the uplands aimed to address forest loss. Providing individual households with rights to agricultural land and forestland also had the goal of sedentarizing the households in cases where households and hamlets still practised nomadic swidden (Nguyễn Lưu Thành et al. 1995, Trần Đức 2003, Castella et al. 2006) and fixing in one place the cultivation of fields where rotational swidden was practised (Lambin and Meyfroidt 2010). Logging was officially banned in special use and natural forests in the Northern Mountains, and the amount of logging activity was greatly reduced in this area following the law’s implementation (Tottrup 2002, McElwee 2004). This was also the case specifically in Nghệ An province (Lê Trọng Cúc et al. 1998, Tottrup 2002). The impact on swidden is not as clear. While swidden activity has decreased in many parts of the uplands, it is still found in areas of the Northern Mountain Region (Trần Đức Viên et al. 2006, Trần Đức Viên et al. 2009), specifically in Nghệ An province (Jakobsen 2007, Đào Minh Trường et al. 2009, Leisz 2009). Land allocation policies in the uplands specify the number of hectares a family can receive. In the uplands of Nghệ An province this potentially

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limits the area available to households for farming, as compared to areas available under traditional swidden systems. This can leave farm households with less land for agriculture than they previously had and lead to decreasing rice production. The government of Vietnam recognizes this potential effect of the land allocation policies, as well as the household and hamlet-level food insecurity that can result, and further recognizes that this will negatively affect the government’s aim of improving the livelihoods of upland peoples. To address this, more intensive marketoriented production systems—the “garden, fishpond, livestock” (VAC, or “vườn, ao, chuồng” in Vietnamese) and “fruit tree, garden, fishpond, livestock” (RVAC, or “rừng, vườn, ao, chuồng”) programmes—have been promoted (Trần Đức 2003). The success of these programmes in meeting farmers’ demands for food and income depends on factors such as the efficiency of extension services, market opportunities, infrastructure, and the geographical setting of the hamlet. The geographical setting is understood to include the topography of the hamlet’s territory, the land cover, the water resources, and the location and proximity of the hamlet with respect to other towns and villages. The aim of this chapter is to evaluate (1) how the policies related to land and forest allocation and agricultural extension programmes were implemented in four hamlets in Nghệ An province’s uplands through 2004; (2) the conditions that affected their implementation; (3) the impact on the hamlets; and (4) the hamlets’ reactions to the policies. The following questions are addressed: 1. Is there evidence that the transmittal and implementation of government policies related to land and resource management through 2004 influenced the hamlets’ management of their land resources? 2. Is there evidence that market changes through 2004 influenced the hamlets’ land and resource management? 3. Does a hamlet’s geographical setting have a bearing on which government land management and agricultural extension policies, formulated in Hanoi and transmitted through the district to the hamlet, can be effectively implemented at the hamlet level? Background Four ethnic Thai hamlets that traditionally practise swidden cultivation have been studied: Quê (Con Cuông District), Ma (Tương Dương District), Cần (Tương Dương District) and Lưu Phong (Tương Dương District).

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Figure 5.1 Location of the study sites in Nghệ An province, Vietnam

The hamlets were deliberately chosen to represent different levels of accessibility. Other factors, such as the implementation of externally funded agroforestry projects, provision of extension services, and level of subsistence-oriented versus market-oriented cash crop production, were also taken into account. Cần, located within the buffer zone of Pù Mát National Park, is accessible from the main road via a 2 kilometre all-season gravel road. It is located in a valley oriented north to south. Hills covered with short grasses and small shrubs border it, and the landscape turns to treecovered mountains as one moves south and nears Pù Mát National Park. According to the hamlet’s inhabitants, Cần’s history dates back to the mid-eighteenth century, when eight households settled in the area. The farming system originally was based on swidden. Between the mid-1920s and 1940, irrigated fields were developed. Hamlet dwellers relate that the introduction of irrigated fields corresponded with the concentration of land in a few households, and these households collected rent from others in the hamlet for the use of these fields. In the early 1950s, as political change reached up the Cả River Valley to the hamlet, the land rent was abolished. By the end of the decade, labour exchange groups were organized in the hamlet and points were awarded for each day worked. Between 1960 and

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1965 a cooperative was established in the hamlet, and in 1964 a local pagoda, which had been constructed in 1935, was destroyed. The main impact that the Second Indochina War had on the hamlet was when Lao refugees settled nearby for one year in 1969. The country’s economic hardships of the 1970s and 1980s do not appear in the oral history of the hamlet, other than remarks that điều khoản 10 (Resolution 10) was locally renamed điều khoản mặc kệ (Resolution Carelessness) when the collective stopped the subsidization of fertilizer. The distance between Cần and the lowlands is further illustrated by the two years it took—from 1986 to 1988—for news of the Đổi Mới reforms to reach the hamlet. The cooperative was effectively disbanded and its property liquidated in 1988. The hamlet’s farming system included the cultivation of paddy and upland swidden fields, a composite swiddening farming system (Rambo 1998), when research for this study was carried out in 2003 and 2004. The initial allocation of paddy fields in Cần was carried out at the same time that news of Đổi Mới reached the hamlet. Allocation of upland forest and field areas was initially completed in 1996–97 and was redone in 1999 and 2002–3 respectively. The Pù Mát National Park Social Forestry and Nature Conservation Project, funded by the European Union, provided money for land allocation. The allocation of upland areas included delineation of areas that could officially be used for cultivation. Animal husbandry was practised in the hamlet, and district extension supported pig-raising efforts. Following land allocation in 1999, cattle raising was limited due to conflicts over crops destroyed by free-grazing cattle. Buffalo were raised as draught animals and for market. Because of its proximity to Pù Mát National Park, the hamlet was a focus of both national and local officials, leading to forestland allocation being implemented earlier than in surrounding hamlets and to the strict enforcement of land allocation regulations. Lưu Phong is located in a wide valley surrounded by rolling hills. Most of the valley has been transformed into bunded paddy fields, and most of the hills have fallow vegetation in various stages of regrowth. According to locals interviewed, the area where Lưu Phong is located originally supported two hamlets that were merged during the time of cooperatives. Going back further in local history, the elders expressed a belief that the two hamlets had existed in the area for at least six generations, and they estimated that their ancestors had settled in the valley at least 200 years ago. The interlocutors painted a picture of a historically isolated population. They said that during the French times a tax was paid to a local representative of the colonial regime who lived in

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a village about 20 kilometres away. If a family could not pay, they had to provide unpaid labour to the official. The hamlet had no direct contact with French officials, except for when French Army personnel passed through the valley trying to escape from the Japanese in the 1940s. The revolution did not touch the hamlet dwellers, except that they were able to stop paying taxes to the local official. Cooperative formation reached the hamlet in 1960, and, as in the case of Cần, the cooperative awarded points for each day worked. The Second Indochina War affected the hamlet in two ways: between 1960 and 1969, 20 men were conscripted by the commune and sent away to the army; and between 1969 and 1973, young men 18 to 25 years of age were sent to the frontier to work. This period was recalled as being the hardest time in the hamlet’s history. The happiest time for the people of Lưu Phong was reported as being in 1985, when the cooperative was ended in the hamlet. Interlocutors reported that the hamlet’s farming system had not changed much for at least 80 years: for as long as people could remember, both upland and flooded rice were planted in a composite swidden system. In 1996, land allocation of the paddy area took place. Paddy fields were reallocated in 2000–1, when upland fields were also allocated. Limited water resources have restricted paddy to one crop per year. Since 2000–1, upland cultivation has officially been restricted to two small valleys in the northern part of the hamlet and fallow periods have decreased from ten to less than five years. The road running through the centre of the valley was upgraded in 2002 to an all-year road, improving the connection between the hamlet and the district town. Ma, located on the banks of the Cả River’s northern branch, is made up of steeply sloping mountains covered with fallow vegetation ranging from grass, bush, shrubs and bamboo to near-primary forest areas. Today it takes three hours via motorboat to reach the hamlet from the district town. However, accessibility was not always this easy. According to locals, when the hamlet was first settled—in November 1949—it took at least three days to reach from the district town. The original settlers of Ma consisted of four households numbering about 40 people. The descendants of these four households today form the hamlet’s four lineages. The elders of the village are proud of the role that Ma has played in local and national history. Village elders related that from the time of the hamlet’s founding until the 1970s, the main influence on its activities was the war. During this time young men joined the army, and the hamlet’s labour force was drastically reduced. A cooperative was formed in the hamlet during 1959– 60 and stayed in place until the 1980s. Each of the four work groups was

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made up of members of a single lineage, so that each lineage’s working population was reflected as a work group. Unlike the other hamlets in this study, the interlocutors providing the historical background did not remark on the exact time when the cooperative was disbanded. According to them, the work relationships found within the cooperative have continued to this day, but under the guise of labour exchanges between members of the same lineage. Another aspect of the history that is unique to this hamlet is the involvement of hamlet personnel in national politics. While physically remote, the hamlet provided the first member from the area to the National Assembly, in 1964. Ma’s physical remoteness ended in 1989, when the first motorized boat made its way to the hamlet from the district town. Ma’s farming system is based on rotational swidden, which has been practised in the hamlet since it was founded. Cattle, pig and chicken are raised in the hamlet. The focus of farmers is on cattle raising, which they say is expanding to provide lowland traders with cattle. In 1998 the district attempted to allocate agricultural land and forestland, but the hamlet dwellers refused the land administration officers access to the hamlet as they did not want their communal and lineage-managed lands allocated for private use (personal communication, hamlet leaders, 13 April 2001; commune land administration officer, 5 December 2003). Allocation of upland fields was done in 2002, and at that time all areas that had historically been cultivated in the swidden system, including fallow lands, were allocated as agricultural land (personal communication, commune land administration officer, 5 December 2003; personal communication, Tương Dương District land administration officer, 1 December 2003). Quê is within the buffer zone of Pù Hương Nature Reserve and is accessible year-round by motorcycle and four-wheel-drive vehicles via a hard-packed dirt road. Locals believe that the hamlet was originally settled during the first decade of the 1800s. The hamlet was evacuated in the 1930s, when a drought struck the area. Part of the population returned in 1942 and has lived there since. The history related by local people focuses on events within the hamlet, with little evidence of external contact with government officials. The events of importance related by the interlocutors focus on local droughts, when fires struck the hamlet, when the first cattle were brought to the hamlet and how much was harvested each year. While it appears that people started to participate in work groups in the early 1960s, a cooperative was evidently not established until 1969, much later than in the other hamlets researched; and it was not until 1975 that all households actually participated in the cooperative. It is also noted that the cooperative failed in 1981. The history of the cooperative illustrates

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what the oral history of Quê makes clear: that the hamlet has always been remote and isolated. A further reflection of this is the lack of information provided by locals on the impact of the Second Indochina War on the hamlet. In a departure from the oral histories of the other three hamlets, Quê’s interlocutors did not reflect on any local participation in the war. The hamlet is made up of steeply sloping hills covered with vegetation ranging from grasses and herbaceous shrubs, small trees and bamboo to secondary forest; there is little flat land. A rotational swidden farming system was traditionally practised in the hamlet. In 1998, 4 hectares of bottom land were converted to paddy with support from district officials, and both paddy and upland fields were allocated. Rather than upland areas being allocated to individual households, as was done in two of the study’s other three hamlets, the upland area was allocated to the hamlet, and then hamlet authorities allocated upland fields to households based on need. Upland agriculture is officially limited to the southeast section of the hamlet’s territory. Commune authorities stipulate that 16 hectares should be cultivated annually, with a rotation cycle of five years. Hamlet leaders stated that the area cultivated each year was closer to 60 hectares, since most households needed to plant approximately 1.5 hectares of land in order to produce enough rice for consumption. With the development of paddy fields and the limitation on upland agriculture, the farming system has started to evolve into a composite swidden system. Animal husbandry is practised in the hamlet, but to a limited extent. District agricultural extension agents are involved in promoting both the VAC and RVAC extension programmes. They have visited each hamlet to promote the digging of fish ponds, the planting of fruit trees, the raising of pigs in sties, and the creation of terraced or bunded paddy fields. There is a district-level credit scheme providing funds for building bunds and terraces for improved paddy fields, and there are funds available to support pig raising in sties and the digging and stocking of fish ponds, but it has not been reported how much each farmer would receive. Agents do not promote cattle raising, nor are there any reports of agents promoting the harvesting and marketing of non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Methods Semi-structured interviews were carried out at district, commune and hamlet levels, focusing on livelihood systems, farming systems, land tenure and forest tenure. District-level land administration and forest protection personnel were interviewed; commune chairmen, vice chairmen and land

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120–480 (boat); 3 days (walking)

80ha 35 Road: improved- Moto, 60–120 uplands; unpaved hard- truck 4ha pack paddy

Notes: 1 hh = households 2 District town and market town are the same. 3 Motorcycle Sources: Field interviews, hamlet records, observation and field measurements.

Quê Bình 409; 1998 Chuẩn/Con 69hh Cuông

Ma Kim Tien/ 580; 2002 All hamlet 40 River or walking Motorboat, Tương 138hh area trail raft, Dương walk

Road: improved- Moto, 30–120 unpaved hard- truck, pack (8km); walk asphalt (7km)

No large valleys; hills changing to mountains (southwest to northeast)

Hills/mountains rise steeply from Cả River; no flat land

Wide valley northeast to southwest; rolling hills; streams flow into valley

15

Lưu Lưu Kiên/ 751; 2001–2 uplands; Phong Tương 147hh 1996 paddy area Dương to 110hh 50ha uplands; 47ha paddy

Northsouth valley; rolling hills to west and east; changing to high tree-covered mountains in south of hamlet area

Distance from Transportation Transportation Travel time Landforms/ district town2 route mode to district Topography (km) town (min.)

Cần Tám Thái/ 835; 1987–88 paddy; 80ha 10 Road: improved- Moto,3 20–60 Tương 183hh1 1996–97 Pù Mát uplands; unpaved hard- bike, Dương buffer zone est.; 27.5ha pack (2km); walk 1999 green book; paddy asphalt (8km) 2002–3 uplands

Hamlet Commune/ Population Year(s) of Area District land allocation allocated

Table 5.1 Basic information on each hamlet for 2003–4 Geographical Settings, Government Policies and Market Forces in the Uplands of Nghệ An 123

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administration personnel were interviewed regarding the application of land allocation and customary tenure systems in each commune; hamlet leaders and farmers were interviewed regarding land allocation procedures, reliance on customary tenure systems, hamlet and household livelihood systems, and farming systems. A structured questionnaire covering these topics was administered in each hamlet (n=30 randomly chosen households per hamlet). Historical socio-economic and demographic data were collected from records kept at district and commune headquarters and from focused interviews and oral histories with hamlet dwellers chosen for their knowledge of specific subjects. Transects were walked to better understand the geographical setting and landscape of each hamlet. Field and hamlet boundaries were measured using GPS receivers, tape measures and compasses. Detailed information on crop productivity was gathered through interviews and measurements in the field. Post-fieldwork Landsat TM and ETM+ satellite images were classified into upland agriculture fields, paddy, and fallow regrowth for the years 1993, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. This was done by first level-slicing normalized differential vegetation indexes and infrared indexes for each year and then setting thresholds to delineate between cleared areas (upland fields and paddy areas) and vegetation-covered areas. Fallow areas were derived from year-on-year analysis of images combined with a supervised classification of the images. All results were checked against a total of 400 ground truth points collected in 2001, 2003 and 2004. Classification accuracy for the upland fields and paddy areas is greater than 90 per cent. Fallow areas were mapped at greater than 80 per cent accuracy. Time series analysis of image classifications was done, and spatial analyses of the field distributions within each hamlet were carried out using spatial statistics tools within ESRI’s ArcGIS software. A mean centre for the distribution of upland fields for each year was calculated and compared over time. The first standard deviation distance from the mean centre was calculated for each year to analyze the change in concentration/ dispersion of the hamlets’ upland fields. Results Implementation and Impact of Land Allocation on Land Use and Livelihood Systems As in the case of other reports (Sikor 1995, 2004b; Sowerwine 2004c; Trần Đức Viên et al. 2005), local variability was found in the application of land allocation at the district, commune and hamlet levels. Land

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allocation was implemented at different times in each hamlet. Though there are similarities across the hamlets’ livelihood systems, the specific roles of the systems’ parts vary by hamlet. Semi-structured and in-depth interviews with individual farmers, village leaders and focus groups provide information regarding how livelihood systems changed over time as forestland and land tenure regulations changed. Because of the nature of the study, a structured randomly sampled household survey was carried out only once in each hamlet; thus, time series data from a structured survey is not available to illustrate livelihood system changes. Tables 5.2a and 5.2b provide a snapshot of the different livelihood systems for 2003–4, and an understanding of the livelihood system changes from the early 1990s through 2003–4 comes from the semi-structured, in-depth and focus group interviews. Cầ n Allocation of upland fields in 1996–97 officially limited upland cultivation to the northern part of Cần hamlet. Satellite image analysis shows upland fields scattered throughout the hamlet in 1993 and an absence of fields in the southern part of the hamlet in 1998. Latter-year analyses show that farmers cultivated upland fields in the southern area in 2000, but field clearing in the south of the hamlet decreased from 2001 to 2003 (Figure 5.2). The mean centre of the field locations moves north in the hamlet each year, and the oval indicating the first standard deviation from the mean for upland field locations gets smaller and moves northwards year to year, indicating increasingly concentrated upland fields in the northern part of the hamlet (Figures 5.2 and 5.6). By 2003, upland field fallow periods decreased to one or two years and in some cases upland fields were cultivated yearly. The decreased fallow is attributed to decreased upland area available for cultivation. Decreased rice yields from upland fields have been reported (Table 5.3). To compensate for the lower yields, farmers are concentrating more resources on paddy fields and have expanded pig-raising efforts. When fallow periods were longer, cattle grazed freely in the upland areas. With a shorter fallow, rules limiting the areas where cattle can graze have been implemented and the number of cattle raised has decreased. Pig raising in sties, promoted by the district extension officers, is popular within the hamlet, and the number of pigs is increasing. Collection of NTFPs has decreased due to strict limitations on the use of forest and on all upland areas.

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418 (100% upland) 145 (37.9% paddy, 62.1% upland)

Ma 2,905 0

Quê 1,141 136

4,040

0

1,470

10,6002

Paddy rice production/ha/year (kg)

790

1,440

1,270

620

Upland rice production/ha/year (kg)

Upland Transformations in Vietnam

Notes: 1 Calculations are based on the total population of the hamlet as reported by the head of the hamlet and noted in hamlet records (included in Table 5.1) and upland field areas measured from satellite imagery for each year; paddy fields measured during fieldwork. 2 Cần hamlet uses fertilizer in irrigated paddy fields and double crops irrigated paddy fields. Other hamlets do not. Sources: Field interviews, structured survey of random sample of households, hamlet records, field observation and measurement.

351 (39.3% paddy, 60.7% upland)

Rice production/ person/year (husked) (kg)

Lưu Phong 1,674 940

Average yearly paddy area/person (m2) 321 (83.2% paddy, 16.8% upland)

Average yearly upland rice field area/person (m2)1

Cần 868 252

Hamlet

Table 5.2a Agricultural land and returns per person from livelihood system activities: rice production 126

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0.31

Ma

Quê 0.3

0.3

0.3

0.2

0.3

0.8

0.7

1.1

269,915

644,162

246,350

555,062

Average value of livestock sold/ person/year (VND)

Note: 1 All cattle owned by one household. Sources: Field interviews, hamlet records, structured survey of random sample of households.

0.3

0.8

Lưu Phong

0.2

Cần

Hamlet Average heads Average Average cattle/person buffalo/person pigs/person

0

65,956

15,625

83,662

Per capita income: timber and firewood (VND)

103,528

80,699

54,750

58,603

Per capita income: NTFPs and handicrafts (VND)

Table 5.2b Agricultural land and returns per person from livelihood system activities: animal husbandry and forest products Geographical Settings, Government Policies and Market Forces in the Uplands of Nghệ An 127

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1993

1998

2000

2001

2002

2003

Figure 5.2 Upland fields in Cần hamlet: 1993–2003

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- 312ha upland - 449,280kg rice - around 540 people 832kg rice/person

- 185ha upland - 71ha paddy - 339,320kg rice - around 644 people 527kg rice/person

- 164ha upland - 21ha paddy - 324,530kg rice - around 755 people 430kg rice/person

1998

- 140ha upland - 201,600kg rice - around 600 people 336kg rice/person

- 200ha upland - 71ha paddy - 358,370kg rice - around 680 people 527kg rice/person

- 118ha upland - 21ha paddy - 295,910kg rice - around 787 people 376kg rice/person

2000

- 56ha upland - 4ha paddy - around 409 people - 76,000kg rice 186kg rice/person

- 168ha upland - 242,440kg rice - 580 people 418kg rice/person

- 125ha upland - 71ha paddy - 263,600kg rice - 751 people 351kg rice/person

- 72ha upland - 21ha paddy - 268,040kg rice - 835 people 321kg rice/person

2003

Notes: N/A – Cloud-free satellite image not available for the hamlet for the year. Calculations are based on the total population of the hamlet as reported in the hamlet records, field areas measured from satellite imagery for each year, paddy fields measured during fieldwork, yield based on hamlet records, and interviews. Sources: Field interviews, hamlet records, field observation and measurement.

Quê - 92ha upland N/A - 110ha upland N/A - 92,000kg rice - 110,000kg rice - around 320 people - around 389 people 288kg rice/person 283kg rice/person

Ma N/A N/A

- 165ha upland - 71ha paddy - 313,920kg rice - around 554 people 567kg rice/person

Lưu Phong N/A

1993 - 187ha upland - 21ha paddy - 338,840kg rice - around 675 people 502kg rice/person

1991

Cần N/A

Hamlet

Table 5.3 Development of rice production (husked) Geographical Settings, Government Policies and Market Forces in the Uplands of Nghệ An 129

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Lưu Phong Paddy and upland field allocation took place later in Lưu Phong than in Cần. Since upland field allocation in 2001–2, hamlet leaders have officially limited upland cultivation to two small stream valleys that enter the main valley from the north. Analysis of satellite imagery from 1993 to 2002 shows a decrease in the percentage of total upland fields (number of fields and area) in the southern part of the hamlet and an increase in the north (Figure 5.3). The mean centre of the field locations moved north each year from 2000 to 2002, but not as significantly as in Cần (Figures 5.3 and 5.6). The first standard deviation oval stays roughly the same dimension over the time series.

Figure 5.3 Upland fields in Lưu Phong hamlet: 1993–2002

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Upland rice cultivation is still very important, but yields are decreasing. Limitations on upland fields resulted in the limitation of the upland swidden area per household and led to a shortening of the fallow period (from five years to one or two). Decreased upland rice yields have been reported (Table 5.3). Paddy area has expanded, but water is in short supply and the hamlet manages only one paddy crop per year. Slightly more rice is produced in upland fields than in paddy fields. Fertilizer is not used for paddy or upland cultivation. District extension officers have emphasized pig raising, but pig raising has not increased. Cattle are considered the wisest investment, and the number of people raising cattle as well as the number of cattle within the hamlet and per household have increased. Hamlet leaders interpret land and forest tenure regulations to allow for free grazing of cattle in the hamlet area. NTFP collection and selling has neither increased nor decreased. Ma Land allocation has not affected Ma’s land management and farming system. As in the past, hamlet leaders and farmers choose where and how to cultivate swidden fields. Analysis of satellite imagery from 1998

Figure 5.4 Upland fields in Ma hamlet: 1998–2003

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to 2003 shows that field distribution within the hamlet territory has not changed (Figure 5.4). The mean centre of the field locations remains very near the geographic centre of the hamlet, and the dimensions of the first standard deviation oval are constant over the time series (Figures 5.4 and 5.6). The livelihood system has three main components: the cultivation of upland rice, animal husbandry, and the collection of NTFPs. The area of upland fields and rice production has increased since land allocation (Table 5.3). Cattle are viewed as the wisest investment strategy for farmers, and cattle raising has increased. Pig raising in sties has not increased. Collection of NTFPs has increased in recent years. Quê Land allocation was done in Quê in 1998, but regulations limiting extensive upland field clearing were not strictly enforced until 2002. Since then upland fields have become concentrated in the southeast corner of the hamlet, in areas officially allocated for upland agriculture. Analysis of satellite imagery from 1993 to 2003 documents how the distribution of the upland fields within the hamlet has changed from fields being evenly distributed throughout the territory before 2002 to their concentration in the hamlet’s southeast corner after 2002 (Figure 5.5). The mean centre of the field locations has moved from near the geographic centre of the hamlet to the southeast corner (Figure 5.5). An analysis of changes in the first standard deviation oval’s dimensions over time shows the mean centre moved a full standard deviation towards the southeast from 2001 to 2003 and that the oval became compacted (Figure 5.6). Upland field area decreased following land allocation, the upland field fallow period decreased, and rice production decreased (Table 5.3). Available flat land has been turned into paddy, but water is scarce and only one paddy crop per year is grown. In interviews, hamlet leaders and farmers reported that increased cattle raising took place in the late 1990s and early years of the twenty-first century, utilizing the old fallow areas that were no longer cultivated as pasture areas. In 2003 a larger than normal number of cattle were sold by farmers to lowland traders in order to pay for food when Quê’s upland rice crop failed. Cattle numbers have not rebounded, and pig raising is not popular. Collection of NTFPs for sale is increasing, but strict implementation of land and forest regulations attempts to restrict this.

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Figure 5.5 Upland fields in Quê hamlet: 1993–2003

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Cần hamlet

Ma hamlet

Lưu Phong hamlet

Quê hamlet

Figure 5.6 Mean centre and first standard deviation of the distribution of upland fields

Hamlet Rice Production People’s Committees in Vietnam consider a household food-secure if it has access to, or produces, the equivalent of 180 kilograms of husked rice/person/year or 300 kilograms of unhusked rice/person/year. Based on these standards, calculations for Cần, Lưu Phong and Ma indicate each hamlet produces adequate rice every year for food security. Quê does not. Using satellite imagery to supplement interviews, rice production in the hamlets was analyzed. The results for Quê (Table 5.3) show that prior to land allocation in 1998 the hamlet was food-secure, producing 283 kilograms of rice/person, while in 2003 186 kilograms of rice/person was produced, barely enough for food security. In reality the decrease is

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greater: in 2003 the harvest was poor, and only the amount in Table 5.2a was actually harvested. Calculations for the other three hamlets (Table 5.3) show that they have met government standards since 1993. However, rice yields for Cần and Lưu Phong decreased nearly 200 kilograms/person since land allocation and have not recovered, while rice yields in Ma decreased from 1998 to 2000 but then increased to above 400 kilograms/person in 2003. Hamlet Reaction to Government Extension/Promotion Efforts and to Market Forces Hamlet reactions to activities promoted by government extension officers vary. In Cần the promotion of RVAC activities has been met enthusiastically, and activities have increased. RVAC has been extended to Lưu Phong and Quê, and paddy areas have expanded in both hamlets, but increased returns from paddy cultivation have not been realized due to a lack of water and a lack of resources for purchasing inputs. Pig raising in sties is not popular in either hamlet, nor is fish raising, though fish ponds have been dug. Ma has had RVAC activities extended to it, but no paddy areas have been developed and cultivated. Fish ponds were dug and pig raising in sties encouraged. But fish are easily stolen from ponds, and fish raising is limited; only one household practises pisciculture in ponds. Pig raising in sties is done on a limited basis. In Ma and Lưu Phong, and to a lesser extent Quê, market forces influence livelihood system development. Farmers in Ma and Lưu Phong consider cattle raising either their most important activity, or second to rice cultivation. Cattle raising became important in the early years of the twenty-first century, when cattle buyers from the lowlands arrived in the hamlets and offered prepaid contracts to deliver cattle to the district market. The logic behind the strategy of raising free-grazing forest cattle was explained by a Lưu Phong interviewee (personal communication, Mr Pong, 10 April 2004), who noted that he would have to cultivate 4 hectares of upland rice to earn enough money for a motorcycle, or he could raise one cow. The hamlets’ fallow areas provide ample forage for cattle. Increased exploitation of NTFPs in Quê and Ma also reflects a reaction to market forces, as more lowlanders are coming to the uplands in search of NTFPs for lowland markets. Both hamlets reported an increase in their exploitation of NTFPs, though the reasons differed. Ma residents were opportunistic in the way they exploited NTFPs. They collected them while carrying out other activities such as gathering firewood or

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herding cattle. They viewed NTFP marketing as a way to diversify their livelihood system and realize more income. Households in Quê organized to collect NTFPs and went to the hillsides specifically with the objective of collecting these products for sale to intermediaries who would transport them to market. In Quê, money from selling NTFPs was important for buying food, while in Ma it was extra income. Both hamlets’ geographical setting supports the natural production of NTFPs; NTFPs collected in the hamlets are found growing in fallow upland fields. Discussion Using the analytical frame shown in Figure 5.7, the following are discussed: (1) Interactions between the district level and hamlet level and how the hamlets’ geographical setting may influence whether hamlet populations completely adopt a district-promoted policy, adapt it to their local conditions after initially adopting it, reject it after initial adoption, or immediately reject the policy as unsuitable (2) Market influences and hamlet-level livelihood systems District-Hamlet Interactions Land Allocation Policies While the timing of enforcement varied, the same land allocation policies were initially transmitted from district level to all hamlets, yet adoption at hamlet level varied. In two cases, Cần and Quê, spatial analysis of the upland field locations identifies the consolidation of these fields immediately after the land allocation process was enforced. In Lưu Phong the analysis indicates a trend towards consolidation following land allocation, but upland fields are still found outside of the allocated area. In contrast to these cases, analysis of Ma’s fields reveals no change in the location or amount of fields. In Quê and Cần, where land allocation policies were most successfully implemented, geographical setting influences the relationship between the district and the hamlets. Both hamlets are located in a protected buffer zone, an area of national importance; district officials pay close attention to how government policies are adopted at the hamlet level within such zones. Despite this similarity, there are differences in the two hamlets’ geographical settings that are reflected in hamlet-district dynamics,

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External market transformations

National government policy changes relayed to province and to district (e.g., land / forest tenure, extension priorities, taxation, etc.)

External influences

Figure 5.7 framework: Analytical interaction framework: interactionpolicies, of government policies, Figure 5.7 Analytical of government market demands, and market ecologicaldemands landscape and ecological landscape

Hamlet economic, geographic setting at T2 – what we observe at the end of the time period.

Hamlet-level impact = f (connectivity to market + farming and livelihood system + land resource potential + impact of government policy at hamlet level)

Hamlet-level adoption and/or adaptation, or rejection = f (connectivity to district admin + relationship to district admin + local land tenure system + local governance + local farming and livelihood system)

Hamlet economic, geographic setting, at T1 (what we observe or is reported at the beginning of the time period) = F (vegetation + topography + water resources available + age of settlement + farming livelihood system (ag practices, land tenure system, population, etc.) + connectivity to market + connectivity and relationship to administrative centre)

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especially when examined in conjunction with how land allocation policies were adopted at the hamlet level. In Cần the composite swidden farming system has historically relied on paddy fields almost as much as on upland fields, because of the large amount of flat land that could be turned into paddy land. When land allocation led to upland fields being strictly regulated, Cần’s system had flexibility to compensate for the loss of harvest from upland fields by increasing investment in paddy fields; and its geographical setting allowed for the expansion of paddy areas in order to produce more rice. This situation made it easier for land allocation to be implemented and may have contributed to the local acceptance of the allocation process. Another possible influence on the hamlet’s acceptance of the land allocation process is the proximity of the hamlet to the district town: Cần is the closest of the hamlets studied to its district town (Table 5.1), and thus implicitly the easiest of the four for district officials to monitor. In addition to the hamlet’s proximity, and possibly influenced by this proximity, local leaders chose to enforce how upland fields were allocated and used and even modified rules regulating the raising of cattle: free grazing was earlier allowed, but now cattle were required to be corralled at night and guarded during the day. Quê’s geographical setting is different from Cần’s in two ways. First, while a composite swidden farming system was introduced in Quê with the creation of paddy fields, the hamlet does not have enough flat land and water to build productive paddy fields to compensate for decreased upland rice production. While the hamlet initially accepted the implementation of the upland field allocation and limitation on swidden fields, its rice production shrank due to a decrease in the upland area cultivated, decreased production per upland hectare of rice, and limited production from the paddy area. In order to compensate for the lowered rice harvest and buy rice, farmers sold their cattle and increased exploitation and marketing of NTFPs. Additionally, farmers indicated that they had expanded upland fields into a new area beyond the allocated area (an expansion of upland fields confirmed in the satellite analysis) in order to increase their rice production (group interview, 10 August 2004). This upland field expansion indicates that the hamlet is moving away from an initial acceptance of the land allocation policy—either adapting the policy to its local conditions after initially adopting it or, especially if more unauthorized fields are open, rejecting the policy after initial adoption. The second difference between Quê’s and Cần’s geographical settings is proximity to their respective district towns. As already noted, Cần is the closest of the hamlets to a district town. Quê is the second-most isolated

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hamlet from its district town (Table 5.1), and furthermore it has a history of being isolated from the district (see “Background” section). This relative isolation helps explain why the hamlet was able to expand its upland fields into unauthorized areas without any initial district intervention. As noted above, Lưu Phong is situated in a long, wide valley running south to north, with hills bordering it on the east and west; and it is connected to the district town via a recently upgraded all-season road. This geographical setting and improved connectivity to the district town influenced hamlet leaders and the population to initially accept the implementation of land allocation for the upland and paddy areas. The geographical setting meant that once uplands were allocated and swidden field expansion limited, all hamlet households could be, and were, allocated paddy land. However, following land allocation the limitations regarding where upland fields could be located and limitations on the clearing of new upland fields were not strictly enforced, as another aspect of the geographical setting—limited water resources—meant that not all of the paddy area actually supported a rice crop each year, and some farmers found that they still needed more upland field area than they had been allocated. While Lưu Phong is almost as easily accessible from the district town as Cần, there is little chance that district officials will monitor the hamlet as closely since Lưu Phong is not located in a geographical setting as nationally important as Cần is: it is not in a buffer zone. Thus, while Lưu Phong has a history of practising composite swiddening similar to Cần, the geographical settings are different and Lưu Phong has not adopted the land allocation policies with the same enthusiasm as Cần. Ma’s geographical setting is very different from the other three hamlets’. Ma is situated along the banks of the Cả River, with no flat land suitable for paddy cultivation, and it is the most isolated from its district town. When land allocation was introduced to the hamlet, as noted above, the hamlet’s leaders and population refused to accept the policy. With no possibility of paddy cultivation, and since the hamlet consisted only of sloping land, the policy would have meant that upland rice cultivation would have had to stop, effectively destroying livelihoods. Land allocation was successful only in 2002, after the district modified how the land allocation policies were interpreted with respect to upland agricultural lands and the modified interpretation was presented to the hamlet. The hamlet has accepted the modified land allocation policy and continues to practise a rotational swidden farming system. Even with the land allocation process officially complete, the hamlet’s customary land tenure system continues to provide rules for managing the system.

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Agricultural Extension Policies The agricultural extension policies promoted by the districts have been introduced in each of the hamlets. The geographical settings of the protected area buffer zones are high priorities for intervention, and the extension efforts in these areas are the best funded. Of the two hamlets in protected area buffer zones, Cần practises a farming system that adopted the RVAC system with no modifications, and its geographical setting provides a situation that is compatible with the implementation of the RVAC components. Consequently, Cần has adopted the RVAC in total within its system. Following visits from the agriculture extension agents, farmers in Quê made efforts to adopt RVAC. Paddy fields were built, fruit trees planted, and some fish ponds dug. Quê’s geographical setting, however, does not have the terrain nor water resources necessary for the population to successfully implement RVAC, and there is a lack of demand for RVAC fish pond products and pigs nearby, since the long travel time to the nearest market means that transportation costs combined with the increased costs of raising pigs in sties do not allow farmers to sell pigs for a profit. These factors have led to the failure of RVAC extension efforts in Quê. Even though less extension efforts were directed to Lưu Phong, the hamlet adopted some aspects of RVAC. Like Cần, Lưu Phong is located in a geographical setting favourable to the implementation of parts of RVAC. Fruit trees have been planted and paddy area expanded. However, as in Quê, paddy development suffers from a lack of water for irrigating more than one rice crop per year; and pig raising in sties cannot compete with the less labour-intensive raising of free-roaming pigs. RVAC was extended to Ma, but the hamlet’s geographical setting is not conducive to the implementation of many of the system’s components. The hamlet has one small flat field that is inundated yearly by the Cả River and is not suitable for paddy. Fruit trees are grown in the hamlet, but they were grown in the hamlet before the RVAC programme. Pig raising in sties is not widely practised, for the same reason it is not practised in Quê: it is not competitive with the raising of free-roaming pigs. Lastly, a social problem has kept pond pisciculture from being adopted: almost all houses accepted district subsidies and dug fish ponds, but only a few households raise fish, due to the difficulty of protecting pond fish from theft. Feedback from Hamlet to District The promotion of government land policies and agriculture policies in the hamlets has resulted in feedback from the hamlet to the district level.

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This feedback is transmitted in one of two ways: either as overt actions by hamlets to accept (positive) or resist (negative) a government policy being implemented within the hamlet; or as mixed feedback, where a hamlet may at first accept the implementation of the policy, but then try to avoid following it or try to subvert it in some way at a later point. This last type of feedback is always negative, but it sends a more “muted” message of non-acceptance than in the case of overtly negative feedback. The following two paragraphs review feedback from the hamlet level to the district with regard to land and agriculture policies. Cần is the only hamlet that willingly adopted almost all government policies with little local modification. In doing so, it sent a positive message of support to the district. Quê and Lưu Phong both sent mixed feedback to their respective district administrations. Quê initially adopted both extension and land allocation policies. Information from interviews in the hamlet shows that over time Quê stopped implementing the extension policies, as they were not well suited to the hamlet’s geographical setting, and the hamlet began relying increasingly on NTFP collection and sale to provide income for buying rice, rather than on the RVAC options. Farmers and hamlet leaders in Quê also admitted that they had expanded the area where upland cultivation was practised beyond the allocated areas in order to produce sufficient food crops. This undercut the land allocation policies of the district. Lưu Phong initially adopted land allocation policies and accepted extension efforts, but active participation in the promoted extension programmes decreased over time, indicating a passively negative attitude towards these programmes. The limits imposed on the cultivation of upland areas have not been locally enforced, indicating non-acceptance of the district’s land policies. Ma sent a clear message of resistance in response to the district administration’s efforts to implement land allocation policies in 1998. This negative feedback influenced the district administration to locally initiate a change in the district land allocation rules (personal communication, Tương Dương District land administration officer, 1 December 2003; personal communication, commune land administration official, 5 December 2003). In 2002 district land administration officials came to the hamlet to implement the allocation of upland areas for a second time. This time district officials explained to the hamlet’s leaders and populace their modified interpretation of Decree No. 85/1999/ND-CP: As far as the district officials were concerned, hillside land could be considered agricultural land and could be allocated to households if it had been previously cultivated by a household (personal communication, Tương

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Dương District land administration officer, 1 December 2003). This interpretation implicitly allowed for land used in a swidden system to be allocated as agricultural land and was accepted by the hamlet. Market Influence and Hamlet-Level Systems The biggest external market impact is demand from the lowlands, transmitted through travelling traders, for NTFPs and beef cattle. This demand has led traders up the Cả River to visit very remote hamlets in search of both. Even though Cần is the most accessible village among the four by road, and is seemingly best connected to the markets, its production system has been the least impacted by the market. Cần has neither increased its collection of NTFPs nor increased cattle production. Rather, its rules have been modified to limit cattle production by limiting the number of cattle per household and by limiting grazing areas. Quê households’ initial reaction to the market was to raise more cattle after land allocation and sell the cattle to traders from the lowland areas. After they sold off most of their cattle, as reported above, Quê farmers started to collect and market NTFPs. However, rather than transport NTFPs to market, they would sell them to middlemen at a belowmarket price, in order to limit the possibility that the products would be intercepted by forest protection agents. Both Lưu Phong and Ma reacted to market demand by increasing the investment in and the raising of cattle and by increasing the collection and sale of NTFPs. Cattle are viewed by households in both hamlets as the best available investment. They wander untended and graze freely in the fallow fields. Households condition their cattle, while they are calves, to return every few days to the house by making salt available in the yard. This limits the labour needed to herd cattle, since the farmers know their cattle will return every few days. Furthermore, cattle walk themselves to market, keeping transport costs low. This also favours the hamlets. Buyers come to the hamlets and contract with households to bring cattle to market on a specified day. Partial payment is made at that time. When the cattle arrive at market, the buyers pay the balance. If a buyer decides not to purchase the cattle, the owner keeps the down payment and returns to the hamlet with his cattle. Overall, households see limited risk in raising cattle. NTFPs in both hamlets are collected as a secondary activity when household personnel are involved with other tasks. Most NTFPs are fairly easily transported to market or collected by middlemen.

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Conclusion This chapter asks three questions regarding the implementation of government land and resource management policies at the hamlet level: Did government policies related to land and resource management influence the hamlets’ management of their resources? Did market changes influence the hamlets’ land and resource management? Does a hamlet’s geographical setting have a bearing on which land management and agricultural extension policies can effectively be implemented at the hamlet level? The answer to the first of these is “yes” for Cần, Quê and Lưu Phong: there is evidence that the implementation of land allocation policies through 2003 influenced hamlet-level management of land resources. Analysis of the interview data, mapped field locations and spatial statistics leads to the conclusion that hamlet management of the upland areas changed after the implementation and enforcement of land allocation. However, in Ma there is no evidence that the management of upland areas changed after land allocation. The answer to the second question is “yes” for Ma, Lưu Phong and Quê: there is evidence of market demand influencing hamlet-level land and resource management decisions. The research reveals that market demand for cattle and NTFPs has been a factor in the choices households make regarding their livelihood activities. In these hamlets the local farmers reported that the collection of NTFPs increased in response to market demand. Farmers also reported, and gave examples of, increased numbers of cattle being raised in response to market demand. In Quê cattle rearing has since decreased, but in Lưu Phong and Ma cattle rearing continues to expand. In Cần, neither NTFP collection nor cattle rearing has increased; rather, these activities have decreased. With regard to the third question, the geographical setting of a hamlet does impact on the effective implementation of government land allocation and agricultural extension policies, and the reaction of hamlets involved does feed back to district-level government institutions. The clearest example of this action/reaction process is in Ma. Besides being the most isolated of the hamlets, Ma has a geographical setting that is not conducive to the implementation of RVAC activities. Ma households’ livelihood system is based upon rotational swidden farming, which fits well with the hamlet’s setting but not with generally understood government land allocation policies. In response to the situation in Ma, the district modified its application of the land allocation policy in order to implement land allocation in the hamlet in 2002.

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The geographical setting of Lưu Phong and Quê also affects the hamlet-level implementation of government policies. Lưu Phong’s geographical setting—hills covered with fallow lands in various stages of regrowth—is better suited to cattle raising and NTFP collection than to the implementation of the complete RVAC, and its lack of water limits the productivity of paddy fields, impacting on the hamlet’s acceptance of land allocation policy. Quê’s geographical setting—hills covered in grasses, shrubs, bamboo and secondary forest trees—is suited to cattle raising and NTFP collection, but the adoption of market-favoured activities has not been as strong as in Lưu Phong and Ma. The hamlet’s setting, given its limited potential paddy area, is not as well suited to land allocation as either Lưu Phong or Cần, but land allocation efforts by the government have been accepted to a certain degree. This is largely due to the efforts of district officials to enforce land allocation in the hamlet because of its location within a protected area buffer zone. In Cần’s case its geographical setting, location within a buffer zone, proximity to the district town, and grass-covered hills and wide valley area provided the conditions for the hamlet’s population to adopt all of the government’s land and agricultural extension policies. The cases in this chapter demonstrate that farmers respond differently, and in most cases rationally from their own perspective, to government policies. The analysis of the case studies shows that whether the land allocation process is successful and whether agricultural extension policies are adopted in each hamlet depends to a large extent on the relationship between the hamlet and the district government, the hamletlevel farming and livelihood systems, and the hamlet’s geographical setting: the landforms found in the hamlet, the hamlet’s water resources, and the hamlet’s proximity and connectivity to the district town and markets. The research suggests that the land and forest tenure changes that Vietnam introduced from the late 1970s to the early years of the twenty-first century, combined with market forces, have had a direct effect on the way upland hamlets in Nghệ An manage their land resources. The research also suggests that market forces emanating from the lowlands have been at least an equal force to government policy in influencing how the hamlets in this study manage their land and natural resource base. Finally, the study also shows that laws, decrees and policies are not always implemented in exactly the same way, even within a single province. This is shown to be a sign of local flexibility that in some cases, at least, benefits the hamlet populations.

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Acknowledgements This research was funded by the Danish International Development Agency, under the REPSI and USEPAM Projects, between 2001 and 2004. Special thanks go to researchers at the Center for Agricultural Research and Ecological Studies, Hanoi University of Agriculture, who helped organize and carry out the research described in this paper; and to the villagers who welcomed us into their communities and patiently explained to us their history, their livelihood systems and the challenges they faced.

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Land Allocations in Vietnam’s Uplands: Negotiating Property and Authority

Thomas Sikor

Introduction Vietnam’s nationwide programme of land allocation has generated a sizable body of research in recent years. As discussed in the introduction to this book, the research has included field studies on local-level land allocations in the Northern Mountain Region, Central Coast and Central Highlands. It has considered the effects of land allocation on local livelihoods, land and forest use, and local property rights. Taken together, the insights generated by this research attest to the importance of land allocations for understanding economic, social and environmental change in Vietnam’s uplands. They also demonstrate the connection between changes taking place in the uplands and larger political economic forces. Against this background, I seek to explore in this paper what land allocations tell us about negotiations over property regarding land in the uplands. Property, in brief, is about relationships among social actors regarding valuable objects (Benda-Beckmann et al. 2006). These relationships are defined in law, yet they also exist in actual social relationships and social practices. Property practices are about how people make, remake and unmake property relationships in their daily interactions, e.g., when they plant a crop, collect firewood in a state forest, or tend their livestock on collectively used pasture. They form property relationships in the sense of actualized social relationships considered legitimate. The relationships, in turn, influence individual practices. It is this mutual constitution of property practices and social relationships that receives my primary interest. 146

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Moreover, my concern is with control rights, an often-neglected element of property relations (Benda-Beckmann 1995). Control rights are about the various types of capacities by which politico-legal institutions affect the use rights held by social actors. Such control is concerned with the capacity to define the core elements of property relationships: the actors recognized to take part in property relationships, the objects considered to possess material and immaterial value, and the relationships considered legitimate. In practice, control is enacted in many ways, including actions concerned with enforcement, rule making and dispute resolution (Agrawal and Ribot 1999). Attention to control rights reveals that property practices are intimately bound up with practices constituting and unravelling authority, authority understood as power considered legitimate (Lund 2002, Sikor and Lund 2009). On the one hand, institutions grant or deny legitimacy to claims on resources on the basis of their authority. Practices are recognized as property practices only if politico-legal institutions sanction them. On the other hand, property is one of the fields in which politico-legal institutions compete for legitimacy. The institutions seek out claims on resources to authorize as property in the attempt to solidify their legitimacy in relation to competitors. Simply put, claimants seek out politico-legal institutions to authorize their claims, and politico-legal institutions look for claims to authorize. The relationship is a dynamic one. This paper, therefore, inquires what negotiations about control over land can tell us about the processes constituting authority in Vietnam’s uplands and beyond. Land remains of crucial importance in the uplands— for its role as a productive resource and its symbolic value—and beyond the uplands because of its association with strategic resources (timber, watershed protection, biodiversity, land for colonization, etc.) and territorial sovereignty. Property rights to land, therefore, are one of the primary arenas in which authority is negotiated in the uplands. Of course, there are other arenas where negotiations take place, such as development, personal security, national defence and ethnic identities. Yet none has witnessed as radical a shift in central government policy as property regarding land. The nationwide programme of land allocation stands for a radical turnaround in central government policy, replacing the focus on agricultural collectivization and forest nationalization of the 1960s to mid-1980s. Local land allocations therefore offer unique opportunities to situate the authority of Vietnam’s central government in relation to other politicolegal institutions.

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My approach to the study of land allocations is different from previous research, including my own, in two important ways. First, it focuses on negotiations over control rights, and not use rights. Second, it uses the insights derived from the study of negotiations over control rights to examine authority relations. In other words, my approach looks at authority relations as they emerge from negotiations over property associated with land allocations. It does not take the authority of any politico-legal institutions, such as the central government, as a given, as implicit in much research on land allocation.1 Instead, the approach taken in this paper traces practices and processes forming, expanding, modifying, reducing and abolishing authority, thereby making the authority attributed to the central government a result of the analysis instead of a founding premise. The chapter draws on ethnographic fieldwork on land allocations in two villages, one in the Northern Mountain Region and the other in the Central Highlands. Both villages were the targets of international development projects implemented by the central government. The chapter revisits the data collected in the course of fieldwork to examine local struggles over property regarding land. The two cases, set in relation to the insights generated by other research, lay the foundations for broader discussions of control over land in Vietnam’s uplands and the dynamics of property and authority in and beyond the uplands. Yet before I turn to the cases, I want to briefly review the literature in search of clues as to how negotiations over land in Vietnam’s uplands may differ from those taking place in other locations. Situating Upland Struggles over Land Negotiations regarding control over land in Vietnam’s uplands may take place under particular conditions, a review of the literature suggests. Historical differences in property and authority relations may set upland negotiations apart from negotiations taking place in the lowlands. Upland leadership, in particular, may have been part of broader processes of authority formation (see Chapter 1), yet may have taken on forms distinct from those commonly encountered in the lowlands. A key feature setting property relations in the uplands apart from those in the lowlands noted in the literature is that people living in the uplands used land under a variety of “customary” property arrangements tied to “customary” politico-legal institutions well into the second half of the twentieth century. The difference originated from several related factors.

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First, upland people long used land under a wide variety of local property arrangements associated with different forms of authority (Vương Xuân Tình 2001). In contrast, Vietnamese rulers expended much effort to unify and concentrate control over land in the lowlands in their own hands (Lâm Quang Huyên 2002). Second, the French colonial regime did not establish a solid administrative presence in most of the uplands but founded a comprehensive land administration service in the lowlands (Michaud 2000a, Salemink 2003b). Third, after independence in 1954, northern Vietnamese government policy focused on control over people and products (instead of control over land) by way of collectivization and state procurement. In addition, in the uplands the more moderate “democratic reform” took the place of the more radical land reform implemented in the lowlands (Trần Phương 1968). Collectivization was never as complete as in the lowlands (Michaud 2000a), and the nationalization of forestland remained highly unstable (Sikor 2004a, Sowerwine 2004c). Fourth, the southern Vietnamese regime did not regulate property rights to land in the Central Highlands (Salemink 2003b). Another historical feature that may distinguish property relations in the uplands and lowlands relates to the exercise of authority by the central government. The uplands are located along important international borders of the Vietnamese nation-state, connecting control over land in the uplands to issues of national sovereignty (Rambo and Jamieson 2003). In addition, the governments of colonial and independent Vietnam have portrayed the uplands as locations of important watersheds and nature habitats for a century, in accordance with international discourses (see Chapter 2). These discourses have lent legitimacy to land policies that accord the central government more direct control over land in the uplands than in the lowlands. The attempts at direct control by the central government have taken a variety of forms, ranging from the designation of forestry land outside the control of local authorities to protected areas managed by the central ministry and resettlement zones sponsored by the central government (see Introduction). These historical features, the literature indicates, set negotiations over land in the uplands apart from those taking place in the lowlands. On the one hand, various customary entities have long competed with the state over land control. On the other, the state has employed a more interventionist approach to exercise control over land in the uplands than in the lowlands. The historical features thus may offer a way to denaturalize the common distinction between uplands and lowlands based on topography and resurrect it on the basis of historical differences

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in property and authority relations. Alternatively, they could serve to highlight differences within the uplands, and commonalities between places in the uplands and lowlands—questioning the sharp divide between uplands and lowlands (see Introduction). Against the background of these two contrasting propositions, I now turn to an analysis of upland land allocations. Upland Struggles over Land: Two Case Studies We take a look here at two instantiations of land allocation. These originate from a Thái village in Sơn La province and an Êđê village in Dak Lak province. The two villages relate to two of the largest ethnic minority groups in Vietnam and are situated in the two major upland regions, the Northern Mountain Region and the Central Highlands. More important, they stand for different historical relations between ethnic groups and the governments of colonial and independent Vietnam. Thái and Êđê have taken on different customary property relations, assumed different roles in the wars for national liberation, and developed different relations with the Vietnamese nation-state. Overlapping Control over Land in Nà Pản Nà Pản is a village in Vietnam’s northwestern mountains that was home to 170 Black Thái households in the early years of the twenty-first century.2 In the early 1990s, villagers gained use rights to land in multiple ways. The village community regulated the use of the paddy fields in the valley, which produced a large share of rice, the staple food. In 1988 and again in 1992, it redistributed wet-rice fields among all households, determining household share on the basis of the number of people living in the household. In contrast, the village community did not play a significant role in the use of cropland in the uplands. The extent of household fields depended on what households had cleared over the past two decades and what they had received from and transferred to other villagers in mutual agreements. Many households also constructed rice terraces, which were exempt from collective redistribution and could be sold to others. The district authorities collected agricultural taxes from villagers and zoned a large part of the uplands as protected forest. Nonetheless, the Forest Protection Unit allowed logging by a local company in the late 1980s. Also, it was not able to stop villagers from cultivating fields, grazing livestock, and cutting trees on the forestry land.

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This brief discussion indicates that control rights over land rested with multiple politico-legal institutions before land allocation. In addition, the exercise of the control rights by the village community and various state agencies emphasized the negotiation of property claims among actors. All households were entitled to land in the valley and uplands based on their village membership. The concrete claims recognized for a household depended on negotiations in the village community (in the case of wet-rice fields) and between households (in the case of upland fields). The boundaries between cropping, animal husbandry and forestry in the uplands were rather fluid, defying repeated attempts by the Forest Protection Unit to define a large part of the uplands as a single, unified property object—“forestry land”. The 1994 land allocation had the potential to put an end to these flexible negotiations over property and therefore provoked strong reactions from villagers. The provincial People’s Committee had instructed the district authorities to set aside much of the uplands as forestry land and allocate wet-rice and upland fields to individual households for a period of 20 years. Yet the villagers of Nà Pản resisted allocation through open protest and everyday forms of resistance, as did many other Black Thái villages. They were concerned not only over its implications for use rights to land but also over its potential effects on control over land. Village leaders and most villagers recognized the threat posed by the new legislation for the control rights of the village community over land. Village leaders voiced their concern that individual households might utilize the land certificates—if they received those in the process of allocation—to fend off claims by the village community in the future. In particular, they vigorously opposed the inclusion of wet-rice fields in land certificates, because that challenged the control rights held by the village community. Villagers resisted the long-term allocation of wet-rice land because it would have terminated the capacity of the village community to define the actors entitled to use the village paddy land and associated property relationships. Allocation meant that the village community would have to discontinue the periodic reallocation of wet-rice fields in the valley. By way of reallocation, the village community provided all households equitable access to the wet-rice fields, which were the most important source of food. “Equity” was the unanimous reason given to me when I asked village leaders and common villagers about their motivations for conducting another reallocation in 1997. This equity, obviously, did not extend to outsiders, who were not allowed to work Nà Pản’s wet-rice

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fields. Use rights depended on belonging to the village, in contrast to the formal procedures contained in the 1993 Land Law. People also refused to accept the definition of property objects implied in the intended demarcation of forestry land. The demarcation would have terminated the flexible use of the uplands for cultivation, livestock husbandry and forestry, replacing it with a singular definition as forestry land. For people, uplands could not be carved up into single-purpose categories as legislated by the central government but needed to accommodate overlapping and changing uses. Moreover, the villagers wanted to retain their customary capacity to define legitimate uses of the uplands, rejecting the attempt by the Forest Protection Unit to assert control. Villagers, therefore, continued to find ways to get forest officers to recognize their use rights to the uplands. The total area of agricultural fields continued to expand in the years after allocation by one quarter, exceeding the allocated area by 70 per cent in 1997. Despite this massive expansion, the Forest Protection Unit fined virtually no household for violating forest protection regulations. The unit instead pursued a cooperative approach, defining the nature of property objects in mutual negotiations with villagers. Just as villagers and forest officers negotiated the definition of legitimate uses of the uplands, villagers continued to decide the distribution of rights within the village in flexible negotiations based on their customary arrangements. Villagers not only adjusted the boundaries between individual fields in flexible negotiations but also transferred plots among each other. They ignored the new procedures, in particular the requirement to get land transactions registered in their certificates by the district’s Office for Land Administration. What mattered to them was that the land certificates attested to their right to use some share of the uplands—and that is why they all kept the land certificates locked in their wooden boxes. Yet when they needed a new field or wanted to expand their existing field, they talked directly to other households. And if they could not agree with another household and a dispute developed, they called upon the village community to resolve the issue and normally accepted the judgement made by village leaders on the community’s behalf. Villagers, therefore, wanted to retain the capacity to define the recognized kinds of rights under their own customary arrangements. In sum, land allocation in Nà Pản brought to light struggles over property that usually took place in less visible and concentrated forms. Central to these struggles were contestations about control over land, involving negotiations over entitled actors, recognized objects and legitimate rights. Bolstered by national legislation and the directives sent

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down by the provincial People’s Committee, the district authorities sought to assert control over land by way of land allocation. Villagers responded by upholding the control exercised by the village community over paddy land and by their own customary arrangements over the uplands. Yet they never challenged the rights of the district authorities to collect taxes on agricultural land or conclude contracts involving forest protection. As a result, control over land continued to be overlapping and flexible, involving multiple politico-legal institutions. Contesting Control over Land in Chàm B Chàm B is a village in Vietnam’s Central Highlands that had only 38 Êđê households in the early years of the twenty-first century.3 By the late 1990s, the state forest enterprise of Krông Bông exerted a significant influence on villagers’ access to surrounding forests. The enterprise prohibited the use of forests for shifting cultivation and enforced this through a small control post built next to Chàm B. The enterprise also had the legal mandate to prevent local people from cutting trees. However, it did not care about firewood and other non-timber forest products, which were collected by the Êđê from Chàm B and surrounding villages as well as by ethnic Vietnamese migrants who had settled in Chàm B and neighbouring villages on their own initiative during the 1990s. Nevertheless, the enterprise’s actual control over the forests was limited in practice. First, there was plenty of space for local people to negotiate with the enterprise staff. As a result, Êđê and ethnic Vietnamese found ways to extract timber from the forests. Second, the “traditional village headman” and “state village headman”, two leaders chosen by villagers and appointed by the local government respectively, retained significant control rights over land. When there was a serious dispute over agricultural land, villagers would resort to these leaders for a resolution. In addition, villagers expected the traditional headman, in particular, to play an important function where forests were concerned. In the past, he had always been the one who would endorse a household’s claim on a particular forest parcel and inform villagers about existing claims on the forest based on prior use. This was especially relevant for forests that had been used by villagers before, which was the case in the forest sought out by the Krông Bông Forest Enterprise in 2000 for allocation. Just as in Nà Pản, land allocation implied a massive assertion of state control over land. The Krông Bông Forest Enterprise and the commune authorities made all important decisions in the allocation process. The

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Table 6.1 Villagers’ assessment of control rights in forest management Position of authority Commune authorities State forest enterprise State village headman Traditional village headman Forest user group

Before allocation (pebbles)

After allocation (pebbles)

11.7 12.2 11.8 11.8 –

17.0 14.8 13.1 8.0 2.0

Source: Fieldwork by Trần Ngọc Thanh (pebble ranking exercise conducted as part of household interviews in 2004).

enterprise allocated the forest block to the Êđê households of Chàm B, demarcated five parcels with signs posted in the forest, requested the Êđê to form five groups, arranged for the issuance of land-use right certificates, and compelled the groups to sign protection contracts. In the future, villagers would have to follow the practices of good forest management defined by the state, obtain a permit before any timber logging, and keep other people out. Commune and district authorities would also be the politico-legal institutions that would assume most control rights over the allocated forest, eliminating the customary role of the traditional village headman. In this way, allocation sought to severely restrict local control over land, even though it brought about a significant expansion in the use rights conferred to local people. Villagers recognized the shift in control over land towards state actors. They saw control rights over the forest shift towards the positions recognized by statutory law, reducing the control rights held by the traditional headman (see Table 6.1). Êđê and ethnic Vietnamese reacted to the perceived shift in control rights in different ways. Above all, they contested the implied redefinition of actors entitled to the forestry land and associated resources. As for access to land for cultivation, Êđê from the neighbouring Chàm A insisted on their rights to the allocated forestry land on grounds of previous use and their belonging to the area well established in local customary arrangements. Serious conflicts developed among villagers from Chàm B and Chàm A. As the conflicts became more serious, villagers turned to commune and district authorities for a resolution. Villagers requested the commune and district administrations to back up a solution to the conflicts that they deemed viable—temporary use rights to people from Chàm A holding historical rights. In contrast to the case of Nà Pản, these

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villagers did not expect the problem to be solved solely on the basis of customary control over land but wanted local state units to throw their weight behind it. Another important reason for villagers from Chàm B to seek endorsement by state units was the presence of migrants in the area. Even though the ethnic Vietnamese migrants accepted that they could not open up agricultural fields in the allocated forest, they refused to give up their use rights to trees in the forest. In fact, they reacted to allocation by logging larger amounts of timber and asserted their rights to harvest trees established in a customary manner. The migrants feared losing the use rights that they had been able to negotiate with the enterprise and Êđê in the past. The Êđê, in turn, perceived allocation as an opportunity to terminate the extraction of trees by migrants. They sought to enlist the support of local state units, redefining the previously separate property objects of “trees” and “land” into the single category of “forestry land” in accordance with state law. Just as they sought to redefine property objects, Êđê villagers also attempted to modify the definition of property rights by linking up with particular state units. Villagers from Chàm B called for changing the logging permit system by giving the commune authorities a larger role. They argued that the current system was too complicated, requiring them to obtain signatures not only from the state village headman and commune authorities but also the district’s Forest Protection Unit, which was a long trip away. In addition, it was obvious that villagers resented the control exercised by the specialized forest protection entities, whether state forest enterprises or the Forest Protection Unit. It was felt that the district’s People’s Committee should instead empower the commune authorities to issue permits for small-scale logging restricted to subsistence uses. Many villagers, therefore, sought to shift control over forestry land to the commune administration in the hope that it would sanction desirable use rights in the future. Nevertheless, they also resorted to the traditional village headman for the exercise of one particular control right: the resolution of disputes among households in the village. The conflicts ensuing after allocation had caused many of them to seek help from the traditional village headman. Villagers continued to rely on him as the primary authority for resolving property conflicts. The traditional village headman emerged strong from land allocation, even though the latter was designed to do away with the former’s authority over land. In sum, land allocation provoked intense negotiations among local actors in Chàm B. Although the negotiations were apparently concerned

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with the distribution and nature of use rights to the allocated forestry land, they had profound implications for the distribution of control over the land. Control over the allocated forest was highly contested by Êđê and ethnic Vietnamese migrants; they particularly disagreed on the question of what politico-legal institutions had the capacity to decide on the legitimate users of the forest. As Êđê villagers increasingly reverted to the commune administration in their efforts to enlist support for their use claims, control over land shifted gradually towards state units. Negotiating Control over Land in Vietnam’s Uplands What do these cases, set in relation to related research, tell us about control over land in Vietnam’s uplands? Above all, the cases unearth a staggering volatility of control. The intensity of the ongoing negotiations over property keeps control over land fragile. A variety of politicolegal institutions compete for control over land, offering alternative justifications for claims on land. State units at local and central levels endorse and reject land claims through their legal texts and cadres. Village communities influence property claims either through designated persons, such as village headmen, or by way of more diffuse deliberative processes. Finally, beyond individual villages, people may reference their land claims to customary regulations or broader social norms, such as equity or prior occupation. As a consequence, the distribution of control among politicolegal institutions displays astonishing variation at any point in time and may quickly unravel when circumstances change.4 Moving beyond the two cases, this fluidity of control over land became apparent in the course of the widely noticed conflicts over agricultural land in Vietnam’s Việt Bắc in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Particularly in Lang Son province, many disputes arose over the question of whether to distribute agricultural land among local households or restitute it to historical owners (Institute of Ethnology 1993, Mellac 1997). The issue possessed explosive potential because many people—sometimes entire villages—had moved within the region or migrated to it in the 1960s and 1970s. Some local people demanded the distribution of fields among the current population in accordance with national land legislation. Other people argued that customary land regulations at and above the village level entitled them to reclaim the fields that they themselves or their parents had worked before collectivization. Many villagers, therefore, ended up deliberating the decision of whether to distribute or restitute among each other (Scott 2000). Their decisions were not only about the

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distribution of use rights between and within villages, but also about the influence of competing politico-legal institutions. The comparison between the two cases shows that there are multiple politico-legal institutions exercising control over land, and that those are situated in relation to “the state” in different ways. In Nà Pản, the village community exercised important control rights over upland fields. If there was a dispute, people called upon village leaders to arbitrate, even where the conflict involved people from different villages. More important, the village community reallocated the village paddy among village households every few years. In Chàm B, the village community, customary land regulations and broader social norms all served local people to justify claims on land at some point in time. People also invoked various kinds of customary arrangements in the land conflicts of the Việt Bắc in the early 1990s and the protests voiced in the Central Highlands in the early years of the twenty-first century. The influence of these institutions may wax and wane over time, yet the institutions remain available to local people as potential points of reference for future land claims. Moreover, they may not necessarily be in an antagonistic relationship with the actors making up “the state” (Sikor 2004b). Politico-legal institutions entertaining more distant relations with the central government, relevant line agencies and local governments do not exist only at the local level. Within Vietnam, various kinds of organizations engaged in research, advocacy and development work related to the uplands assume an increasingly important role offering material and immaterial support for land claims in the uplands (Gray 1999). Looking beyond Vietnam, there are many multilateral and bilateral donor organizations that finance development projects in Vietnam’s uplands and bring along international framings of legitimate claims on land (Zingerli 2005). In addition, transnational conventions on human and indigenous rights endorse some land claims for some uplanders but do not offer equal justification for others (Salemink 2006). Similarly, refugee organizations provide international visibility to some claims in the uplands, enhancing their legitimacy by connecting them with international norms (Salemink n.d.). Moreover, different state actors may compete for control over land with each other. In both cases analyzed here, various units of the state asserted control rights over land. In Nà Pản, local state actors at district and provincial levels actively supported the control held by village communities. In Chàm B, the state forest enterprise, commune authorities and the district People’s Committee all participated in the negotiations

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over property. In addition, the central government and provincial People’s Committee sent down regulations and instructions to assert control over land. Competition for control over land often takes the form of cleavages between state units located at the central and local levels. Both the above case studies indicate the strong presence of central government agencies in the uplands, in the form of state forest enterprises and regulations on forestry land. One may ask at this point how land allocation has influenced negotiations over land in Vietnam’s uplands. Obviously, land allocations were not only a massive assertion of state control over land but were also associated with intense negotiations over use and control rights. This insight applies to both Nà Pản and Chàm B, independent of the different outcomes of the negotiations and contestations in the two villages. Otherwise, it seems impossible to generalize. This result is interesting in itself considering the central role accorded to the nationwide land allocation programme by the central government. It is even more surprising considering that both cases discussed above were pilot sites for natural resource management projects funded by an international development agency and implemented by the central government. The findings of the two case studies, therefore, warn against attributing too much control over land to the central government a priori without sufficient empirical support. In fact, as suggested by research on “illegal” logging, land allocation may have intensified competition for control over land. Competition may intensify in two ways. First, land allocation may deepen divisions between competing state units, as illustrated by the competition between the provincial Department of Agricultural and Rural Development and army units regarding authority over the dense forests along the national border with Laos in Hà Tĩnh province (McElwee 2004). Second, land allocation may provoke local actors to reconsider not only their claims on forest but also the primary politico-legal institutions that they expect to sanction their claims. In other words, land allocation may intensify the competition among politico-legal institutions for control over land. The intensifying competition may work to weaken customary arrangements (see Chapter 4). Yet it may also motivate local people to turn to politico-legal institutions outside “the state” if land allocation makes the discrepancy between state regulations and the actual practices of its agents more apparent (Tô Xuân Phúc 2007). A final issue worth exploring is the relationship between customary property arrangements and ethnic identities. Much writing on property

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in Vietnam’s uplands carries the implicit assumption that ethnic groups employ distinct land tenure practices and possess customary land relations. The two cases discussed here lend some support to the notion that ethnic identities may influence the politico-legal institutions available to local people. Ethnic identities offer shared social repertoires of historical and cultural practices that local actors can bring to bear on property negotiations. Yet they also caution against making any essentialist linkages between ethnic identities and politico-legal institutions. This becomes evident if one compares Nà Pản with other villages discussed in the literature. First, ethnic Vietnamese migrants in Chiềng Phu village also practised periodic reallocation of wet-rice fields, just like their peers in nearby Nà Pản (Sikor and Phạm Thị Tường Vi 2005). The village community exercised significant control over land in both villages, irrespective of their residents’ ethnic identities. Second, the powers held by the village community in Nà Pản resembled the control enjoyed by local villagers in the Dao village analyzed by Sowerwine (2004c) and the ethnic Vietnamese villages discussed by McElwee in Chapter 3. Conclusion: Dynamics of Property and Authority Land allocations have brought to light negotiations over property regarding land that usually take place in a less visible manner. These negotiations are likely to remain a persistent feature of Vietnam’s upland transformations, even if the central government should one day declare the nationwide programme of land allocation as complete. Uplanders and other actors will continue to struggle over property regarding land as they react to new market opportunities, government actions, subsistence needs, consumptive desires and social values. These struggles will consolidate, modify and destabilize control over land, with repercussions at the local, national and international levels. The empirical insights indicate how negotiations over property regarding land intersect with broader practices and processes constituting authority over the uplands. Control over land is a primary arena in which authority has been contested in Vietnam’s uplands over the past two decades. Land continues to be a primary productive resource and assumes symbolic significance for many people living in the uplands. In addition, control over land remains an important preoccupation for the central government for reasons of national sovereignty and environmental protection. At the same time, the linkages between property and authority may become less direct over time, as property regarding land is only one

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field among several in which authority is formed, consolidated, modified and unravelled. The processes constituting authority in other fields, such as development, may be different from those shaping control over land. In addition, the relative significance of control over land as a source of authority may change with time. Moreover, attention to authority has allowed me to highlight how negotiations over property in Vietnam’s uplands are connected with larger processes operating at the national and international levels. I find that the connections work in both directions. On the one hand, actors at the national and international levels influence upland struggles by endorsing some claims on land and rejecting others. Vietnam’s central government, of course, is a primary actor, as it has been constantly preoccupied with efforts to consolidate and expand its control over land in the uplands over the past two decades. Yet it is far from being in a monopolizing position, calling attention to the presence of politico-legal institutions offering competing sanctions for land claims. These competing institutions include international development organizations, as property figures high in their project interventions and policy strategies. Yet there are many more actors. Within Vietnam, various kinds of organizations concerned with upland livelihoods, resources and cultures have emerged in the past decade. Beyond Vietnam, upland struggles over property have attracted attention from refugee organizations and international rights activists. On the other hand, negotiations over property taking place in Vietnam’s uplands influence contestations over authority occurring at the national and international scales. Control over land in the uplands is an important subject in national politics because the uplands are generally considered to possess strategic importance for national defence, as a location of major watersheds, and as suppliers of timber. Issues related to control over land in the uplands, therefore, have taken on national significance several times over the past two decades. These include the inability of local governments to resolve many of the land disputes in the northernmost mountains in the early 1990s, the ineffectiveness of local governments and state forest enterprises dealing with land issues in the Central Highlands, and the persistence of illegal logging despite the logging bans promulgated by the central government (see Chapter 4). Similarly, local struggles over land in Vietnam’s uplands generate repercussions at the international level. They are one of the issues taken up by international refugee organizations in their cases against the Vietnamese government (Salemink n.d.). They also serve to justify new strategies and projects pursued by international development organizations

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not only in Vietnam but also beyond the country, such as “customary land titling” (World Bank 2004). These practices and processes constituting authority, I surmise, differentiate rural transformations in Vietnam in ways that do not neatly fit the upland-lowland divide, as suggested in the Introduction to this book. They intersect with local negotiations over property regarding land in spatially differentiated ways, reflecting the primary influence of three conditioning factors: the material and symbolic significance of land, the importance of various kinds of politico-legal institutions, and the forms by which the central government asserts authority. These conditions obviously resonate with popular images and the literature on the uplands, as pointed out in an earlier part of this chapter. Many people in the uplands continue to make a living off the land. They typically reference their claims on land to a variety of politico-legal institutions. Upland people also encounter direct interventions by the central government in the form of protected areas and state forest enterprises. Nevertheless, as prevalent as these conditions may be across the uplands, they are not unique to them. For example, customary property arrangements are also influential in northern lowland villages, as illustrated by the frequent practice of periodically redistributing wet-rice fields. The central government has also intervened directly in land affairs in other settings, such as the measures it enacted to curb the conversion of peri-urban agricultural land into residential land. Neither do these conditions apply uniformly to the uplands. Consequently, the influence of these historical and contemporary factors calls for more nuanced analyses of spatial differentiation in rural Vietnam that move beyond the upland-lowland dichotomy. Acknowledgements I thank two anonymous referees as well as Jeff Romm, Jennifer Sowerwine, Janet Sturgeon, Tô Xuân Phúc and the other participants of the workshop on “Montane Choices and Outcomes” for their insightful comments. The writing of this paper was in part funded by the Emmy Noether-Programm of Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Notes 1. Much of the research (including my own) starts with a summary of the applicable land legislation and then proceeds to examine the effects of land allocation on local land-based property relations. That approach, I suggest, takes

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the authority of the central government as a given, even though the approach is often used to point out gaps between statutory law and local practice. 2. I can offer here only a brief discussion of property and authority relations in the village. More extensive discussions of the local setting, land allocation, property relations, land-use dynamics and information on methods can be found in Sikor 2004a, 2004b, 2006a, 2006b. 3. Please see Trần Ngọc Thanh (2006), Trần Ngọc Thanh and Sikor (2006) and Sikor and Trần Ngọc Thanh (2007) for more detail on the dynamics of land allocation in Chàm B and research methods. 4. Besides changes in the distribution of control, the nature of control also varies over time and between localities, as pointed out to me by Jennifer Sowerwine.

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7

Market Relations in the Northern Uplands of Vietnam

Nghiêm Phương Tuyến and Masayuki Yanagisawa

Introduction The term “market network” refers to the way in which supply and demand interact, in a particular social and historical context, to price commodities and the means of their production. It also refers to social relations (social strata) or the powers of exchanging parties that determine the function of the market system (Smith 1977). In such unequal relationships, whoever controls the means of production (resources and production tools) will control the prices of commodities being exchanged in the market. That is to say, commodity prices are more reflective of the distribution of resources than they are causative (Painter 1987). As a result, a disadvantaged party that enters the market system with unfavourable relations will always be exploited, while the advantaged party goes on accumulating capital. In the market network, the disadvantaged party (rural sellers) cannot equalize its position just by being more productive. What can help is gaining access to resources and other means of production as well as the ability to manage them. The relationship between rural sellers and urban buyers forms the “market organization”. Stephen Corry (1993) views the relationship between rural resource harvesters and urban intermediaries in quite a negative light. Rural people in need of cash income for purchasing basic consumer goods may be motivated to sell products obtained by exploiting their local natural resources to outside wealthy intermediaries, even though the latter control the market unfairly by dictating terms of trade most of the time. When such an unequal relationship exists, rural-urban interactions are controlled by those who control the distributive system. 165

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The market network is strongly associated with, if not a determinant of, the distribution of marketplaces and is the main factor that influences the functions of the market system (Painter 1987). While distribution of marketplaces affects the functions of the market network characterized by social classes and power, control over productive resources and means of production determines the terms of trade. As Barbara Harris-White (1996) observes, when villagers engage in trading activities that reveal themselves geographically in patterns of marketplaces and a tracery of commodity flows, both between rural areas and between rural and urban areas, they are also involved in social relations of exchange. Such social relations establish market networks. In Vietnam, economic liberalization (known as reform, or Đổi Mới) has brought about economic changes in rural households. These changes permit people, information, commodities and money to flow more speedily within a spatial setting (Vũ Tuấn Anh et al. 2000). Such changes create endogenous dynamics for mountain villages to open up, initiate and develop their marketing system. The questions in this chapter are: How does the market emerge? And how does it affect small agricultural producers? The focus is on interactions in the market. The answer comes from a case study in an upland district of the Northern Mountain Region of Vietnam. Bảo Thắng District Bảo Thắng District is located in the heart of Lào Cai province, in the central north of the Northern Mountain Region of Vietnam. To the north it shares a boundary of 15 kilometres with Hakou District, in China’s Yunnan province. The district is surrounded by a number of other districts and adjoins Lào Cai town. Bảo Thắng District has 15 administrative units. For a mountainous district, Bảo Thắng enjoys rather ideal topographic conditions. The landscape is generally flat, with gentle slopes ranging between 3 and 5 degrees, which is favourable for agricultural production. The district’s transportation system includes waterways, a railway and a road network (Figure 7.1). Although Bảo Thắng is a mountainous district, Kinh people are its major ethnic group, accounting for almost threequarters of its population. The Kinh were resettled in the district from Hải Phòng and Thái Bình provinces in the Red River Delta during the 1960s, when there was a nationwide government programme to establish new economic zones in the mountains.1 The agriculture and forestry sectors make up a dominant share (65 per cent) of the district’s economic structure. Within these sectors, forestry (22 per cent) has been increasing

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Figure 7.1 Bảo Thắng District (Lào Cai province), Northern Mountain Region

recently because of massive planting of cinnamon and other valuable tree species. Services occupy a 23 per cent share, while small-scale industry has only a very small share. Trade Relations before Economic Liberalization During the 1960–86 period there were two networks coexisting in Bảo Thắng District. The first was a network of commercial cooperatives. This network was considered formal, as it was established by the state to collect local agricultural and forestry products and to distribute consumer products managed by the state. The second network was an informal and illegal system controlled by private traders who came from outside the district. This network was also known as the “smuggling system” or “black market”. Formal Market Network During the period of cooperative management (1960s–80s), commercial cooperatives were established to collect products from upland villagers at stipulated prices and transport primary goods and services from the

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lowlands (through district towns) to upland villages. These cooperatives also collected forest products and handicrafts from mountain villages to transport to the lowlands. The cooperatives were organized in a vertical system that operated from provincial to district to commune level. The commercial cooperative network in Bảo Thắng included the district cooperative (based in the district town) as well as commune cooperatives established in almost every commune. Consumer products were distributed from district to commune level, while agricultural and forest products were collected and transferred from commune up to district level. Bảo Thắng’s district cooperative (based in Phố Lu district town) was established in 1964 (and dissolved in 1990). The cooperative was assigned to buy pigs, chickens, chicken eggs, canna flour and clear noodles from the villagers. In return, the villagers received stamps to buy salt, kerosene, cloth, dry fish and fish sauce. As the woman in charge of the Phố Lu cooperative recalled, salt was transported to Bảo Thắng from Nam Định, kerosene from Hanoi and dry fish from Quảng Ninh province. The price for canna was much higher than the price for pigs and chickens; thus, the villagers preferred selling canna flour. As a result, Bảo Thắng’s district cooperative collected nearly 10 tons of canna flour each year. Canna flour was transported to Lào Cai for making clear noodles. Other products, such as pigs and chickens, were distributed to government staff and army soldiers located in the district territory. On being asked why the villagers did not sell canna flour on the black market, the woman in charge of the cooperative said they were afraid of being caught by the commercial officers. The cooperative was the only organization that could collect local products legally. Commune-level cooperatives were established in 1964 to play an intermediary role in barter activities. The villagers had to barter pigs, soybeans, canna roots and rattan in exchange for salt, cloth, bowls, pots and pans. A villager recalled exchanging 10 kilograms of soybeans for a set of ten bowls. Each year the commune-level cooperative was assigned to collect (buy) 1 ton of canna flour and 10,000 metres of rattan. Canna flour was transported to the district town and from the district town to Lào Cai for making clear noodles. During 1960–80, rattan was collected by staff from Bảo Thắng Forest Enterprise who came and stayed in the commune at the collection time. Starting in 1981–82, the commune’s cooperative collected this product and transported it to the town for the enterprise. Rattan was then transported to Phủ Lý town (Hà Nam province) to make baskets, chairs, and paddles for dusting futons, and these goods were exported to China. The export company in Phủ Lý town would give

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a reward of flower-patterned cloth (which was sought after and valuable at the time) to villagers who sold more than 1,000 metres of rattan per year. The villagers also collected sơn thục (a medicinal plant) from the forest to sell to the commune clinic for local use. The former head of a commune clinic recalled a very limited amount—some tens of kilograms—being sold each year. He explained that not many people knew about this plant, and thus the collection was limited. Commune forest exploitation teams were established in all the communes in Bảo Thắng. Each team consisted of 12 members, who were Tày and experienced in collecting timber and non-timber forest products. The teams were operated under the management of Bảo Thắng Forest Enterprise. Members of the teams were responsible for cutting timber and collecting rattan. Each member was assigned to collect 4 cubic metres of timber and as much rattan as possible. Staff of the forest enterprise came to the commune and told the teams where to cut timber. A team member, an elderly man, told me that the regulations for rattan collection were very strict at that time. It was forbidden to collect rattan shorter than 20 metres in length as it might kill the plant. Rattan that was 30 metres or longer could fetch a good price; the price was dependent on the length of the rattan (it varied from VND100 to VND500 per metre). The man told me that one time he found three long rattans (around 90 metres each) and exchanged them for one young buffalo. Rattan was collected for the forest enterprise for two purposes: it was used as rope to pull timber from the district’s communes to the Red River (from where the logs were transported to the lowlands), and it was sold to craftspeople who used it to weave furniture and baskets. The villagers were not allowed to collect timber, but they were allowed to collect rattan for sale. However, they could do that only during their spare time (from agricultural production) and with permission from the head of the exploitation team. When they went to the forest they needed a member of the team with them to make sure they followed the regulations. Rattan collection was very much encouraged by the forest enterprise and cooperative as it was in high demand for export and was a good source of income at the time. Yet, rigid enforcement of regulations helped to maintain the source for exploitation for a long time. Established in the 1960s, Bảo Thắng Forest Enterprise was a government-owned organization. It functioned as the main force in the management of Bảo Thắng’s forests, and its major activities included the planting of new forest, cutting of timber, and collection of forest products from the commune’s cooperatives. The forest enterprise was the

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only organization that had permits to collect forest products. Thus, it was the only collection point for forest products in the district territory. The enterprise was assigned to collect 11,000–13,000 cubic metres of timber per year from the forest in Bảo Thắng. As not many of the local villagers were experienced in (massive) logging, forest enterprise staff were sent to Xuân Trường (a commune in Nam Định province, one of the provinces where Bảo Thắng’s migrants came from). The timber was transported down to the lowlands for construction projects. At the end of the 1980s, the timber collected by the enterprise was sold to China for supporting pillars in mining and wooden ties for railway tracks. Every year the enterprise collected 1,000 cubic metres of fuelwood to burn for charcoal. This charcoal was sold to the railway company (which ran the train from Hanoi to Bảo Thắng, Lào Cai). The cooperative system encountered increasing difficulties in achieving food production targets. Grain production kept declining, with per capita output falling from 248 kilograms in 1976 to 215 kilograms in 1980 (Phạm Xuân Nam et al. 2000). By the end of the 1970s forestland was being cleared for rice cultivation in all the communes, and this was implemented on a massive scale during 1980–85. Due to a shortage of staff, the forest enterprise could not stop local people from cutting forests and finally lost control. There was a serious loss of forest cover during this period. A vertical system of commercial cooperatives was established during the cooperative period to collect agricultural and forestry products. District town and commune cooperatives were major nodes in this market network. Goods collected and distributed by this system were transported to the town and then transferred to the provincial towns and lowlands. These commercial cooperatives were a major link in the chain of the local market network. The function of this network was determined by state policies, such as price and distribution policies. The nature of past trade relations was vertical and rigid through the state-controlled cooperative systems. The trade network was regulated by a policy of using stamps to control both the supply and the demand sides. Only government institutions could exchange the stamps for quotas of foodstuff and other essentials; black market traders could not. A “smuggling network” or “black market” coexisted with the commercial cooperatives. This illegal network had always existed and been linked with the Chinese market. A report on smuggling in Lào Cai filed 140 smuggling cases during the first six months of 1960. Locals recalled that the most common goods being smuggled at the time included opium,

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piglets, bananas, dry cassava, and non-timber forest products such as medicinal plants and wild animal parts. Opium was the most profitable good and required a special trading network. Natural resources were not widely collected and traded with China through this system, because of state distribution policies and closed markets. Locals also recalled that Lào Cai used to be a central point for smuggling as it was connected to other districts of Lào Cai province and the lowlands. Illegal traders came to the district town, gave money to the local people and waited for the goods. Then the goods were transported either to China or to the lowlands. According to a report from the Lào Cai Custom Office, local villagers sometimes preferred selling their products to smugglers, because they could sell quickly and get cash in return. Interviews with locals revealed that “no tax” was another factor that encouraged smuggling. Domestic smuggling also took place during this period. There were flows of consumer goods and agricultural and forest products from the lowlands to Phố Lu, and vice versa. In Phú Nhuận commune, massive amounts of rattan were collected to sell to traders from the lowlands. This overexploitation left no rattan to regenerate in the following years. After that, land was allocated to households and timber species were planted. Forest products were not important goods for trade during this period. But forests were severely damaged due to the collection of forest products as well as the expansion of agricultural land for growing maize or other cash crops as a source of income. The black market network coexisted with the formal trading network during this period. Local people participated in the former network as they enjoyed its flexibility. Market Liberalization Policy Government policies have a strong impact on the formation and performance of the market network. Before the reform in the 1980s, agricultural production was centrally planned and managed under the collective system. Nearly 80 per cent of farmers joined cooperatives, and resources (e.g., land) belonged to the collective tenure. Among the most influential policies were regional development policies during the 1950–70 period that encouraged the development of specialized production zones (e.g., handicraft production areas or fishery areas) to make use of regional advantages. Requiring each district to produce all of its own rice and strictly limiting commodity distribution (phân phối lưu thông) within the district territory worked counter to this objective. Low prices were fixed

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for rural products, few consumer goods were available, and transportation and communications were poor and greatly favoured the urban areas. Under these circumstances, upland rural households were limited in their exchange activities: local products were exchanged for primary goods such as salt and kerosene. During this period, trade remained restricted within state-monopoly cooperatives and separated between rural and urban areas. The distribution system was supported by a system of residential permits that strictly prohibited movement of people from one place to another. Centrally planned market management policies create a monopoly in the market system, leading to a hierarchical market organization. A vertical market network was formed in the districts during the cooperative period. Most households consumed their agricultural products themselves. Trading activities were conducted through the intermediaries of commercial cooperatives. Commercial cooperatives collected products from upland villagers at stipulated prices and transported primary goods and services from the lowlands to the upland villages. However, villagers recalled the coexistence of a “black market” system in the district. They transported swidden rice on shoulder poles to a nearby village to sell and get money for special events in the family, such as funerals and house construction. This was not permitted, but the villagers had no other way to raise cash for their needs. A centrally planned economy was suited to northern Vietnam’s conditions during wartime but not so effective after the war. Cooperative production kept declining, and as a result the Vietnamese government decided to implement a reform (economic liberalization) to promote socioeconomic development and closer integration with the rest of the world (Phạm Xuân Nam et al. 2000). The reform process was initiated at the beginning of the 1980s with Khoán 100 (Contract 100) and was officially announced in 1986. After the announcement, a number of policies came into being, marked by Resolution 10 (1988), the 1988 Land Law and the 1994 Labour Law. By legalizing market forces (farmers were free to sell and buy products), the reform transformed the economy from an autocratic to a commodity-based one. In the mountain region, the effects of the reform spread much slower than they did in the lowlands. Only after 1990 (after the big event of the redivision of provinces) did northern provinces report changes in their economic conditions. In Lạng Sơn Monograph (Lạng Sơn People’s Committee 1999), it was reported that after 1990 significant economic development took place and this was reflected in improvements in various aspects of Vietnamese life. The monograph recorded diversification in the

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agriculture and forestry sectors in the province. The area under cultivation with oranges and mandarins increased from 700 hectares in 1993 to 1,300 hectares in 1998, and the plum-growing area grew from 400 hectares to 1,200 hectares. The provincial record also reported the comeback of the handicraft and private sector, which created a shift in labour distribution. From 1990 to 1995, Lạng Sơn’s non-agricultural population grew by 0.2 per cent. During the reform process, a series of special programmes were implemented in the Northern Mountain Region. The Re-greening of Bare Land and Denuded Hills Programme (1993–99) aimed to integrate barren land into national development (Sikor 1995). This programme advised a combination of forest plantation, industrial crop plantation and livestock husbandry. Food security was also an important target of the programme. The Five Million Hectare Reforestation Programme (1998–2010) aimed at enhancing environmental protection, reducing poverty and increasing the contribution of forest resources to the national economy. The Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction Programme (abbreviated as Programme 133, 1998–2000) and Support for the Most Difficult and Remote Communes Programme (abbreviated as Programme 135, 1998–2005) aimed to reduce poverty in the mountain areas. Programme 135 invested heavily in building infrastructure for poor communes, such as roads, irrigation, electricity, schools and marketplaces. This reform process has brought about economic changes in rural households, and these changes have permitted people, information, commodities and money to flow more speedily within a spatial setting (Vũ Tuấn Anh et al. 2000). Changes in macro policies have encouraged the production and participation of various parties in the market (Lê Thị Mai 2004). As a result, social relations in the market network have developed in size and complexity. More nodes have been added, and with them have appeared new institutions, such as pre-harvest contracts. Cassava Business Cassava, known as sắn among northerners and củ mì among southerners, is among the most important food crops in Vietnam. Its root can be cooked as a source of carbohydrate, its leaves can be eaten as a vegetable, and its stalks can be used as feed for fish. In the old days, fresh cassava root was boiled and served as a substitute for rice. Many other dishes were created from fresh cassava or tapioca—for instance, cassava dumplings and cakes. In the mountains, cassava was (and still is) also used to make moonshine

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wine. This cassava wine is not as smooth as corn or rice wine, but it is an available source to drinkers. Cassava used to be planted mainly in the midlands of northern Vietnam, as the soil and weather conditions were suitable, but now it is planted massively almost everywhere as a cash crop. It is no longer used as a substitute for rice but has become a raw material for processing into a wide range of products. Plantation During the time of the cooperatives, from the 1960s to 1980s, wet rice and swidden rice were the two major crops in Trì Quang. Only a few households planted canna to produce flour to sell to the lowlands. After the reform, new crops were grown in the commune. Driven by market demand, these crops changed swiftly. Green banana replaced sugar cane, which was then replaced by fruit trees. Cassava was introduced to a large area in the commune by 1999, but only a few households planted cassava then, most of whom were Kinh. Interviews with villagers revealed that about 57 per cent of the total households in the commune had planted cassava in 1995–96, after which there was a lull in cassava cultivation. The inter-commune roads were improved in 2002, bringing traders to Trì Quang, and cassava cultivation took off again. It became massive in 2006, with almost all households engaged in it. Today most households grow cassava, with the planting area depending upon economic status. Table 7.1 shows that in 2006 the poor used 80 per cent of their agricultural land for cassava, while the better-off used only 67 per cent. This may imply that cassava is a major crop for the poor and they depend on it more than the better-off do. Table 7.1 Average growing area for cassava by poor and better-off households in Trì Quang commune (m2/person) Crops

Poor (m2)

Wet rice Corn Cassava Other crops Total agricultural land



Rich (%)

(m2)

(%)

189 228 1,693 0

9.0 10.8 80.2 0.0

401 476 2,026 106

13.3 15.8 67.3 3.6

2,110

100.0

3,009

100.0

Source: Trì Quang People’s Committee 2006.

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Sale Activities Villagers choose to sell both fresh and dry cassava. They either sell the crop at the beginning of the harvest or stock it for sale at the end. The price is higher for dry cassava than for fresh. Our survey in 2006 found that the villagers received VND900–1,000/kg when they sold cassava at the beginning of the harvest and the price went up to VND1,200–1,500/kg at the end of the harvest that year. All the interviewed villagers were well aware that dry cassava fetched a better price and that the harvest could be saved until the end of the season, but many of them could not afford to do that. Most villagers have neither the space nor the oven capacity to dry cassava at home, while drying cassava in the fields carries the risk of losing it to rats. Furthermore, the drying process requires watchers, and this can pose a challenge. A lack of optimum drying conditions can make dry cassava look mouldy. Recently, several collectors have equipped themselves with dryers that ensure the cassava is dried at the proper temperature and is appealing to the eye. Although most households are engaged in the selling of cassava, their participation and gains vary depending on their economic status and ethnicity. Table 7.2 shows that the poor households sell an amount of cassava equal to just one-third that of the better-off households. But the percentage of contribution from cassava to their income is larger than in the case of the better-off. Table 7.2 also shows the difference in the share of income from cassava between Dao and Kinh. The percentage of income from cassava for the Dao is twice as much as for the Kinh, and it accounts for one-fifth of their income. This means that the Dao depend significantly on cassava, especially when their total income is lower than that of the Kinh (Nghiêm Phương Tuyến 2004). Table 7.2 Share of household income from sale of cassava Poor Better-off Kinh Dao

Cash from sale of cassava (thousand VND)

Share of total cash income (%)

2,645 7,053 5,413 5,460

18.1 15.2 11.7 23.6

Source: Household interviews, 2006.

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Collection Activities Villagers transport cassava by backpack from swidden fields to their nearest collection points in the villages or the commune. They sell cassava and get cash at the collection points. Some of the villagers who cannot carry cassava to collection points have to sell their cassava in the field or at their houses. In such cases, they get a lower price as they have to cover the transportation cost of collectors. Interviews with collectors at collection points revealed that they sold cassava either to the commune’s collectors or to outside traders who came from other communes, district towns or provincial towns. When we tracked down these traders, they reported that good-quality cassava was transported to a feeder factory in Việt Trì city (in the midlands). Poor-quality cassava was transported to Lào Cai provincial town and then to China for use in the production of candies, MSG and other products. These traders also said that during harvest season they preferred selling large amounts of cassava to China, as the trading process was shorter and more flexible on the Chinese side. The locations of sale and collection activities show that cassava trading in Trì Quang takes place in “mobile” places at the commune, not in any concrete marketplace. Cassava is sold in the commune, yet the villagers make different choices regarding whom they sell it to. The statistics in Table 7.3 show that more Dao households choose to sell cassava to village collectors, while more of the Kinh prefer outside traders. As all the outside traders are Kinh, the village Kinh may find it easy to communicate with them. The table also shows the different choices between poor and better-off households. While most of the poor (80 per cent) sell cassava to the village collectors, only one-third of the better-off do. Our interviews found that most of the Dao were poor, and the poor often have to sell cassava before the harvest. Such pre-harvest sales often mean cassava is used Table 7.3 Households’ choice of buyers for their cassava Type of household Kinh Dao Poor Better-off

Village collectors (% households)

Outside traders (% households)

Total

47 56 80 30

53 44 20 70

100 100 100 100

Source: Household interviews, 2006.

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to pay off loans, which the village collectors give to the poor to pay for children’s school fees or agricultural inputs. When the villagers accept pre-harvest sales they also have to accept much lower prices. Interviews show that in 2006 the price for pre-harvest crop was VND2,000/kg while the price for in-season crop was VND3,800/kg. Transportation is another reason why poor villagers sell their crop to collectors. Poor households do not own vehicles to transport their cassava to commune roads or highways, where outside traders are based. There have been attempts at large-scale collection at the commune level as well, but these have not fared well. For instance, a few years ago cassava was sold to a processing factory located in a commune. The factory was built by a Chinese man who was married to a Vietnamese woman in this commune. But, according to a collector, the factory was closed after two years as the quality of cassava obtained could not meet the higher standards required by the factory. Portrait of Collectors Collectors come from different places and have various functions in the market chain. They can be small-scale collectors based in the commune or large-scale traders based outside the commune—in Phố Lu district town, Lào Cai provincial town or cities in the lowlands. These outside traders can collect cassava directly from the villagers, but more often they collect it from the village collectors, creating nodes in the cassava chain. The village collector is a simple version of the middleman. There are two types of village collectors in the commune. Some of them, who have small amounts of cash, collect some tens of kilos of cassava to sell to traders for a higher price. Others are hired by outside traders, and these collectors weigh cassava, store it in small huts and write down the amount in a record book. Traders come at a scheduled time, collect the cassava and give the collectors money to pay the villagers. Hired collectors do not have to take any risk in price uncertainty and quality of cassava. A collector told us that the number of hired collectors was increasing fast and competition getting stronger. These collectors make little money and will get even less in the future, as more households need cash and thus will choose not to sell cassava to hired collectors. There is a special case of a large-scale collector in the commune—Mr Chúc, former chairman of the commune’s commercial cooperative. While performing his tasks, which were to collect products from the villagers and distribute livestock feed, he made connections with staff from feeder

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factories and truck drivers in the lowlands. He started collecting cassava in 1995 and made contracts with truck drivers whom he knew to transport the product to Lào Cai. In 2006 he collected 1,000 tons of cassava and sold it all to Lào Cai traders. He had to pay VND200,000/ton for transportation. But he is moving on to another business now. “The cassava business went down in 2006, when the road [to the commune] was improved, bringing in outside traders and creating strong competition,” Mr Chúc said. Most of the collectors are Kinh, but a small number of Dao have started participating in this activity. Mr Binh, a Dao collector, recalled that the Kinh started selling cassava in 1995–96 but the Dao began only in 2001. He became a collector in 2005, when he had the money to collect cassava from his neighbours. Given the 2006 price, he earned VND300/kg of fresh cassava if he sold it to the commune’s collectors. He wanted to sell to the Chinese to earn VND1,200/kg, but due to his limited capital investment and poor means of transportation, the best he could ever manage was to sell to district town traders and earn a difference of VND700/kg. Social Relationships in Cassava Trading Villagers-Collectors The relationship between growers and traders is often assumed to be exploitative (Neumann and Hirsch 2000). It is considered exploitative when it is maintained on the basis of (1) low price given, (2) lending money in the lean months in order to get products at low prices in the harvest season, and (3) cheating in measurement. The nature of the relationship between cassava growers (villagers) and village collectors in Trì Quang is different among the Kinh and the Dao groups. In the case of the Kinh, collectors lend money to growers and require the loans to be repaid in cassava at a much lower price (compared with the market price). This relationship is determined by economic benefits. On the other hand, the tight neighbourliness and kinship among the Dao does not allow this to happen. The relationship between Dao growers and collectors is more supportive. A Dao collector told us that he could not take advantage of his neighbour by forcing the man to sell cassava to him to pay off his debt. “I let my neighbours borrow fertilizer and rice as an advance for cassava, not as debt,” he told us. Therefore, he could not pay his neighbour a lower price when he collected the man’s cassava. This shows that the relationship between Dao growers and

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collectors is not tied by debt but by commitment and advancement. This relationship is determined by social bonds. The emergence of new collectors after every season creates strong competition among them. This might help to eliminate monopoly and thus might not allow price control at this level of the chain. Village Collectors-Outside Traders Traders are connected to growers via intermediaries, who are village collectors in this case. Due to improvement of roads and availability of credit, competition among traders and village collectors is getting fierce. Thus, traders have to create various methods of collection and payment to maintain their sources. They often offer investment and technological advice to their agents—village collectors. A trader located along the 4A highway told us that he made a deposit/investment of VND2 million for each of his 30-odd collectors in Trì Quang when the harvest started. In fact, the village collectors explained that this deposit was small and that it was more of a token of agreement than an investment. And it meant that the collectors agreed to sell cassava to the traders. The terms of agreement for such deposits are in favour of the collectors when all the risks, such as unstable price and fluctuations in price for quality differences, are negotiable. The nature of this relationship is based on investment, negotiation and agreement. Summary and Conclusion Local market systems have experienced significant changes in social relations, from being unidirectional and rigid in the past to being more diversified, more decentralized and more flexible today. Before economic liberalization, the local market system was set up as part of the centrally planned economy to facilitate the exchange of village-produced rice and livestock for primary consumer goods allocated by the central government. Controlled by the government authorities, the marketing system functioned through the artificial channel of commercial cooperatives located in 12 villages. The stateowned commercial cooperatives were the dominant force of “dealers/sale agents” that exchanged consumer goods (such as kerosene and salt) for the villagers’ agricultural and forest products at stipulated prices. All the goods sold by commercial cooperatives were heavily subsidized by the central government, and all the rural products were sold at fixed prices.

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The local market network was organized vertically, with a chain of nodes from commune to district, provincial, national and international levels. The network was administered by the government. The villagers now have more than one choice when they want to sell their products, as illustrated by the cassava trading network. The emergence of village collectors played a significant role in linking rural villagers with the market. With the existence of village collectors, the market network has developed from a simple relationship between growers and middlemen to a multifaceted relationship between villagers and middlemen, wholesale dealers and urban consumers (Figure 7.2). The cassava trading network also shows that the market relationship between villagers and collectors at village level is not patron-client, but interdependent and socially driven, whereas the relationship between village collectors and dealers is monetized on the basis of negotiation, agreement and investment. The market relationship is also marked by the ethnic characteristics of villagers/sellers and traders. Both Dao and Kinh actively participate in selling activities. But the number of Dao collectors is limited at village level, and none of them appear at the wholesale trade level. Such a social relationship shrinks the structure of the market network by shortening the market chain, but it makes it more complex at the same time, with different parties participating at each node, especially at the collecting node. The structure is now characterized horizontally by flows Pre-Ðổi Mới

Post-Ðổi Mới

Central government

Wholesale dealer from prov. town

District town coop

Communebased coop

Village producer

Villager as collector

District town traders

Villager as small-scale trader Village consumer Village producer

Figure 7.2 Transformation of the local market network

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crossing the boundaries of villages, districts, provinces and spaces that fit into an inter-regional trade network. In their study of the NTFP chain, Roderick Neumann and Eric Hirsch (2000) argue that a shortening of the market chain would help the extractors get more benefits. The findings show that it is not the cassava that makes the network different. The mechanism of the market network is no longer based on monopoly but driven by the cash economy, which is transformed by a series of government policies that support the poor by improving infrastructure, subsidizing agricultural inputs, and providing production technology. The local transportation system or spatial linkage is another major factor that enables villagers to get more information about policies, market price and so on, thus improving their marketing skills. With better road systems there is more competition in the market, which helps to abolish monopoly and hierarchy in the market organization. The villagers’ access to the market becomes more open, making their participation in the cash economy more active. After the reform, trading activities are undergoing rapid change in all spheres of existence (Tô Đức Hanh and Phạm Văn Linh 2000, Castella et al. 2002, Rambo 2005). With all the changes, the whole region is opening up to intensive marketing activities. Trading takes place within rural areas, between rural and urban areas, and between the region and external systems. Cassava trading illustrates the integration of the local market into the larger system. The market network is a major force that forms and stimulates the integration, as the spatial distribution of village markets provides space for traders to function as vital links between local markets and external ones. Through trading activities, villagers engage with the traders in social relations of exchange, which reveal themselves geographically in patterns of marketplaces and commodity flows, the latter between rural areas and also between rural and urban areas (HarrisWhite 1996). The integration of Vietnam’s economy into the international market, especially the development of trade with China, has extended the flow of local products. But at the same time it exposes upland producers to an unstable market, which has negative impacts on local production (e.g., the collapse of the market for locally produced apricots and green bananas) and thereby discourages them from investing in cash crop production on a large scale. The question of whether participation in the market helps to improve upland household well-being, thus, is still not answered. The market can provide plenty of opportunities, but it also can be a risk when the poor depend heavily on it.

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Acknowledgements We would like to thank Dr Thomas Sikor and Dr Stan Tan for their insightful comments that helped reshape our writing. We also thank UC Berkeley for a small grant to support our research. Note 1. The xây dựng kinh tế mới programme aimed to move rural people away from delta provinces such as Nam Hà, Hải Phòng and Thái Bình, which were crowded but lacking in natural resources. It was common for a whole village to be moved to the Northern Mountains and settled in the same new village. Migrants under this programme initially received subsidies of rice and temporary housing.

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8

The Cultural Politics of Agrarian Change in the Highlands of Ba Vì, Vietnam

Jennifer Sowerwine

Introduction Since the late 1980s, the Vietnamese government has launched numerous initiatives to alleviate poverty and increase forest cover in mountainous areas through dual processes of decentralization of agricultural and forestry lands and market liberalization. In order to increase productivity and promote economic and ecological stability in the highlands, the state began to allocate agricultural land and forestlands to individual households for protection and production. It also began to deregulate its tightly controlled economy, freeing up agricultural prices, production quotas and trade to market forces. Despite such efforts, numerous studies suggest that economic differentiation between the lowlands and the highlands has widened, with much of the minority populations in the highlands still suffering from food shortages (Castella and Đặng Đình Quang 2002, Poverty Task Force 2002, Scott and Trương Thị Kim Chuyên 2004). Studies such as these, which rely on aggregate statistics, both reflect and reinforce dominant stereotypes in Vietnam, which isolate and place the highlands in an irreparable state of underachievement relative to the lowlands. They fail to illuminate the social relations through which such differentiation occurs, and miss important categories of analysis, reflective of local values, that may provide more insight. It is known that most highland populations remain heavily dependent on sloping lands for agricultural and other forest-related activities to meet household needs (Nguyễn Văn Sản and Gilmour 2000, Swinkels and Turk 2004), yet 183

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little is understood about the social relations of access to these critically important lands. How do customary practices and local modes of authority interface with new values, opportunities and constraints affecting these landscapes, and with what effect on social differentiation? Recent scholarship in Vietnam is beginning to shed light on the myriad ways in which highland peoples both affect and are affected by political economic landscape transformations.1 In order to better understand whether or how social differentiation is occurring during these transformations, explicit attention to local politics, values and practices in relation to the constellation of forces (state, market, environment) affecting change is critical.2 It is important to look beyond official land-use categories such as “agriculture” or “forest” land as the privileged categories of analysis, as unofficial land uses may be most central to livelihoods and security. Through in-depth case studies, this and several of the other chapters in this book illustrate diverse and strategic ways in which villagers in the highlands exhibit tremendous agency as they negotiate new modes of authority in decisive responses to market and political changes. Studies such as these may help alter the patent victimization trope that dominates much of the literature on upland transformations and ethnic minorities, opening up new possibilities of interpretation. In their analysis of social differentiation in Southeast Asia nearly 20 years ago, Hart, Turton and White argued that the causes and consequences of agrarian change could best be examined by conducting local-level case studies and situating local processes within larger political and economic forces (Hart, Turton and White 1989). Analyzing the cultural embeddedness of political and economic processes at the local level helps to make sense of the “failures of development” as well as the dramatic variability of social response and ecological change in the highlands both within and between villages during the course of economic reform. This paper seeks to broaden discussions about the nature of social differentiation in rural Vietnam by conducting an in-depth case study of agrarian change in a “highland” Dao village at the turn of the millennium.3 As minority communities become increasingly involved in new commodity markets and subject to new forest and land laws, how are patterns and relations of resource access and control being redefined, and with what effect on rural livelihoods and landscapes? This case study demonstrates how privileged access to state resources (reforestation and forest protection programmes) by the village political elite magnified or reinforced differential access to landholdings and opportunities for capital accumulation. However, a tight labour market, a booming commodity market for cassava,

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and the scarcity of arable land enabled the non-elite to negotiate a slight levelling of these differences through invoking what I am calling a cultural “politics of xin”—that is, a kind of politics of “favour asking” in which villagers ask for and can depend upon their leaders for certain favours, including access to productive resources to guarantee a certain right to livelihood and, in some cases, unfettered accumulation. Examining the effects of either state or market forces independently on agrarian livelihoods and differentiation would have led to very different conclusions. I begin this paper by briefly describing the history of land tenure and the resettlement of the Dao population to the base of Ba Vì Mountain, followed by a discussion of contemporary land access, recent changes in the political economy, and cultural politics in the village. I then focus specifically on the politics of access to sloping lands, the critical land for capital accumulation, and the ways in which cultural norms and market forces mediate or even out the potential for vast differentiation. The processes of agrarian change—notably, changing access to productive resources, differentiation, and livelihood strategies—were governed by “the politics of xin”, a culturally specific form of patron-client relations that guaranteed livelihoods. History of Land Relations and Resettlement of Ba Vì Ba Vì Mountain rises 1,296 metres up out of the agricultural plains of former Hà Tây province, a mere 70 kilometres from Hanoi.4 Because of the area’s rich forests, proximity to the nation’s capital and cool mountain environment, there have been numerous claims to Ba Vì’s land over time; and these have altered its social and ecological landscape. Under colonialism, Ba Vì was utilized as a hill station resort as well as a source of lumber. It was subsequently managed by the Vietnamese government for commercial exploitation, followed by a series of increasingly protective designations culminating in Ba Vì Mountain being declared a national park in 1991. Dao villagers inhabited the upper elevations of Ba Vì Mountain and engaged in rotational swidden agriculture. According to village elders, Dao families began immigrating to Ba Vì in the late 1800s in search of arable land. The Dao produced dryland rice, corn, cassava, canna and other vegetable crops for subsistence. Because the population density was relatively low, there were few regulations governing land tenure. Individual households cultivated swidden fields consecutively for three to four years until yields declined, and then left them fallow. Regenerated abandoned fields became open access to subsequent farmers,

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as new lands continued to be available. As populations grew, available land diminished, and young farmers had to ask permission from previous occupants of the land for cultivation rights. Efforts by the Vietnamese government to resettle the Dao off the mountain began in the mid-1950s. The process intensified in the mid1960s, and by 1968 most of the Dao were settled into cooperatives at the base of the mountain. They were encouraged to cultivate wet rice for the first time, on land appropriated from a neighbouring village. 5 The area in which the Dao were resettled was, and still is, heavily eroded, lacking sufficient land and water to meet household needs. Despite the introduction and adoption of new irrigation technologies, rice varieties and chemical inputs, paddy yields met subsistence needs for only about two months of the year. In fact, not a single household surveyed produced enough rice to attain food self-sufficiency year-round. Yet this did not mean they suffered from a “food shortage”. Simultaneous efforts to collectivize swidden fields yielded poor results. Farmers continued to cultivate independent upland fields near their former villages (600–800 metres elevation). As the quality of soil declined, due to shortened rotations, villagers altered their cropping patterns from rice and corn for consumption—which require more fertile soils—to canna and cassava for sale. As populations grew and new markets for agricultural products developed in the late 1980s, villagers began to compete over previously unclaimed sloping lands by planting trees to establish claim. They also began to delineate clear boundaries among their existing upland agricultural plots with rocks to signify tenure (see Figure 8.1). At the same time, a series of conservation and reforestation initiatives began to alter both the physical and tenurial landscape on Ba Vì Mountain and increase social divisions within Ba Vì village. The new market economy played a critical role in transforming the value of sloping land and land-based capital, in direct contradiction with state conservation objectives. In response to a new market demand for cassava powder by the biscuit and livestock feed industries, the Dao began to intensify cassava production within the boundaries of the national park, often returning to ancestral plots. When the national park was established in 1991, all Dao remaining on the mountain, regardless of tenure claims and need for viable land, were forcibly settled in the buffer zone below 100 metres elevation, in a new village called Sổ. As a means of compensation, farmers were to receive resettlement money, garden land and other support services.6 Recognizing the potential for economic benefit, party leaders and their family members

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Figure 8.1 Villagers prepare to plant cassava within the national park.

already in the buffer zone—in Hợp Nhất hamlet—were the first to elect “resettlement” in the new hamlet, selecting the largest, most desirable lands, with existing tea and forest plantations as well as access to water and roads. Because of Sổ’s proximity to the national park, many of these well-to-do families staked a claim to the uncultivated margins of the park by planting trees. The resettlement programme essentially provided the political elite access to scarce and highly coveted land and capital. Many families for whom the programme was originally intended had to purchase land and housing in Hợp Nhất from the departing cadre. Additionally, reforestation contracts, intended to provide opportunities for displaced families, were allocated solely to political elites. Like other social programmes designed to alleviate poverty (Lương 2003b; Trần Thị Thu Trang 2004: 146), the resettlement and reforestation programmes of Ba Vì disproportionately benefited village cadres. Serial and overlapping claims to Ba Vì’s resources had resulted in a landscape marred by uncertainty, contestation and degradation. Ba Vì Village Profile under Economic Liberalization Ba Vì village wraps around the northwest base of Ba Vì Mountain. This study focuses on two hamlets in Ba Vì village: Hợp Nhất and Sổ (see Figure 8.2). At the time of this study (1999–2000), the hamlet of Hợp

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Figure 8.2 Map showing official land-use categories in Ba Vì National Park

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Nhất (established in the late 1960s) comprised 93 households. The second hamlet, Sổ (created in 1991), comprised 91 households. This paper draws on extensive fieldwork, including 62 household surveys conducted in both Hợp Nhất and Sổ. Access to Land In 1998, according to the Ba Vì District Land Administration Office, the majority of arable land in the Ba Vì village buffer zone was classified as either forestry land (đất lâm nghiệp) or “unused hills and mountain land” (see Table 8.1). Less than 1 per cent of the land was designated as wetrice land, and only 12 per cent of it was classified as agricultural land (presumably garden and perennial crop land). This aggregate district data suggests that villagers no longer engaged in swidden production, except in a limited way on their garden lands, and that their primary source of livelihood should have been derived from those agricultural or forestry lands. What the data doesn’t reveal is the productivity (or lack thereof) of each land use, and the social relations of access. While there was no indication of involuntary landlessness from the survey, limitations on the quantity and quality of both wet-rice and garden lands pushed villagers to extract surplus from the mountain to meet their livelihood needs. Title to wet-rice and garden lands had been allocated, while formal rights to swidden land had been legally banned with the establishment of the national park seven years prior.7 Despite the limited quantity, wet-rice land was, nevertheless, intensively cultivated, helping to offset the significant cost of purchasing rice. While former collective wet-rice land had been allocated in a relatively egalitarian manner, with most households receiving a relatively even amount and quality of land, the ability to purchase Table 8.1 Area of land-use types in Ba Vì village, 1998 Land-use type Agricultural land (including garden land and perennial crops) Rice and cropland Forest (natural and plantation forest) Hills and mountains (unused)

Area (hectares)

% of land area

297.26

12

21.01 1,197.78 988.5

1 48 39

Source: Ba Vì District Land Administration Office 1998.

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additional private wet-rice lands was governed by social status (and associated connections) and access to capital.8 Garden lands were less evenly distributed, as gardens in Sổ were 25 per cent larger than gardens in the older village of Hợp Nhất and had better access to the road.9 Despite village cadres and their families acquiring access to the largest and most productive garden lands, few villagers openly expressed resentment. This may have been due to garden land undervaluation at the time of study. Most garden lands, representing nearly a third of the village land base, remained underutilized and underinvested in. In fact, only 6 per cent of those surveyed ranked garden land as one of their top three main sources of income (see Table 8.2). Rather, villagers invested the majority of their time, capital and labour in growing cassava on the mountain. Officially classified as “forestry” or “hills and mountain” lands, these lands present the most complex arrangement of access due to multiple and competing claims, wide fluctuations in state policy, and the expansion of commodity production. Table 8.2 Distribution of current and projected livelihood sources by land category, 2000 Land category

Relative importance of current livelihood source (top 3) (%)

Expected source of livelihood in future (%)*

31 9.8 12 20

24 0 9 53

2.7

0

6

32

8.7

3

15.8

0

National park -

Cassava Canna Medicinal plants Livestock (buffalo and cow grazing and fodder collection) Planting trees

Garden Rice Non-farm income

Note: * Some households indicated two future sources of livelihood, so the total does not add up to 100 per cent. Source: Data based on responses from 34 household surveys, 1999–2000.

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Figure 8.3 Villagers process cassava in the upper elevations of Ba Vì National Park.

Changing Political Economy By 1999, income streams for Ba Vì villagers were dramatically different from ten years prior, coinciding with changes in formal land tenure, resettlement and the establishment of the national park. With the decline in soil fertility, the production of food on sloping lands had all but been abandoned, having been replaced by commodity production. The three most frequently cited sources of livelihood for Ba Vì villagers in 1999–2000 were cassava (sold for cash) (94 per cent) followed by rice (consumed) (89 per cent) and livestock (sold and consumed) (69 per cent).10 While forestry contracts were the most lucrative source of income, they were the least accessible to most villagers. The three most important sources of household livelihood cited by those surveyed were derived from productive activities within the national park (see Table 8.2). These included both income derived from the sale of canna and cassava grown in the national park and secondary—or “insurance”—forms of livelihood derived from the harvesting of natural resources for shelter, fuelwood, medicine and sale.11 The largest source of income was derived from cassava production on sloping lands, with households averaging 4.5 million dong per year (see Figure 8.3).

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Concomitant with the rise in income from cassava were increasing levels of debt. Evidence of the cassava boom was apparent in the rapid proliferation of concrete homes.12 Future insecurity of swidden tenure and income drove villagers to mine their social and ecological environments for short-term gain. A regional market glut of cassava had begun to drive prices down. As access to resources within the national park became increasingly restricted and cassava yields and prices plummeted, how would villagers fare?13 Despite clear evidence that availability of sloping land for cultivation (both in quality and in quantity) was finished (hết đất), more than half of those surveyed still expected future income to be derived from livestock (which depends on grazing and fodder collection from within the national park). A third did foresee gardens as the future source of income. Yet nearly a quarter still intended to continue with cassava production. Surprisingly, expectations for non-farm income in the future dropped to zero. Implied in the villagers’ responses, I believe, was a kind of faith or dogged determination in their future ability to maintain access to resources within the park. Villagers’ belief in their ability to negotiate access to land or resources beyond their purview can be better understood by examining cultural politics in the village. The Cultural Politics of Xin At the time of study, rights to cultivate sloping lands had all but been eliminated while forest production and protection contracts with sizeable payment structures, intended to provide alternative sources of income for displaced farmers, were allocated largely to the village political elite. 14 Tô Xuân Phúc, who also did research in this village several years later, argues that the political elite “grabb[ed] all the land, compelling the villagers to work for them based on patron-client relationships” (Chapter 9), and that “the relationship between the two is exploitative” (2009: 65). Rather than blatant exploitation, I would argue that these social relations of access were largely mutually beneficial or mutually exploitative. Despite being formally denied rights to “forestland”, common villagers successfully manoeuvred around these newfound boundaries, responding as entrepreneurs to new market opportunities and either amassing new wealth or at least achieving subsistence needs. These trans-boundary manoeuvrings were tightly interwoven within a particular cultural politics, what I am calling a “politics of xin” or “politics of favour asking”, in which villagers could ask for and depend upon their leaders for certain

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favours—including access to productive resources—to guarantee a certain right to livelihood and accumulation. During and before the collective period, the ability to ask for favours, or xin, had provided critical livelihood insurance, particularly during times of scarcity. Xin, by definition, means to ask for, to beg or to borrow. It connotes a sense of deference, thanks, indebtedness, and oftentimes social inferiority to the one from whom it is being requested. In the case of Ba Vì, it resembles a kind of patron-client relationship in which the patron protects and meets the needs of the client, while the client performs certain duties (or, in this case, pays rent in the form of cash, labour or kind) to meet the patron’s needs. Village and hamlet leaders are expected to take risks and set an example for their constituents, as well as to guarantee a certain right of livelihood. By granting such favours, the political superior reinforces his position, thereby reproducing local power relations. In everyday speech, common throughout northern Vietnam, xin is used as a gesture of thanks when one receives a gift, food or small token from someone else, em xin. Similar to James Scott’s notion of moral economy (1976), it is typically leaders of the community who are expected to provide for villagers in times of need or scarcity. They are whom the villagers request, or xin anh em, for special favours, using the idiom of kinship. In this case, a critical negotiation point is access to sloping lands, which provide the greatest economic returns but have been declared off limits to villagers and targeted for reforestation and protection.15 Without access to these sloping lands, villagers would not be able to meet livelihood security and increasing debt obligations. As in the case of other rural communities experiencing a commodity boom (Suryanata 1994, Lewis 1992), in Ba Vì—most notably in Sỏ hamlet—newfound wealth from cassava production resulted in increased levels of consumerism and showy displays of wealth and status, such as holding lavish weddings and building large homes, which oftentimes contributed to increased levels of debt. Such expenditures, however, often had the secondary function of building social capital. Wealth and status were important criteria for loan eligibility, forest contracts and other sources of investment funds. This perhaps explain why … agricultural surplus was used in part to establish or strengthen the social identities and relationships through which people entered or influenced negotiations over access and control of resources. (Berry 1993: 15)

Increased investment in such non-productive activities during this time of apparent land insecurity may be explained by either of two phenomena.

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It may reflect villagers’ ongoing faith in cultural norms of reciprocity: faith in their ability to negotiate future access to land and productive resources within the national park. Or, it may reflect a fundamental transformation in society as norms governing a kind of “moral economy” are replaced by the pursuit of prestige, as the rich are judged and rewarded more favourably than the poor, regardless of behaviour. 16 Explicit attention to the dynamics of sloping land access provides more nuanced insight into the cultural politics of xin in Ba Vì. Seeing the Forest for the Cassava and the Trees Paying close attention to the details of how “forestlands” are classified, allocated, managed and actually used illuminates the centrality of forestland in villager livelihoods, village politics and processes of social differentiation. After the establishment of Ba Vì National Park in 1991, all swidden lands were deemed illegal, as evidenced in their erasure from the official land-use map. According to the District Land Administration map of Ba Vì, all land above 100 metres was now designated “forestland”. Prior yellow-coded swidden fields were replaced with either white-coded “barren land” or orange-, purple-, green- and brown-coded forestlands in varying stages of quality and development (see Figure 8.2). Their customary tenure relations on the land were effectively erased. Yet eight years after the establishment of the park (1999), 98 per cent of all respondents (n=62) in the survey still engaged in cassava and canna production within the national park, with 60 per cent cultivating in or near the park’s “strictly protected zone”. Swidden acreage per household ranged from 1 hectare to 51 hectares, with an average of 1.38 hectares per household. It is fair to assume these figures were under-reported, as it was widely known and understood that any form of cultivation above 600 metres was strictly illegal. Yet village leaders in effect turned a blind eye, allowing villagers their ancestral right to livelihood. This behaviour was not entirely benevolent, as we shall see, as village leaders profited from not reporting these flagrant land-use violations to the park authorities. While villagers were investing in their swidden fields to extract as much surplus as possible from the cassava boom, National Park officials had other plans for those lands: reforestation and forest protection. The first significant reforestation programme, funded by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP, known by its French acronym, PAM) in the late 1980s, provided acacia and eucalyptus seeds and rice as incentives for villagers to reforest 1 hectare plots within the then forest reserve.

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Designed as a food-for-work programme, it was to support villagers who had been displaced from within the reserve boundaries. Managed by the village cooperative, with funds transferred through the Ba Vì Forest Reserve, each household contributed labour to effectively reforest their customary swidden fields.17 Ultimately, villagers were to have rights to 80–90 per cent of the timber harvest once the trees reached maturity (AREA 1993). Participation in the planting was quite egalitarian, even though the management board had illegally retained a portion of the funds. While many of the plantations grew well, others did not. Rather than deny unsuccessful villagers access to trees, one hamlet leader responded to xin requests by allowing the plantation under his authority to dwindle: In Cay Da, I planted 2,500 trees for the PAM project in 1989. I couldn’t protect it because the buffalo killed it, but also people collected trees for firewood and to make homes. Some people xin or asked me for the trees in exchange for 7,000 dong/tree. I now have 200 trees left.

For those who had good-quality plantations, a quick shift in land policy effectively eliminated all claims to the harvest. With the establishment of the national park in 1991, Ba Vì Mountain was carved up into “scientific” management zones with the explicit goals of protection, reforestation and rehabilitation. By 1995, the trees planted under the WFP project had reached maturity. Villagers began to wonder whether their claims would still hold. Farmers received conflicting stories from the village cadres regarding benefits. Some were told the trees now belonged to the national park and were to be protected; others were told they would receive 30 per cent of the revenue from their harvest sale, while the village administration would receive 70 per cent “when the time was right”. Despite approval from the district, the national park refused the right to harvest, arguing that the trees fell within their jurisdiction. Due to the uncertainty of benefits, many farmers began harvesting the trees illicitly, one at a time, for fuelwood or for housing construction (see Figure 8.4). When a new reforestation initiative by the central government was launched in the 1990s, the remaining trees were quickly felled. Some of the trees were legitimately harvested by those who had invested their labour. Others were harvested and sold by the village people’s committee, which retained 70 per cent of the profits and distributed the remaining 30 per cent to the farmers: the opposite proportion to that stated in the original contract. Village leaders extracted surplus from villagers under the rationale that they had lobbied on the farmers’ behalf in order to get any benefits, since the park had effectively erased any claims to the trees.

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Figure 8.4 Sabotage of forest plantations is evident in the national park.

Like the inequitable distribution of benefits from the WFP harvest, access to participate in and receive benefits from the new reforestation initiatives was equally uneven and dependent on social status and wealth. Beginning in the mid-1990s, “Programme 327” was launched to regreen the “bare lands” of the park and to improve the socio-economic conditions of inhabitants of the buffer zone (below 100 metres). The Land Law and Decree 02 on forestland allocation stated that forestland within the “rehabilitation zone” of special-use forests (national parks) was to be contracted to local farmers for protection and reforestation. According to Article 8, Decree 02, the procedure for reforestation within the rehabilitation zone was for the park management board to contract with households to plant, tend and manage the trees. The contract recipient was to receive 2.5 million dong for each hectare planted, to cover labour, seedling and tending expenses for three years. Intercropping and harvesting of understorey growth was permitted until the canopy cover closed, but no tree felling or firewood collection was allowed (AREA 1993) (see Figure 8.5). According to the regulations, 60 per cent of the future products was to go to the state and 40 per cent to the household (Apel and Phạm 1998). In return, villagers were responsible for planting, tending and protecting the seedlings to maturity. What emerged was quite different from what was intended.

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Figure 8.5 Villagers grow canna beneath acacia plantations in the national park.

The goal of the reforestation programme—to provide alternatives to shifting cultivators through the allocation of reforestation contracts—was circumvented by powerful local and regional elites.18 The programme was administered through a supra-local institution with no relationship to or investment in the well-being of the villagers. According to the head of Ba Vì village, the national park leaders didn’t want to allocate land to small households, citing inefficacy. Rather, villagers were subjected to an application process to determine their eligibility to participate. According to the village leader, the criteria for receiving a reforestation or protection contract were based on “intelligence, wealth, and the capacity to organize”. As a result, only 14 (out of 200) villagers received large contracts, most of whom had links to the Party and village administration. Non-recipients did not take this lightly. One widow reflected thus on the process: They are contracting (thầu) our old village land to reforest it. We are poor so we can’t thầu forest land. Our land now belongs to the person with the contract. We no longer have rights to use our old land. The contractor hires other people to reforest our land. If we had money, we could buy planting rights back from him, but we can’t.

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Another villager expressed a similar sentiment, citing the increasingly monetized nature of access: “Now you need money to plant trees; if you refuse to plant trees, then your land will be allocated to someone else.” A third villager added, “You never xin land for nothing. If the land is far, you pay 200,000 dong/ha. If close, 600,000 dong/ha.” Wealth, however beneficial, did not guarantee access to land. Several families requested (xin) contracts directly from the national park and had the ability to pay, but they lacked the necessary social status (village cadre) to receive the contract. Following was the response of one disgruntled villager who was turned down: Only the cán bộ (leaders or cadre) can get land. The dân (people) rarely thầu (contract). People can buy land from those who thầu. One hectare for 300,000 dong. You pay once for three years. But when the trees are big, then that is the end. You get none of the protection money even though you planted the trees. What rights do I have? I don’t have rights to use anything. In my opinion, they are going to have to redivide the swidden land. If not, then there is going to be fighting between the Forestry Department and the people, because the people don’t have land to grow cassava and canna anymore. All the forest that is nearby has been contracted.

This was also the case with forest protection contracts. Article 8 states that people living in strictly protected zones can establish contracts with the management board for protection of the area. Protection contracts for special-use forests, according to Decree 661, should be given as a priority to poor households or households involved in the government’s Fixed Cultivation and Sedentarization Programme. In Ba Vì, however, recipients of contracts were mostly non-local officials from the district towns of Sơn Tây, Quang Oai and other areas outside the buffer zone. As in the case of reforestation contracts, local recipients tended to be government cadres and/or wealthy village men. They first contracted with the park to plant the trees, receiving 3.2 million dong/ha, followed by 50,000 dong/ha/year to protect the trees. The contract was to last for 50 years. Because of the potential economic windfall, some recipients actually paid 400,000–800,000 dong/ha to national park officials to secure rights to the contract. These forms of “administrative fees” or patterns of patronage, what some have called bribes (Lương 2003b, Trần Thị Thu Trang 2004), reflect social practices inherent in the socialist system that enable local government cadres to access resources, thereby expanding their power. Inequitable allocation of protection contracts to well-off non-local individuals has further marginalized the most needy households

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within the buffer zone and contributed to instability of land tenure and intensified pressures on forest resources within the park. Members of both the village and district people’s committees, responsible for the land allocation process, exercised their social status to acquire forest contracts for themselves and their kin. Out of the 54 households that responded in our study, six had direct contracts with the national park, 33 had varying kinds of subcontracts, and 15 had no contract to “forestland” at all. Distribution of forestland contracts, administered by the national park, was highly skewed, in contrast to the wet-rice land and garden lands, administered by the village. Thirty-seven out of 51 respondents reported holdings of less than 1 hectare, areas significantly smaller than their original swidden fields. Of the 15 households that had not subcontracted any land, one reported having had her land stolen, one reported having paid a fine, but most simply claimed they were not cultivating swidden fields—or at least did not reveal that they were. If we look at formal landholdings alone, it would seem that rapid differentiation was occurring in Ba Vì village, as villagers were losing rights to their most productive land (swidden fields) to the national park and to the wealthy village political elite. The process seemed to parallel the English enclosure movement, in which the most economically viable land was usurped by large landlords. In this case, however, the political elite were able to alienate farmers from their land because of support from the state (national park).19 A new kind of landlord-tenant relationship developed virtually overnight as village cadres controlled large swathes of land under contract, while former customary owners of the land became subject to rules defined by the national park and new “landlord”. If we were to look at regimes of access rather than tenure control, however, we would observe how the village elite were in effect mediating villager access to important arable land in ways that were highly risky to themselves. Village leaders exercised their political authority with the national park to obtain lucrative reforestation contracts, yet at the same time guaranteed villagers at least three more years of access to cassava production. Anxious to retain cultivation rights to their swidden fields, villagers exercised their customary claims to subsistence by requesting (xin) or in effect begging for temporary access to their original lands. Village leaders with large reforestation contracts needed inexpensive (or free) labour to actually plant the trees. As such, they mobilized the unpaid labour of their social subordinates to plant trees in exchange for temporary cultivation

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Table 8.3 Diversity of forest contract arrangements on sloping land, 2000 Contracting arrangement

Range of monetary exchanges

Primary contractor (6)

Received 400,000 dong/ha Received 1.7 million dong/ha Received 1.2 million; 300,000; 200,000 dong/three years/ha Received 700,000 dong/ha

Subcontractor with income (13)

Received 200,000–900,000 dong/ha

Subcontractor without income (13)

No payment

Subcontractor with payment (7)

Paid 100 dong/tree Paid 200,000–750,000 dong/ha/year Paid 2 million dong

No contract (15)

No longer cultivating Not cultivating (off-farm income) Paid fine Land was stolen

Source: Data based on stratified random survey of 54 households, 1999–2000.

rights in the form of “subcontracts”. The nature of the relationship between contractor and subcontractor was highly variable (see Table 8.3). Thirty-seven per cent of the subcontractors received varying levels of payment (50,000–900,000 dong/ha) to plant trees and retained rights to plant cassava. An equal number received no payment but had to plant trees in order to retain cultivation rights for three years. Twenty-six per cent reported they not only had to plant trees, but also had to pay between 250,000 and 2 million dong per year to retain access to their lucrative cassava fields. Payment schedules varied depending on the nature of the contractorsubcontractor (or patron-client) relationship and the “quality” of the resultant plantation. Villagers whose swidden land was contracted by a fellow villager had a greater likelihood of retaining access to the land and surplus from cassava production compared to the tenure insecurity of those villagers whose land was contracted to a non-villager. In one case, for example, when a woman refused to plant trees on her land, the non-local contractor hired someone else to plant trees on her land and uprooted her cassava plants. There were also differences among local contractors. Hamlet leaders, the lowest level of governance, tended to be

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more generous in their subcontracting arrangements than village leaders, who were one step removed.20 Villagers with kin ties to the contractor also tended to have more favourable arrangements, but not always so. In general, most villagers were able to successfully xin land to grow cassava as an understorey crop for three years, until the canopy closed, prohibiting further cultivation. But not all relations were good. Several villagers who either refused to “reforest” their swidden fields, or whose reforestation results did not meet national park requirements, were threatened with eviction. Some villagers complained that one local contractor in particular, who had promised payments for tree planting, either failed to pay or significantly reduced the promised amount. Very few open conflicts emerged, however, as customary claims were already tenuous and villagers were fearful of drawing attention to their “illegal” practices. Villagers, thus, reforested their lands but with great ambivalence, as illustrated by the words of one interviewee: We had to plant trees on our swidden land in order for us not to lose it; so that it wouldn’t be reallocated to someone else. We are worried because we think we will lose the rights to the land after the trees grow up big. We then have to find another way to earn a living.

There was a certain degree of risk and uncertainty for the contractors as well, as they had to pay an advance to the national park authorities in order to xin the reforestation or protection contract in the first place, and later compensation was contingent on some arbitrary notion of reforestation success. Very few contractors received the full amount stated in the contract, as many of the saplings reportedly “died” or were “destroyed by grazing cattle”. As such, some contractors received no compensation at all, while others received between 900,000 and 1.8 million dong/ha. Contractors who were village leaders often cut their subcontractors some slack when it came to planting success. They were willing to accept a lower payment (albeit still quite substantial at times) from the national park in exchange for an appeased populace. Indeed, without access to cassava lands, villagers might not have been so complacent. One primary contractor, a hamlet leader, was particularly benevolent in his subcontracting arrangement, exhibiting a form of mutual assistance typical of pre-capitalist societies. In order to guarantee a group of poorer villagers access to swidden lands, he took on great personal risk and financial burden. Representing a group of six families, he exercised his authority to xin land (for a price) from the national park within the

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“strictly protected zone”, a highly fertile and productive area. One member of the group expressed his sentiments thus: Poor people can’t get contracts to reforest. In order to get a contract, you must be able to xin (ask for it) and pay 500,000 dong/ha/year. We can’t pay that much, so five families got together and xin land collectively, with the assistance of our hamlet leader. Each family only had to pay 200,000 dong.

Others were less fortunate. One villager recounted what happened when her ancestral swidden land was contracted to two outsiders with no moral or social obligation to the villagers: We used to plant cassava and rice in Suối Den. Then in 1995, villagers from Minh Hông contracted with the national park to replant the land. We couldn’t xin to keep planting. So we had to abandon our fields. We only plant canna randomly now, on areas that are not contracted. We planted canna for two years in Che Choong [without permission], then the Forest Protection Department said we couldn’t plant any more. Our only plot of ancestral land in Đá Đồi, near our house, where we grew cassava, was contracted out to Mr Quý [district Forestry Department official]. In 1998 Quý told us we had to plant acacia and longan (130 acacia and 70 longan trees). All the seedlings died. We received no money. In 1999 Quý told us to replant, but we saw no benefit [money] so we didn’t plant. Then Quý hired others to plant the trees, and we lost rights to cultivate. Many of those seedlings have since fallen over from grazing cows and buffalo.

Villagers’ ability to participate in the cassava boom was thus partly dependent on luck: that is, who held the reforestation contract to their swidden fields. Forest protection officials or outside villagers who received contracts for reforestation were not beholden to the village cultural politics of xin. Villagers were often unable to xin land and were cut very little slack if the seedlings they planted failed to flourish. On the other hand, some village leaders not only granted existing landholders rights to cultivate, but even gave a portion of their personal proceeds to the villagers to plant the trees. The results of the reforestation programme were an increasing mistrust of the government, distress over the impending loss of arable land, increased everyday forms of resistance in the form of plantation sabotage, increased degradation of the sloping lands, and increased awareness and frustration over the gross inequity of contract allocation. Exacerbating land tenure insecurity, in 2000 yet another reforestation project emerged, jointly administered by Ba Vì National Park and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. Partially in response to

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villagers’ complaints about the inequitable allocation of contracts, the goal of this programme was to reallocate 600 hectares in 1 hectare plots to individual households at 100 to 400 metres elevation within the park. The national park would take back all land that had been allocated under Programme 327 and redivide it “equitably” among households, since many households did not have any land. According to the plan, landuse decisions were to be made by the national park, and households had to abide by the rules, including growing forest cover. Existing contract holders, who foresaw the size of their landholdings and economic returns shrink, resisted the programme. Villagers also resisted, as many of them still held tenurial claims to various non-contiguous plots of land with important land-based capital. Quality of land was also highly variable: some plots had access to water, while others were heavily covered with rock. One villager expressed his frustration: I planted bương [bamboo] in Moong on my PAM land to collect bamboo shoots. But this land will be allocated next year. Who will have rights to my bamboo? We used to have the contract to our PAM land, but then it got taken away.

For more than ten years, the cultural practice of xin had served to defuse tension around increased social stratification between the village elite and the local farmers arising from new state conservation and reforestation policies and market forces under Đổi Mới (economic reform). Conclusion: Uncertain Future This case study demonstrates the importance of situating local processes of agrarian change at the intersection of state and market forces and the specific cultural institutions and ecological arrangements that both mediate and are influenced by their effects. It illustrates the ways in which the highlands are intricately linked to the lowlands and beyond through both commodity markets and internationally funded state conservation efforts. It contributes to broader discussions about the nature and power of the state and local authorities under “post-socialism” and the proliferation of particular rent-seeking practices, common under socialism, in mediating access to productive resources today. It examines the politics of intraethnic social differentiation and how commodity markets and cultural norms may help level the effects of differentiation just as government development projects intensify them.

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At the turn of the millennium, villagers in Ba Vì experienced rapid and compressed agrarian change, as the state sanctioned enclosures of their most productive lands and the emergent market economy provided new opportunities for the rapid accumulation of wealth. Villagers and institutions at multiple scales governing access to productive resources adapted quickly to the new landscape, each vying to maximize benefits. Historical forms of social differentiation, sustained by cultural norms of state patronage, were becoming magnified. Socialist cadres utilized their political status to amass new wealth through privileged access to state resources, including resettlement benefits, reforestation and forest protection contracts, as well as by continuing to extract surplus from their “subjects” in many forms, such as rent in labour service (tree planting), terms of trade in the purchase and sale of cassava, high interest on private loans, cash (in some cases to retain access to swidden land and/or payment for trees from WFP projects) and xin money. Villagers tolerated these incremental forms of extraction so long as they could rely on village leaders to provide during times of scarcity. Determined to capitalize on the lucrative cassava market, villagers engaged in a politics of xin to retain access to their swidden lands, some for subsistence, but many to accumulate wealth for themselves. Village and hamlet leaders took a risk, and many an ultimate hit on their economic returns, when they entrusted reforestation duties to villagers, several of whom sabotaged the tree plantations. The extent of differentiation was thereby buffered both by village leaders’ sense of obligation to sustain their villagers’ livelihoods as well as by the entrepreneurial spirit of the villagers to maximize profits from cassava markets. Without the village elite securing reforestation contracts, “outsiders”—without the binds of this kind of patron-client relationship—could have effectively stripped villagers of their cultivation rights completely. We may begin to observe processes of increased or more permanent differentiation, increased levels of protest, and the erosion of the cultural politics of xin as environmental conditions and economic possibilities worsen. In his exploration of causes of peasant rebellion, Scott (1976) argues that it is not just starvation and constraints on income that cause resistance, but also the breakdown of peasants’ conceptions of social justice, the erosion of rights and obligations between village leaders and the peasantry, and the violation of patterns of reciprocity. With the loss of arable land, allocation of swidden land to non-locals, degradation of natural capital, increased incidence of tenuous “survival” strategies such as self-exploitation and temporary entrance into the wage labour market,

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and portending commodity bust, the future security of Ba Vì social and ecological landscapes remained highly tenuous. In the next chapter, Tô Xuân Phúc revisits one of the two hamlets discussed in this case study four years later. He describes the emergence and social implications of a new land market, in which two-thirds of the village households sell their garden land to outsiders. Social differentiation of a different kind emerges, with different forces, actors and consequences at play. Yet the question remains whether villagers who lost everything in the land rush were able to (re)negotiate access to sloping lands, upon which their livelihoods depended for centuries, or the canopy had closed and the politics of xin come to an end. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the participants of the workshop on “Montane Choices and Outcomes: Contemporary Transformations of Vietnam’s Uplands”, and especially Thomas Sikor, for constructive commentary on this chapter. I would also like to thank Emma Tome for her excellent cartographic work as well as the Fulbright-Hays DDRA Program and the Social Science Research Council IDRF Program for funding this research. Notes 1. See, for example, McElwee (2004), Sikor (2001a, 2001b) and Scott (2000). 2. Examples of studies that pay attention to local sociopolitical dynamics include the volumes edited by Kerkvliet and Marr (2004) and Lương (2003a), in addition to Sikor (2001a, 2001b, 2004a, 2004b), Sowerwine (2004c), Clement et al. (2006) and Trần Thị Thu Trang (2004.) 3. The Dao (pronounced “Zao” in northern Vietnam) are often referred to as the Yao in other English-language publications. 4. In August 2008, Hà Tây province was merged into the Metropolitan Area of Hanoi. 5. Wet-rice land was managed collectively from 1963 to1982. 6. Those who settled in Sổ received 800,000 dong and six months of rice (15kg/person/month), financing to dig a well, and other agricultural support services. 7. Not all eligible villagers actually received titles to their garden land. Several refused to pay the exorbitant 125,000 dong fee for something they perceived to have little or no value. Ba Chinh, a widow, asked, “Why must I pay 125,000 dong to get my Red Book when in Minh Quang [the neighbouring village] they must pay only 25,000?” When she asked why the price was so high, she was

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told the village leaders were, in effect, “killing people”(chết người) by “eating” (ăn) a portion of the proceeds from the allocation. 8. According to the household survey, 75 per cent of households in the newly established hamlet of Sổ purchased wet-rice land from the neighbouring villagers of Minh Quang, who were the prior inhabitants of Sổ. 9. Village leaders asserted that the size of garden lands was determined based on the number of people in the household; however, the per capita amount of garden land varied widely, as did the quality. The average household garden size was 4,339 square metres (the per capita area ranged from 100 square metres to more than 1,000 square metres). 10. Other sources of income were selling garden products, selling medicinal plants and bamboo collected in the national park, forestry contracts, government salary, selling labour (occasionally), and loaning money. 11. The average annual income from cassava and canna was 7.4 million dong, from livestock 1.5 million dong, from medicinal plants 1 million dong, and from tree planting 24.7 million dong. 12. Of the 56 respondents (6 were unrecorded), 28 had wooden houses, 25 had cement houses, and 3 had bamboo houses. 13. In 1999, cassava starch fetched on average 1,500 dong/kg. By the end of 2000, the price had decreased to 630 dong/kg. 14. The six primary contractors I interviewed were all current members of the village leadership: the head of the village, head of security, head of police, vice head of police, head of both hamlets and vice head of the village. The former village party secretary—currently the head of the village militia, who resided in the hamlet not studied—held the largest reforestation contract, at 260 hectares. The former cooperative accountant who swindled money from village funds during decollectivization held a reforestation contract for 70 hectares. The village policeman and land administration official held reforestation contracts for more than 100 hectares above 600 metres elevation within the park. 15. Another example of the politics of xin in the village at the time of study was the way villagers asked for and received loans that they were resolutely unqualified for from village loan officers. Recognizing the dire need of some indebted villagers (those who had lost money speculating in the cassava market) for access to immediate capital, village loan officers would bend the rules to sustain fellow villagers through lean times until the next cassava sale. 16. Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, argues that certain norms and behaviours of particular moral economies can change as a result of changes in the social context. He notes that the rise of commercial society is likely to induce a corruption of moral sentiment promoting vanity and valuing prestige more than praiseworthy behaviour (Sayer 2004). 17. Based on principles similar to the work point system under the cooperatives, villagers were to receive 2.5 kilograms of rice per five-hour workday (WFP 2000).

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18. Similar distributional patterns are observed by Elisabeth Grinspoon (2002) in her research on wasteland auctions in China, in which networks of local economic and political elite are altering policy intent by privatizing and appropriating collective land. Lương (2003b) and Trần Thị Thu Trang (2004) provide similar examples of village cadre corruption. 19. Elsewhere (Sowerwine 2004c: 103–5) I describe the inadvertent role of the international conservation aid community in undermining villager livelihoods by supporting a kind of environmental territorialization through national reforestation initiatives. 20. One village leader was particularly ruthless in his subcontracting arrangements. I believe he was one of the two Hợp Sơn village leaders who in later years (see Chapter 9) became a land broker and exploited many of the villagers for personal gain.

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9

The Development of a Land Market in the Uplands of Vietnam

Tô Xuân Phúc

Introduction This chapter focuses on the market for garden land of the Dao1 people in Sổ village of Ba Vì commune, the place described by Jennifer Sowerwine in Chapter 8 of this volume. In 2003 the village was characterized by simple houses equipped with basic furniture and amenities. Villagers were poor, deriving their livelihood mainly from swidden crops grown in the forest and paddy rice in the valley. Some villagers grew food crops, fruit trees and medicinal plants in garden lands adjacent to their homes. Very few had motorcycles or colour televisions. When I was in the village in 2004, I noticed substantial changes: there were several new houses; vehicles loaded with construction materials traversed back and forth on the village road; bulldozers rumbled; and motorcycles, colour televisions and hi-fi stereos could be seen in abundance. In some newly opened grocery stores I saw goods previously available only in the big stores of the lowland markets. These dramatic changes were brought about by the land rush in Sổ at the end of 2003. Villagers started to sell off their garden lands, including their home lots, to outsiders, most of whom were from Hanoi. By the end of 2004, all the garden land in convenient locations, such as near the village road and in flat areas, had been sold. Around 70 per cent of households in the village sold their land; about 33.1 hectares, or half of the total garden land of the village, was sold. Some VND8 billion, around US$529,000, was channelled to the village through the land market. 208

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This paper examines the emergence of the land market in the village and investigates the forms of social relations, institutions and differentiated market actors that have surfaced. The paper focuses primarily on garden land, thus complementing Chapter 8, which studies forestland in the same village. I show in this paper that a market for garden land arose in the village because of three reasons. The first was the increasing demand on land for housing and recreation by the regional elite. With the government’s adoption of a market renovation policy at the end of the 1980s, urbanization has been rapid all over the country. Cities with better job opportunities have become more and more crowded, while the living environment has worsened (Asian Development Bank et al. 2003). With the increasing environmental pollution in the cities, a growing number of people have decided to relocate to rural areas in the suburbs. The second reason was the villagers’ desire to “be modern”. The third reason for the rise of a market for garden land in the villages was that villagers’ participation in the market was rooted in the structural inequality of economic and cultural production at the regional level. Despite the rapid growth achieved since the economic liberalization in the country at the end of the 1980s, the Dao villagers of Sổ did not benefit from the country’s progress and are still experiencing economic difficulties. The government’s adoption of an evolutionary approach in classifying ethnic minorities in the country produced popular discourses about the ethnic minorities, including the Dao, as backward and at a low stage of development. When the land market emerged, Dao villagers voluntarily participated in it, striving to shed their negative image. They sold off their land quickly and used the cash to acquire material assets and ostentatious consumer goods that were considered modern by lowland Kinh (ethnic majority) standards. By doing this, they expected to be accepted as members of a modern society dominated by the Kinh. The market meant different things to different actors. Income generated from the market and risks associated with it were unevenly distributed among the actors. The market deepened rural differentiation in the village, produced local conflicts, and changed villagers’ identity and aspirations. The paper begins with a brief outline of the theoretical orientation, with a focus on commodity markets in Southeast Asia, followed by a short description of the study village. The main body of the paper presents the mechanisms that produced the market, the different actors involved, and the impact of the market on the local population.

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Commodity Markets in Southeast Asia Throughout Southeast Asia, lowlanders, including government officials, have traditionally viewed the uplands as remote areas inhabited by impoverished, backward and superstitious indigenous people who derive their living mainly from the forest, by practising primitive and destructive forms of swidden agriculture (Poffenberger 2006; Li 1999a, 2007; Elson 1997). However, recent studies have shown that peoples, identities, livelihoods and political relations are as dynamic in the uplands as they are in the lowlands (Li 2002, 2007; Elson 1997). Li (2008) observes that upland farmers in Indonesia are profit-oriented and actively involved in the production of commodities. Since the fourteenth century, uplanders have engaged in commercial production of tobacco, pepper, cotton and rubber destined for local, regional and global markets (Boomgaard 1999). In the uplands and deep interiors, there were trading posts for the interchange of goods between these commercially peripheral regions and lowland centres. Uplanders often travelled to lowland markets, and traders from such centres often ventured into the wild to procure what they needed (Elson 1997). Much literature has documented how upland villagers in Southeast Asia have actively embraced the global market for agricultural commodity products (see, for example, Ruiter 1999, Li 2002, Suryanata 1999 and Elson 1997 for Indonesia; Elson 1997 for Malaysia; Déry 2000, Salemink 2003a, and Sikor and Phạm Thị Tường Vi 2005 for Vietnam). While commodity markets have brought wealth to several upland areas, they have also resulted in many negative impacts on local populations. The emergence of the market in Southeast Asia’s uplands has often been associated with agrarian differentiation and social tensions (Li 2008, Sikor and Phạm Thị Tường Vi 2005, Suryanata 1999). The global market for cocoa, for example, forced many uplanders in Indonesia to sell their land to migrants and capital-rich outsiders, in the face of growing debts, rendering them landless (Li 2002, 2007). Upland farmers responded to the market through individual initiatives, but they also had some influence on the process of market formation (Suryanata 1999). In Thailand, while some upland villagers engaged in pulp production have benefited, some indebted farmers with legal tenure have been forced to sell their land to plantations and have been reduced to wage labourers (Barney 2008). Many upland villagers in the Central Highlands of Vietnam have sold their land to more successful and entrepreneurial farmers from among their own group, or from migrant groups, becoming landless in the process (Hardy and Turner 2000). According to Li (2002: 419), “the market is so strong that it can draw in or expel new populations, regions, and nations.

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At the local level, institutions are not strong enough to create collective actions to identify, halt, or manage the process of agrarian differentiation.” Just how such a land market emerged in Vietnam’s uplands is the subject of the detailed case study that follows. The Study Village The study village of Sổ (Figure 9.1), described in Chapter 8, belongs to Ba Vì commune, in Ba Vì District, in the former Hà Tây province (currently Hanoi).2 As described in Chapter 8, the Dao villagers resided at high elevations, with swidden cultivation as their main source of livelihood. With the national park established in 1991, all the land 100

park

Figure 9.1 Land-use pattern in study village

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metres and above, including household swidden land, was officially classified as forestland belonging to the park. In 2003, the village had about 500 villagers distributed in 104 households. In general, households’ access to both paddy land and forestland was limited due to the lack of paddy land and the park restriction on forestland (see Chapter 8; also Tô Xuân Phúc 2007, 2009). To earn a living, almost all households maintained their swidden land planted with cassava inside the park despite the illegality of this practice. Villagers also relied on garden land adjacent to their houses by planting it with cassava, tea, medicinal plants, fruit trees and vegetables. Although the garden land was not as important as paddy or swidden land, it was normally utilized, except for the land belonging to newly established households with a more severe land shortage. Many raised livestock to sell. By the end of 2003, income derived from cassava and livestock—accounting for 60–70 per cent of annual household income—was primarily used to buy food and other necessities. Income derived from cassava planted in the park was not stable, however, because the park increasingly restricted villagers’ access to the land. In 2003, about 80 per cent of households lacked rice for about eight to ten months of the year. Land Market in the Village The market for garden plots (see Figure 9.1) emerged in Sổ at the end of 2003, when city residents, mostly from Hanoi, came to the village and bought garden land from the villagers for recreation and speculation purposes. The market involved only garden land, as government regulations allowed only this land to be used for recreation. Within a year, two-thirds of the village households had sold off their garden land. Half the village’s garden land (33.1 hectares), most of it in good locations, had been sold to city residents. Within a year, some VND8 billion, or around US$529,000, had been channelled to the village through the land market. For a village such as Sổ, where the average annual household income was a mere US$800, gains derived from the land market were huge—an average of about US$4,000 per household. By the end of 2004, the market stalled; all the land in good locations had changed hands, and there were no more transactions. With the huge influx of cash derived from the sales, the villagers’ living conditions changed quickly and dramatically. Almost all households constructed new homes, utilizing half the money derived from the sale of their land; many bought motorcycles, colour televisions, hi-fi stereos, sofas and wardrobes—goods unaffordable for most households

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prior to the emergence of the land market. How did the market for garden land come about? The answer is the subject of the next section. Market Mechanisms Socio-economic Changes at National Level With the introduction of the economic renovation policy in 1986, Vietnam’s economy changed from a centrally planned one to a market-oriented one. The shift dramatically increased the demand on land for housing and development projects, with large areas of agricultural land being switched to non-agricultural purposes (Leaf 2002, Nguyễn and Kammeier 2002, Kerkvliet 2006). On the outskirts of Hanoi, local households started selling land to people from the city. By the end of the 1990s, many villages on the outskirts that were previously characterized by small houses, dirt roads and agricultural fields had been replaced by luxury villas equipped with modern amenities, owned by people from Hanoi.3 A land rush also emerged in Hà Tây province, bordering Hanoi. In Hà Tây, from 1995 to 2002 more than 3,500 hectares of land, mostly agricultural land, were taken by the government for development projects.4 Tourism hot spots and golf courses have mushroomed in the province since the second half of the 1990s, and land markets have boomed as a result. The land market emerged in Ba Vì District, Hà Tây province, in the mid-1990s, starting in the communes with easy access. By the end of the 1990s, large areas of the district were occupied by city residents, including high-ranking government officials. In a village near Sổ, a large area of land was sold to a tourism company. The presence of government officials and tourism in the areas near Sổ produced hope for many that the development process would embrace the village in the near future. Rumours that high-ranking officials would bring development projects to the area were widely circulated. They were reinforced by periodic visits to the area by the country’s former president, who bought a vast area of land in a village adjacent to Sổ and constructed a big villa. Rumours also spread that Hanoi would expand in the future, embracing the surrounding areas, including Sổ, and that the village would benefit greatly from the financial muscle of the capital city. Furthermore, talk of government plans to construct a good road running across the village quickly spread throughout the area. These rumours produced an expectation for many that Sổ and the surrounding areas would become a development frontier in the near future. This motivated city people to rush to Sổ to grab land. The market involved only garden land, which was household-owned, as legal

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regulations allowed transactions and construction on privately owned land but not on forestland or agricultural land.5 The presence of land buyers in the village when the market was operating substantially reinforced the market. However, the emergence of the market was partly attributed also to the poor material conditions the villagers experienced owing to the limited amount of land they owned. As the next section shows, villagers wanted to sell their garden land to gain cash in order to improve their material conditions. Local History and Geography As described in Chapter 8, Sổ village was established in 1991 as a result of the government’s programme to resettle Dao households living at an elevation of above 100 metres inside the park. To facilitate the resettlement, local authorities gave each household in principle about 1 hectare of land to be used for housing and garden production. This land was previously owned by the Ba Vì Forest Enterprise. The enterprise used the land to plant tea, eucalyptus and pine trees for production purposes; some of the land was idle. However, the households that moved to the village first (in 1991), many of whom were the village elite (Tô Xuân Phúc 2007), often acquired larger plots of land in convenient locations close to the village road, with tea planted on the land. By contrast, households that moved later (1993–94) received smaller holdings in less convenient locations, where the land was idle. In 2001, to formalize households’ access to the land, the local government granted land-use certificates (LUCs). However, not all households with land were granted LUCs, for the reason described by Sowerwine in Chapter 8. These certificates allowed households to transfer or exchange land with others, to rent it out, to mortgage it with a bank, or to pass it on to other members of the family. After receiving the garden land, households with tea plantations tried to maintain it, thus deriving a good income from it; others were not able to do so and abandoned their plantations, some after having harvested eucalyptus and planted cassava and fruit trees on the land. In general, life was not easy for most of the households, with many experiencing food shortages and poor living conditions. The emergence of the land market provided villagers a good opportunity to improve their material conditions. The land gained value quickly. One sào (360 square metres) of land planted with tea, generating about VND3 million–4 million per year, now could sell for VND20 million. Another sào of land in a less favourable area, with fruit trees, cassava

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or vegetables—which produced much less income—now could sell for VND10 million–15 million. The high market value of the land induced the villagers to voluntarily participate in the land market by selling off their garden land quickly. One villager recalled, “Prior to the land market I never dreamed of having 10 million dong. Now I have 100 million dong.” After selling the land, the villagers used the money to invest in housing and consumer goods such as motorcycles and colour televisions. Some acquired paddy land in the neighbouring village as well as cattle. New houses and consumer goods were not only for the villagers’ material comfort; they carried a symbolic meaning as well, as these assets could help satisfy the villagers’ desire to “be modern” and to be members of a society dominated by the Kinh, as the next section shows. Villagers’ Desire to “Be Modern” Ethnic minorities living in the uplands, including the Dao, constituted about 14 per cent of Vietnam’s 87 million people (Keyes 2002). Until recently, the level of economic activity in the uplands was still far lower than the activity in the Kinh-dominated lowlands (Rambo 2005). For many Kinh, including government officials, the low level of economic activity among the ethnic minorities could be explained by the backwardness of the latter, plagued as they were by superstition and resistance to change (Rambo 2005, Jamieson et al. 1998, Michaud and Turner 2000). Scholars have shown that the negative images and connotations associated with the uplands have roots in the government’s adoption of an evolutionary approach to classifying ethnic minorities, under which various ethnic groups are placed at different stages of development (Keyes 2002). The lowland Kinh, making up the majority of the country’s population, are placed at the highest stage of development and are considered “modern” and “civilized” citizens, whereas ethnic minorities are placed at lower stages, with many of them viewed as inferior and backward. The Vietnamese government has specific ideas about “modernity” and “progress”, based primarily on three main aspects: mode of production, sociopolitical organization and cultural traits. The groups that practise wet-rice agriculture are perceived to have relatively high literacy rates, and formalized social organizations such as the Kinh are considered more “modern” than the groups that practise swidden cultivation, reside in scattered and inaccessible settlements, and have less structured sociopolitical institutions. With this idea in mind, government officials believe that compelling the minorities to abandon their traditional

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production and cultural practices for those of the lowland Kinh is both natural and morally right (Rambo 2005). As a result, agricultural techniques and cultural traits of the minorities that were distinct from those of the Kinh and consequently seen as backward and primitive were abandoned and replaced in the 1960s–80s.6 However, the government’s ambition to close the economic and cultural gaps between ethnic minorities and the lowland Kinh majority has not been realized. Upland areas still lag far behind the lowlands, with the poverty rate among ethnic minorities in 2002 at 69.3 per cent, or three times higher than the average for the lowland Kinh (Asian Development Bank et al. 2003). Many ethnic minorities still experience physical, environmental, infrastructural, economic, demographic, cultural and intellectual constraints (Rambo 2005). The proportion of upland households owning permanent and semi-permanent houses, motorcycles, telephones and colour televisions is much lower than the average figure for the country. The per capita income in the uplands is only about half the national figure (GSO 2008). Despite the government’s efforts to settle them, the Dao still live at high elevations and experience many material difficulties, with more than 70 per cent of them living below the national poverty line (Asian Development Bank et al. 2003). However, the Dao in Sổ perceive themselves as distinct from other ethnic minority groups in a number of ways. They are better assimilated and aspire to showy displays of wealth, and they go into debt building houses and buying modern amenities so as to be perceived as more Kinhlike. Sowerwine (2004c: 107–8) notes the following: The Dao of Ba Vì … have been subjected to varying government policies including resettlement, education, and conscription in the army. Social relations are highly monetised such that most social transactions including labour, ritual performance, weddings and loans are based on the exchange of money … They speak fluent Vietnamese, are visually indistinguishable from the Kinh, and many identify themselves as “Kinh-Dao”—a self reference that distinguishes themselves from other Dao who are less integrated into the national culture. The society is based on principles of individualism, perhaps associated with the imposition of state assimilation policies, the influx of non-related people into the community, and level of integration into the monetised economy.

Seeing themselves as having many similarities to the lowland Kinh, villagers strongly contested their popular image constructed by the lowlands. They wanted to improve their material conditions and to be seen as members of modern society. Their desire was informed by what Henrietta

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Moore calls “fantasies of identities”, meaning “ideas about the kind of person one would like to be and the sort of person one would like to be seen to be by others” (Moore 1994: 66). The emergence of the land market in the village provided them with a good opportunity to satisfy this desire. Motorcycles, colour televisions and Kinh-style houses became most desirable for the villagers, as these commodities were prominent signs of status and identity. The use of modern construction materials and finishes imported from the lowland markets was highly appreciated in the village. Villagers judged the beauty of houses according to their number of storeys, type of roof, and shapes of doors and windows—features strongly associated with Kinh lifestyle and culture. They appreciated glass tables, faux-leather sofas and colonial-style cupboards—common household items in the lowlands. In the village, households having more of these items were considered more modern than households having less. For the villagers, the new lifestyles and aspirations existed long before the land market arrived; the land market helped fuel their aspirations and satisfy their desire for assimilation into the larger Kinh society. Nowadays, if one walks along the village road one can see only newly built houses with flat roofs, enamelled floor tiles with floral designs, colourfully painted walls, and “modern” consumer goods. These material assets and commodities strongly evoke images of “advancement” and “modernity”. This is similar to what Marry Mills (1999: 13) observes in Thailand: The meanings and practices of modernity constitute a discursive arena through which people make claims or express ideas concerning themselves and their society. The discourses on modernity permeate everyday life, emphasizing images and standards of newness, new times, and ideas concerning progress, and development.

Differentiated Agents Villagers Villagers had uneven access to the market. As the city people wanted only large plots of land in convenient areas, to set up a villa surrounded with a nice garden, households owning such land were able to sell their land and derive a good amount of money. Most of these households were headed by officials (see Chapter 8). By contrast, households having small plots in inconvenient areas were not able to sell their land to city residents. Some of them were able to sell a small portion to households that needed land

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for homes, but others were unable to do so, and consequently they were excluded from the market. In the village, there were certain households with large plots of land in good locations who did not want to sell their land though they were offered huge amounts of money by city residents.7 All of these households were wealthy and had stable sources of income. Two of the households were headed by government officials, who had a salary. In fact, they were forest contractors (see Chapter 8), and each obtained about 50 hectares of forestland from the park. Both of them served as land brokers during the emergence of the land market and derived considerable benefit from the market. Three were involved in the trading of medicinal plants and agricultural products, particularly cassava and canna.8 Because households in this group had stable income sources, they could afford good houses and consumer goods such as motorcycles and colour televisions. In general, they did not experience pressure to sell their land in order to “be modern”. The next section describes the city people who bought the land in the village. Land Buyers Most of the land buyers were government officials from Hanoi. Some of them bought land for recreational purposes, others for speculation. People in the first group believed that staying in the village could provide them with a “better quality of life”, as one land buyer said—a beautiful landscape, trees, mountain ranges, clean air, quietude and privacy, none of which could be found in the crowded, polluted city.9 They appreciated the land not for its production value, as the villagers conceived it, but for its recreational value, created by its environment and ecological components. Some buyers constructed luxury villas, often equipped with modern amenities such as swimming pools, satellite receivers, air conditioning and furniture. Some built wooden houses on stilts, imitating the style of the Thái and Tày ethnic minorities.10 To make their houses more “natural”, they grew corn and fruit trees around them. Most of the city people bought the land for speculation purposes. Until recently, they had left the land idle. One of them told me, “If the land fetches a good price, I will sell it. If not, I will leave it here. It will not run away.” They make periodic trips to the village to make sure the land is not being used by anyone else. For them, land is not a means of production but a market commodity that can help them accumulate wealth.

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Land Brokers About 70 per cent of land transactions in Sổ involved land brokers; the remaining 30 per cent took place directly between buyers and sellers. The land brokers collected information on households who wanted to sell their land, the prices they wanted for the land, and the status of the land (e.g., location, size, legal documents). They had to have this information ready to offer to potential buyers when needed. Sometimes land brokers were directly involved in negotiating prices between the seller and buyer. There were even cases where brokers quoted the buyer a price higher than what the seller was asking for, or they quoted the seller a price lower than what the buyer was willing to pay. They then grabbed the difference. More often, they worked with the buyer to determine the price and then imposed it on the seller. When the transaction succeeded, the brokers received a “service fee” from the buyer—about 5 per cent of the sale price. Usually they did not receive a fee from the villagers, and thus they sided with the city residents, sometimes even to the point of cheating the villagers. Villagers had no prior experience in the land market, but the city residents had a lot of knowledge about it. With their experience and help from land brokers, the city residents largely controlled the market. One villager articulated this well: I have no idea about it [the land market] … Ông Bi [land broker, also a forest contractor] brought a man from Hanoi to my house and said this man was interested in our land … The man told me that he would pay me 5 million per sào. I never imagined we could have 120 million from selling our 24 sào. Our annual savings hardly reached 5 million. … I then told the man that I needed to talk to my wife and would give him my answer the next day. In the evening, Ông Bi came over and told me that 5 million per sào was good enough and that it was not easy to find a buyer. Afraid of not being able to sell the land, I decided to sell the land to the man the next day.

There were five land brokers who participated in the market in Hợp Sơn. Two of them were from the village and had opted not to sell their land. Both were local government officials, who were also the more exploitative forest contractors, as described in Chapter 8 of this volume; they had good connections with people in other villages. Before they joined the land market they had been involved in the markets for timber, tea and forestland, and thus they had accumulated some knowledge and experience. As officials, they had opportunities to travel beyond the village and to broaden their connections with people who lived outside

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the village. With their knowledge, experience and connections, they were able to position themselves as land brokers in the village. As villagers normally did not have direct contacts with potential buyers living outside the village, they often asked these brokers for help with finding buyers. The remaining three land brokers were professional brokers who lived near the district centre. Their primary role was to look for potential buyers from Hanoi and then work with the brokers in the village to facilitate the transaction. Two of these three were former chairmen of their villages who had experienced the land rush in the second half of the 1990s. They had been serving as land brokers since then. The remaining broker was an official of Ba Vì National Park who received a lot of backing from his father, the chairman of the district. This broker was involved in many land transactions in the district. Having access to the district government, he also provided service to those who wanted to complete their paperwork quickly for an immediate transaction, and was therefore able to derive a lot of money from the market. One of the three actually collaborated with one broker from the village. Local Government Officials Land transactions are considered illegal if no permission is sought from the local government. Activities such as boundary demarcation, certification of the legal status of the plot, and the issuing of LUCs required for land transaction are under the jurisdiction of the local authorities at the commune and district. In a sense, the land market strengthened the role of local officials in the village and commune in administering the land, as villagers who wanted to sell their land had to seek approval from local officials. This provided local officials, particularly village and commune leaders, with the opportunity for personal gain. Some villagers believed that the cadastral official intentionally delayed the transaction process, compelling buyers and sellers to pay a bribe before he proceeded with the transaction. I was told by some buyers that they had to give the village and commune officials money as an “administrative fee” to hasten the paperwork. The land market also challenged the officials’ power to control the land. So long as buyer and seller complied with legal regulations, local authorities could not intervene in the transaction. The commune chairman, who saw risks associated with the market, said, “The land law granted villagers the right to sell the land. We know they will face a problem, but we cannot stop them from doing it.” This highlights how market forces challenged state control over land on the ground.

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Impacts of the Land Market Rural Differentiation Prior to the emergence of the land market, the villagers in Sổ were already differentiated by their access to forestland, paddy land and offfarm income opportunities (Tô Xuân Phúc 2007, Sowerwine 2004c). Access to the forestland inside the park was extremely uneven, with the local elite grabbing all the land, compelling the villagers to work for them based on patron-client relationships (Tô Xuân Phúc, 2009; see also Chapter 8 of this volume). Access to cooperative paddy land was uneven, too, with households established after the cooperative broke up in 1989 not having any. Households that engaged in trading in medicinal plants and agricultural products, and those with members working at the local government office, had stable sources of income, which afforded them good houses and consumer goods. The land market deepened the rural differentiation in the village. 11 Households with plots located in convenient areas were able to sell their land to city residents and derived a substantial amount of money from the sale. Only local officials and senior households had such land, because they were the first ones who moved to the village when the resettlement programme started in 1991. Having small plots in less convenient locations, later settlers were not able to sell their land to city residents. Some were able to sell some of their land to other households and derive a small amount of money; others were not able to do so and were entirely excluded from the market. Villagers’ new patterns of consumption also contributed greatly to the process of differentiation. My survey of 25 households in the village revealed that about 30 per cent of the total revenue derived from land sales in the village was spent on buying smaller plots of land for housing, 18 per cent on house construction, 7 per cent on motorcycles, 3 per cent on cattle, 1 per cent on TV sets, 1 per cent on paddy land, and the remainder on other uses. After selling the land, many households lived on the money from the sale; some gave up their paddy land in the former village, Hợp Nhất, saying, “The field is too far to walk to.” Some abandoned or reduced their swidden fields in the forest. Large expenditures on housing, consumer goods and food quickly consumed the money. My trip to the village in early 2007 revealed that almost all the money derived from land sales was gone. At least six households were in debt, with no idea how to repay the loans. Some households had tried to borrow from the government credit programme but failed because the bank considered them

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a bad credit risk. One household had borrowed money from moneylenders outside the village but failed to repay the loans on time. This resulted in the moneylenders confiscating motorcycles, televisions and calves from the household. Three households had had to go to other villages to work as wage labourers. Anh Hi, the head of a household in this group, told me, “Life is getting more and more difficult and expensive. Everything, such as electricity and kindergarten, is measured in cash and is increasing.” For these households, participation in the market did not help them to “be modern”. Instead, they were marginalized in the process of searching for modernity. The market fragmented, dispossessed them of the land, and threw them into the process that some scholars term a “downward spiral” (Jamieson et al. 1998, Rambo 2005). About one-fourth of the households who sold their land were able to find a good balance between spending on housing and consumer goods and spending on productive goods. Acquiring new houses and consumer goods helped improve the households’ material conditions and facilitated their search for modernity, and paddy land and cattle helped stabilize their future livelihood. The household of Chị Binh and Anh Trung is one example. Before selling 22 sào of garden land in late 2003 for VND114 million (US$7,400), the family did not have enough rice to eat. After selling their land, they spent 32 per cent of the proceeds on buying 4.5 sào of garden land with a tea plantation from another household; and they spent another 5 per cent on buying 2 sào of paddy land from a household in a nearby village. Currently, the total paddy land of the household is 4 sào, enough to produce rice for the household of six year-round. Viewing cows as a source of savings, they used 12 per cent of their income from the sale to buy four small cows. They spent 26 per cent of the income from the sale to construct a simple house. After spending around VND6 million on a Chinese motorcycle, the household still had more than VND20 million left as savings. The wife told me, “I put all the savings in the bank. I will use it for my children’s education.” Three or four households became entrepreneurial after selling their land. They used money from the sale to buy trucks and rice mills and then provided services to the villagers. The households who spent extravagantly on housing and consumer goods differed markedly from those who struck a good balance between spending and saving. Usually, the first group comprised young households. They were poor by village standards, were characterized by having small plots of land for cultivation, and had a limited labour force to draw on. They did not have the material assets other households boasted and were

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thus under immediate pressure to “be modern”. As a result, they sold off their land quickly and spent extravagantly on material assets. Households like that of Chị Binh and Anh Trung were more mature in terms of age. Usually they had the land distributed to them by the cooperative, and thus they felt less pressure for land for cultivation. Gradually, they were able to save money and thus afford some consumer goods. They were not under immediate pressure to “be modern” like the households in Anh Hi’s group. Local Conflicts The land market has produced conflicts in the village. First, it has intensified existing conflicts between villagers and park officials over the use of forestland and forest resources in Ba Vì National Park.12 Many households bought cattle and freed them in the forest. After spending all their money, some households opened new swidden fields to grow swidden crops. Many intensified their collection of medicinal plants. “They are going back to the forest [to work the land and collect non-timber forest products],” said the head of the park’s Forest Protection Department. Conflicts among household members, mainly over the use and distribution of money derived from the sale, were observed too. There were cases where consumer goods considered important by men were viewed as ostentatious by their wives—a difference that produced tensions between the two. Fights among siblings arose when money from the sale was distributed unequally. Gambling quickly followed the land market to the village, resulting in another type of conflict between husbands and wives, owing to husbands spending a lot of money. Teenagers sold their parents’ motorcycles to pawnshops and quickly spent the money, resulting in further family conflicts. For these households, the land market may have provided them with an opportunity to improve their material condition and “be modern”, but it also eroded their social relations and domestic harmony. Tension has also been observed between the city residents, as the newcomers to the village, and the villagers. The newcomers’ refusal to make cash contributions for upgrading the village road made the villagers angry with the “very rich but very mean” newcomers, to quote the words of a villager. Some behaviours and acts practised by the newcomers, such as “passing by villagers without greetings” or “looking down on villagers”, were considered irrational and unacceptable by the villagers. The latter expressed their anger in various ways, such as the burning down of a vacant house belonging to a city resident who had not yet moved

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in, by unknown villagers. My conversations with city residents revealed that they were strongly biased against villagers. They often used words carrying negative connotations, such as “dirty” (bẩn), “unhygienic” (mất vệ sinh) and “backward” (lạc hậu), when they talked about the villagers. Some said they were scared of living with villagers who were ethnic minorities. This implies that it will not be easy for city residents and villagers to live in the same village in the future. Tensions between villagers and local officials also emerged owing to the sluggish nature of transactions and the bureaucratic hurdles involved with paperwork. Afraid of losing the opportunity to sell their land, households experiencing slow transactions accused the commune land cadastral official and village leader of intentionally slowing down the process so as to make the households pay “administrative fees”. Some households that did not have land-use certificates due to their late arrival now wanted certificates to sell their land. But the paperwork needed for the issuance of the certificates took time. Quarrels were reported between officials and households who were not able to sell their land due to a lack of certificates. Quite often, village meetings became a forum for households to complain about the ineffectiveness of local officials in dealing with the paperwork needed for land transactions. Remaking the Village In a sense, the land market fuelled villagers’ demand for consumer goods, modern identities and aspirations, dramatically changing the social boundaries of the village. The villagers’ expressive and aesthetic standards have been shifting. Material assets and consumer goods such as housing, motorcycles and colour televisions are increasingly valued as symbols of modernity and social status in the village. They have also produced different sets of relationships of inclusion and exclusion among villagers. Those who were able to sell their land and afford material assets and goods feel they have become modern. New visions and aspirations have also been produced in the village. Just like the household of Chị Binh and Anh Trung described earlier, another 10–15 households in the village spent a good amount of money on their children’s education; some deposited their savings in a bank, planning to use it for their children’s education in the future. For them, the land market served as an opportunity to improve their livelihoods. By contrast, those who wanted to sell their land but were not able to do so felt marginalized. The household of Anh Thanh is a case in point. Anh Thanh

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had a plot of 2 sào. But no one asked him for the land, as it was located deep in the village. “I am not lucky,” he said. There were about a dozen households in the village in this group. Some were newly established households with small plots of land given to them by their parents; others, such as Anh Thanh’s, were not young, but they had settled in the village in the second wave (1993–94) and thus had small plots of land in disadvantaged locations. The land market produced anxieties for some villagers. The arrival of government officials from the city created a feeling among villagers that the village was integrating into modern society. Yet at the same time, villagers felt they were strangers in their own home because of the presence of the city residents. When the latter came to the village, most of them ignored the villagers. One villager complained, “They acted as if we did not exist … as if it were their village.” The appearance of some city residents’ luxury villas—with huge protective iron gates and thick concrete boundaries, in the most eye-catching locations—reinforced the villagers’ feeling that the village no longer belonged to them. In general, villagers wanted to be members of a modern society dominated by the lowland Kinh, including city residents who had bought land in their village, and to try and integrate with the newcomers. Yet the newcomers resisted the villagers’ attempts, dissociating themselves from the latter. The villagers’ aspirations to “be modern” are far from being satisfied, at least in the eyes of the newcomers. Conclusion This paper has investigated the mechanisms that constitute the land market in Sổ village. It has examined the differentiated market actors and assessed the market’s impact on the local population. The paper has shown that the land market emerged in the village due to three main reasons: increasing demand for land by the regional elite; villagers’ desire to “be modern”; and structural inequality at the regional level. Despite Vietnam’s rapid economic growth—the country is characterized as a “new tiger”, or a newly emerging economy—Sổ village, inhabited by the Dao, has lagged far behind in the development process. Combined with this are the legal regulations strictly prohibiting villagers’ access to the forest, which have produced economic difficulties for the villagers. These conditions, intertwined with the villagers’ stereotyped image of “backwardness” and “underdevelopment”, have created a sense of economic and cultural exclusion, making the villagers “the other” in modern society.

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In stark contrast, the Kinh, including government officials in the lowlands, are considered more “advanced” and “modern”. The ideas of modernity are closely associated with intensive, wet-rice-based agricultural production; commodity markets; consumer lifestyles; technology; and popular culture. These ideas about advancement and modernity are strong and permeate the everyday life of the villagers. Voluntarily participating in the market, giving up the elements viewed as backward, and replacing them with commodities are the ways villagers have used to obtain modernity. In other words, villagers’ participation in the market is rooted in an inequality of economic and cultural production in the country. The market has produced wealth and at the same time risks in the village. It has played a developmental role for some, but a fragmenting role for others. It has deepened rural differentiation in the village and produced a number of conflicts, new identities and new aspirations. In a short period of time, it has dramatically changed the social and geographical landscapes in the village. These findings suggest a critical look into the meaning of the market for different people, the distribution of income generated from the market, the risks associated with the market, and the ways markets transform social relations and local landscapes. This study also makes an important inquiry into the question of power in understanding how markets work on the ground. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Tania Murray Li, Philip Hirsch, Jonathan Rigg, Derek Hall, Thomas Sikor, Kregg Hetherington and Jennifer Sowerwine for their useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks go also to the participants of the workshop on “Montane Choices and Outcomes: Contemporary Transformations of Vietnam’s Uplands”, held in Hanoi in January 2007. Notes 1. Some writers use the term “Yao” to refer to Dao people. In this paper I use the word “Dao”, as this is used in the daily and official language of Vietnam. 2. In June 2008, the whole of Hà Tây province and parts of two other provinces were merged into Hanoi. This tripled the geographic area of the capital city. 3. Vnexpress, an online newspaper, carried a series of articles on the area’s transformation. Further details can be found at vnexpress.net.Vietnam/XaHoi/2004/02/3B9CFB08/?q=1.

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4. These projects included an urban housing project, an industrial zone, a new national university, and a cultural and tourism village under an ethnic minorities project. 5. According to the 2004 Land Law, a household that legally owns a garden plot of more than 400 square metres can use up to 400 square metres for construction (e.g., building a house). This land is officially classified as residential land. The remaining area in the garden plot is subject to agricultural production purposes (e.g., cultivation). In this paper, I use the term “garden land” to refer to both residential areas and garden land. 6. During the 1960s–80s, the government launched a massive programme on fixed agriculture and sedentarization under which thousands of upland households were forced to abandon swidden cultivation and adopt fixed agricultural cultivation. Many cultural practices associated with swidden cultivation were considered backward and consequently banned. Coupled with this programme was the government’s massive migration programme in the 1970s–80s, under which millions of “advanced” lowland Kinh who used “modern” cultivation techniques were brought to the uplands to modernize the latter. 7. One of them, for example, was offered around US$100,000. 8. Canna is a tuber crop whose starch is used to produce noodles. 9. The Human Development Report 2001 emphasizes that in Hanoi, “Air pollution levels regularly exceed two to five times [the] accepted standards. Pollutants from industries … are often two to three times higher than permitted … Both domestic and industrial solid wastes are being dumped in unprotected sites causing serious pollution …” (National Center for Social Sciences and Humanities 2001: 67). 10. Many lowland people believe that houses built on stilts, such as those of the Thái and Tày ethnic minorities, constitute the most distinctive cultural expression of the ethnic minorities in the uplands. 11. I adhere to Benjamin White’s notion of rural differentiation: an “accumulative and permanent … change in the ways in which different groups in rural society—and outside of it—gain the products of their own or other’s labor, based on their different control over production resources … and often on increasing inequalities in access to land” (1989: 15). 12. Prior to the emergence of the land market, conflicts over forestland and forest resources took place between park officials and villagers, owing to the parks’ restriction of villagers’ access to land (Tô Xuân Phúc 2007, Sowerwine 2004c).

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10

“Stretched Livelihoods”: Social and Economic Connections between the Red River Delta and the Central Highlands Alexandra Winkels

Introduction People, and indeed the places in which they live—which may be categorized along territorial, environmental and/or ethnic lines—do not exist as isolated social actors or arenas. Analyzing social and economic change in one geographic area or within one ethnic group therefore necessitates a view of the region within its wider context and linkages (Rigg 2006). Vietnam’s upland regions are linked to other regions through, among other things, economic exchange, migrant networks and regional policies. Economic trade between traders in the upland areas and lowland markets and ports is one of the most obvious connections (see Chapter 1 by Salemink in this volume). Other, subtler connections exist between upland and lowland areas as a result of migrations between these two regions. Over the past 20 years the Central Highlands region, also known as Tây Nguyên, has become a major destination for migrants from all over Vietnam. Those who leave the Red River Delta are most likely to go to the Central Highlands.1 It is not an exaggeration to say that in this relatively short period migration has fundamentally transformed the upland area. The rapid development of commercial agriculture in the uplands has been positive for land speculators, migrants and their families, as well as the regional and national economy. Yet the consequences of rapid population growth and the unsustainable use of upland soil and water resources are less positive for indigenous populations as well as old and 228

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new settlers. Despite these, mainly negative, changes in the destination areas, the rate of migration to the Central Highlands does not seem to be falling (GSO 2001). Rather, it appears that migrants adapt their behaviour to this ever-changing matrix of opportunities and risks in the Central Highlands. Interviews with migrant families in the Red River Delta indicate that one way of dealing with the rapid changes experienced in the Central Highlands is for migrants to remain actively involved in the home area. This ensures flexibility when choosing how to respond to the next opportunity or new challenges presented to them. Little is known about how these continuing connections between migrants and their home communities impact on migrant livelihoods and dynamics as well as on social and economic conditions in both the Central Highlands region and the migrant sending area. In this paper I take a closer look at why and how those migrating between the Red River Delta and the Central Highlands maintain close links to their home communities and what impacts this has on both the migrants and the environments they inhabit. The discussion in this chapter is informed by interviews with migrants in both the Red River Delta and the Central Highlands, respectively a net out-migration area and net in-migration area since 1975. During 2000, 2001 and 2004, I visited migrants and their families and talked to numerous officials in Giao Thuỷ District (Nam Định province), located in the Red River Delta.2 The net in-migration area I visited included Tân Phú District (Đồng Nai province) and Bù Đăng District (Bình Phước province); both are situated at the southern plateau of Vietnam’s Central Highlands region (Tây Nguyên). Access to these sites was facilitated through the Cát Tiên National Park authorities. The recently published 2004 Migration Survey (GSO 2005) is another important source of empirical information about micro-level impacts of internal migration in Vietnam on which I draw in this paper. In order to assess the connections of migrants to their home communities, this chapter first provides a brief overview of historical and contemporary migration patterns between the Red River Delta and the Central Highlands. The changes that occurred in the upland destination, largely as a result of mass in-migration over the past 20 years, are also important to consider as they provide migrants with a certain, and indeed continually changing, risk context to which they respond. I then use migrant experiences more directly to illustrate how and why migrants keep their connections to the home area alive over prolonged periods. Finally, and before concluding, I discuss the impacts of this so-called stretching on both migrants and the places they inhabit.

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Historical Patterns of Migration between the Red River Delta and the Central Highlands The directions of population movements in the past century have often been shaped by conflict and attempts to strategically distribute people throughout Vietnam for economic, geopolitical and security reasons (De Koninck and Déry 1997). While the Red River Delta region has been a source of migrants, the Central Highlands have become a key destination for migrants originating from the Red River Delta, the Mekong Delta and the Northern Highlands (GSO 2001, 2005). Although the Central Highlands first became an agricultural frontier during the period of the French Occupation in the early twentieth century, official resettlement programmes, instigated between the 1960s and the 1990s, had a far greater effect on the demographic structure of the upland area. During this time, state propaganda changed the portrayal of frontier areas from “Việt Minh resistance zones” to the “nation’s new economic zones” (vùng kinh tế mới) (Hardy 2000: 24), praised as a place for economic development (Tan 2000, Hardy 2003a). Resettlement programmes went hand in hand with the attempt to settle ethnic minority groups who practised shifting cultivation, catalyzing both the economic and ideological domination of lowland values over traditional values of ethnic minorities originating in the Central Highlands (Rambo and Jamieson 2003, Salemink 1997). While migration outside the state-sponsored system occurred to some degree in parallel with state-sponsored moves, the political reforms in the mid-1980s, known today as Đổi Mới (renovation), provided the necessary rights and freedoms to migrants who wanted to (legally) leave their place of origin and lease land elsewhere (Fforde and de Vylder 1996). The key structural changes meant that the collective system was dismantled, returning agriculture to family farming on the basis of long-term leases, and that the private sector was formally recognized. Most crucially for migrants, the state’s control over people’s movements was weakened as a result of both the abolition of the rationing system and the erosion of the household registration system (hộ khẩu) (Hardy 2001). Contemporary Migration Motivations While migration between the lowlands and uplands appears to be motivated primarily by economic opportunities, the individual itineraries, motivations and outcomes of migration appear to be far more complex than most traditional theories of migration allow us to contemplate. Whereas economic theories of migration (e.g., Harris and Todaro 1970,

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Stark and Levhari 1982) focus on the way households diversify their income sources in order to minimize risk exposure in one location, it has also been shown that having networks between migrants and residents in the home area decreases the costs of migration and provides a certain level of insurance against the risks of entering a new market. Social connections can thereby stimulate movement (Carrington et al. 1996, Massey 1990). Indeed the historical connections between Vietnam’s lowlands and uplands, described above, continued to drive migration in the 1990s. Using their connections to soldiers and state-sponsored migrants who had settled in the Central Highlands previously, many new migrants from all over Vietnam used their new freedom to explore possibilities for working first in state cooperatives and later on their own farms in the uplands. Direct public transport routes between the Red River Delta and the Central Highlands are testimony to the steady two-way flow between these two regions. Today we find that around a fifth of all migrants in the Central Highlands are from the Red River Delta (GSO 2005).3 Despite the apparent contradiction of a higher incidence of poverty in the Central Highlands when compared to the Red River Delta (Glewwe et al. 2004), the upland area remains an attractive destination. First and foremost, the availability of land and the development of cash crop markets are very attractive to prospective migrants (Minot and Baulch 2002). A comparison of the average landholding per person in origin and destination makes obvious the vast differences in opportunity that exist between the two locations. The average size of leasehold in the Red River Delta is 700 square metres per person compared to 1–2 hectares in the Central Highlands (Van de Walle 1998). Further, the government efforts to settle the uplands, a good road network (a legacy of the Second Indochina War) and increasing numbers of migrant settlers provide wage labour opportunities for those seeking to work in both construction and on-farm and off-farm production. Increased land sizes per leaseholder and sparse population densities increase the need to hire farm labourers for weeding, sowing and harvesting activities. Comparing the income received in the Red River Delta with that received in the Central Highlands, migrant labourers interviewed for this study stated that they were able to earn about twice as much in the uplands. Migration from the Red River Delta also has a long tradition. Sojourning to work in places where additional labour or a particular skill was needed has been common since the early twentieth century (Hardy 2003a). Migrants are attracted by labour opportunities in nearby Hanoi and the southern regions of Vietnam. Most of this migration is seasonal

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and is stimulated by a growing labour surplus as a result of high birth rates in the past 20 years, a low land-to-population ratio, and the lack of off-farm employment. Interviews with migrants indicate that they have very different capabilities at the time of their move: most use migration to cope with poverty, while others use it to expand their assets (Winkels 2004). Migrants to the Central Highlands, on average, tend to be older and more likely to be married than migrants to other destinations, reflecting the desire for a more stable and secure location than is usually found in urban centres (GSO 2005). Migration as a Driver for Change in the Central Highlands In the early stages of upland settlement, migrants, encouraged by government-supported resettlement schemes, cleared plots of forested land to establish farms. By the early 1990s, the highlands witnessed the “second generation problem of land settlement”—described by Shrestha et al. (1993) with reference to Nepal—as more and more migrants intent on joining the commercial agriculture boom in Vietnam’s Central Highlands region competed for precious land resources. The decreasing availability of good-quality agricultural land resulted in new migrants becoming more reliant on financial capital and network contacts than mere labour power to establish new plantations (Đặng Thanh Hà et al. 2001). Migrants reported an increased need for loans, as the development of land markets in the Central Highlands in the late 1990s required new farmers to pay up to a year’s salary for 1 hectare of highland land. Interviews with migrants show that loans provided by family members back home have become crucial for contemporary migration. Many migrants also benefited from relationships with extended kin and “hometown” friends at the destination, as the latter facilitated access to land: plots of land were subdivided by those who had arrived earlier and either passed on to siblings and close kin or sold to other new arrivals. After 1993, the granting of usufruct rights to land provided an incentive for migrants to claim titles to land previously obtained through either clearance or illegal speculation.4 Yet administrative delays frequently hampered this process, creating inequalities and insecurity among migrant farmers who could not use their land as collateral until it had been officially titled. The reasons for this heterogeneity in issuance of land-use certificates are discussed by Đỗ Quý Toàn and Iyer (2003). As a result of the rising number of new small farms (less than 2 hectares on average), Vietnam’s agricultural sector experienced an average

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annual production yield growth of 4.5 per cent. Coffee and other commercially farmed perennial crops (rubber, tea, cashew nuts) and annual crops (sugar cane, groundnuts) also experienced annual production growth rates of up to 10 per cent between 1990 and 1999. Upland resources were already heavily mined by state-owned forest and mining enterprises and, to a lesser extent, by agricultural cooperatives;5 and the sharp rise in coffee bean production in the early 1990s, fuelled largely by migrants farming coffee in the Central Highlands, had far-reaching consequences both locally and globally (Eakin et al. 2008, Giovannucci et al. 2004). For example, the rapid increase in production of coffee as a cash crop in a largely unregulated market is said to have contributed to the collapse of world market prices for coffee in 2000. This had a detrimental impact on small growers—most of them migrants—who could not recover their investments made over the three to five years prior to harvesting their crops (Winkels 2008). At the national level, the rising number of cash crop plantations means that the Central Highlands region has seen a steady decline in forest resources over the past 50 years, and many argue that upland soils are currently being exploited beyond sustainable levels (Pettenella 2001, Rambo and Jamieson 2003).6 At the local level, the growing number of migrants originating from all over Vietnam, including ethnic minorities from the northern uplands, has contributed to a deepening of the economic and cultural marginalization of the Central Highlands’ indigenous ethnic minority population. As a result of competition for resources and cultural differences, indigenous ethnic minorities have moved into more marginal areas, which are characterized by increased risks due to climatic variations and poorer soils (Jamieson et al. 1998). A. Terry Rambo and Neil Jamieson (2003) discuss in detail the factors that led to the marginalization of Vietnam’s ethnic minorities.7 Demonstrations in the Central Highlands held by ethnic minority groups since 2001 have been linked to the disempowerment of ethnic minorities, especially with regard to both resource allocation and religious freedom (Human Rights Watch 2002, McElwee 2001). Mass migration to the uplands is, by and large, responsible for many of the impacts and changes to upland ecosystems and culture outlined above. Yet, migrants in turn are also affected by the outcomes of these impacts. For example, social tensions arise not only between indigenous inhabitants and new settlers. When compared to most long-standing communities in Vietnam’s lowlands, newly formed migrant settlements in the uplands are much more likely to experience a lack of community cohesion and increased levels of social conflict. Community solidarity in

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the Red River Delta is strengthened through ethnic homogeneity, a history of both formal and informal cooperative management of resources (e.g., community dyke maintenance and labour exchange), and affiliations to mass organizations and religious groups. The relatively short history of frontier settlement in the Central Highlands, cultural heterogeneity among settlers and inhabitants, and large administrative areas mean that institutions such as mass organizations, parishes, as well as schools and health centres are available only in central areas of formally established communes and districts (Huỳnh Thị Xuân 1998). Migration to the highlands thus means that migrants leave the tightly structured and socially well-integrated environment of the Red River Delta and enter into a less-defined social context made up of inhabitants and settlers with different ethnic, cultural and economic backgrounds. This lack of social cohesion became evident when I visited three fairly recently established settler communities in Cát Tiên National Park’s buffer zone. I was struck by the difference between Đăng Hà commune, which still felt very dynamic—if not restless—compared to Nam Cát Tiên and Đắc Lua communes, which both had a much more settled atmosphere. Upon investigation I found that the 12 communes located in the park’s buffer zone were at different stages of their institutional development (see Table 10.1). My first impression proved to be right, as Đăng Hà commune received official recognition only in 1994 and still experiences high rates of illegal immigration (CTNP 2000b). This upland commune stood out from other communes I visited in that it had a much larger number of public and private building projects under way. Roads were under construction, houses were built mainly with wood (rather than concrete, as was commonly found in other communes in the area), and many home gardens spoke of neglect rather than care. Indeed, our host in Đăng Hà commune mentioned that he had started to build his permanent house as soon as the commune received its official status; until then, he had lived in a house made of wood. This is indicative of the insecurity migrants feel when arriving in a place without administrative boundaries, both physical and legal. The constant threat of eviction has as its corollary the insecurity of land rights and economic instability. It has also been shown that a lack of legal security makes it less likely that farmers will make the necessary investments to sustain natural resources in the long term (Ribot and Peluso 2003). Many migrants we talked to perceived a lack of social contact, and even felt socially excluded, as a result of not having a shared identity with

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Table 10.1 Settlement histories and formal recognition of various communes situated in and around CTNP Commune

Year local settlement was first recognized

Ta Lai Phước Cát1 Quảng Ngãi Nam Cát Tiên* Đắc Lua* Đồng Nai Phước Cát2 Gia Viễn Nam Ninh Mỹ Lâm Tứ Nghĩa Đăng Hà*

1976 1982 1982 1983 1983 1984 1985 1985 1985 1986 1988 1988

Year commune was officially recognized 1995 1986 1982 1988 1988 1984 1986 1985 1987 1987 1994 1994

Note: * Commune visited. Source: CTNP (2000a, 2001).

their fellow migrants. This is mainly because migrants preferentially relate to those originating from the same district or province. A migrant who had worked in Đắc Lắc province since 2000 aptly described how the lack of a common background, and slow institutional development—in this case the building of a church—prevented people from socializing: In the South, I didn’t relate to others much because of work and because people came from everywhere. I know some households from Giao Thuỷ who migrated there to earn money. For example, I know Thinh’s son—he was my neighbour [in Giao Thuỷ] before. But I don’t know many other people, because I only concentrate on my work. If I meet someone I only say hello to them; I don’t introduce myself to them … Others who are religious don’t go to church because they are busy on their farms and they live away from the church. In the north, we often go to church on Sunday. This parish has just been established. The church was built four or five years ago. There are many Catholics in this commune, but they concentrate on their work so they don’t go to church.8

Most migrants hope to benefit economically from their migration, yet, as migration alters conditions in the uplands, the context for migration also changes. Rapid in-migration has meant, for example, that new migrants increasingly face difficulties with regard to housing, access to land and

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declining agricultural productivity (GSO 2005); and, as the example above shows, there are also problems related to the lack of social cohesion in new settler communities. All in all, large-scale and rapid migration into an environmentally and socio-economically precarious environment such as the Central Highlands has resulted in social, economic and environmental changes at the destination that make the outcome of any migration enterprise unpredictable. Migrants therefore have to find different ways to cope with changing circumstances at their chosen destination. Responding to Change: Stretching as a Means to Be Flexible Faced with a continually changing risk context in the Central Highlands, migrants tend to adapt their behaviour in different ways. For some, fluctuations in coffee markets are dealt with by borrowing more money while waiting for the prices of coffee beans to go up again. Others take loans from private (and more expensive) lenders to plant other cash crops (Lindskog et al. 2005, Winkels 2004). Those with connections to urban areas may also move on to work in the burgeoning service and construction sectors located only a bus ride away from many industrial growth centres in the Southeast region and Hồ Chí Minh City.9 Other migrants may cope with limited funds, decreasing availability of goodquality land and social tensions by returning home to seek different economic opportunities. What many of these responses tend to have in common is that they often involve support from other family members and friends in the migrant-sending area. Migration to the Central Highlands is widely considered to be of a permanent nature, although the Vietnam Migration Survey 2004 found that around a third of migrants in the Central Highlands were permanent residents and more than 60 per cent had temporary papers (GSO 2005). The chairman of the Migration Division of the Agricultural Department also observed a gradual shift from permanent to temporary migration. He attributed this trend to the cessation of resettlement programmes in the 1990s, which required migrants to leave their home area permanently. 10 However, qualitative data from Giao Thuỷ suggest that migrants deliberately choose to be absent for long periods without ever changing their registration. Migrants tend to have less income and savings and are more likely to lack access to credit than their non-migrant counterparts, making them more vulnerable to unforeseen shocks and events (GSO 2005, Winkels 2004). Thus, staying registered in the home area is one way in which migrants adjust to these uncertainties. The fact that there are such a

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large number of migrants who stay in the Central Highlands for extended periods, often five years or longer, without changing their household registration means that they are still connected to their home areas. What has been termed “stretching” by Fiona Samuels (2001) allows households to increase their area of land and/or diversify agricultural activities over space while at the same time more effectively increasing their response mechanisms to the possibility of market fluctuations or natural disasters in either place. As we will see in the following examples, stretching involves not only an expansion of land assets but also the division and allocation of labour and childcare responsibilities between migrant origin and destination. An overriding theme among the migrants interviewed was the insecurity they felt as a result of fluctuating cash crop prices. Many were determined to move to the uplands permanently but felt that giving up their house and land in the Red River Delta would be too risky. One of the migrants we met was Thi,11 who together with her family had effectively stretched her livelihood between her home community in Giao Thuỷ District (Red River Delta) and the family farm in Đắc Lắc province (Central Highlands) for more than eight years. Tăng’s migration experience is also typical. In 1989, when Tăng had saved enough money, he invested in a coffee plantation. His wife and children stayed home in Giao Thuỷ, farming their allocated rice fields. The income from the rice fields was used as a buffer in the early years of coffee farming, but later Tăng managed to give his family several million Vietnamese dong when he visited them in Giao Thuỷ twice a year, often paying back loans his wife had taken in his absence. The family had a strong wish to live together in Đắc Lắc province, but concerns over livelihood security prevented them from giving up their rice fields in the north. At the time of our first meeting, in early 2001, Tăng had intended to move his entire family to Đắc Lắc province the previous year. The declining coffee prices and heavy rains, however, meant that he had made a loss on his investments (paying for labourers, water and fertilizer) in his coffee farm in 1999, thus delaying the family reunion further. Nearly four years later, in December 2004, on a follow-up visit we found Tăng’s wife and children still living and farming their land in the north. 12 Migrant networks, especially the ties between migrants and their family, are crucial for migrants to be able to “stretch” their livelihoods. Labour migrants require very little capital investment compared to those migrants who extend their household assets over two households and farms. Coffee plantations require high financial and labour investments

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for prolonged periods, and without the support of other family members, migrants would often not be able to engage in upland farming at all. Interviews with migrant families and migrants show that for many years the net flow of investment occurred towards the migrant, where the nonmigrating household members pooled resources to support the farming of cash crops in the Central Highlands. Those household members who remained in the origin—the spouse, the father or a sibling—often joined the migrant during times of high labour requirements (usually during periods of soil preparation and harvesting). Parents and spouses of migrants take out loans using their land and house in the Red River Delta as collateral in the hope that successful highland farming will benefit all members of the household both directly and indirectly. With the usual exceptions, remittances sent by migrants in the Central Highlands back to their families tend not to be very substantial when compared to remittance behaviour in other, especially urban, destinations (GSO 2005). Chiêu and his two sons, for example, have been pooling resources to invest in their upland farm since 1995. Chiêu spent some time looking after the rice fields at home, while his sons migrated. Only four years after leaving were the sons able to remit money to their father. Similar to other migrants, their decision on whether to permanently relocate is almost literally “pegged” to the price of pepper, their chosen cash crop. Chiêu, who was residing in Giao Thuỷ District when he was interviewed, described the situation thus: Our work isn’t good, because our pepper plants didn’t survive initially and now the price of pepper is low. If this situation continues, we [my sons] will come back here [Giao Thuỷ District]. Registrations [hộ khẩu] of our sons are still here. If the situation improves I’ll move my sons’ registrations to the south and I will stay here, because I am old and I don’t want to leave my neighbours. If I move there [Central Highlands], I can’t do anything to help them. … Three years ago, I had to send money to the south for my son so that he could invest in his farm. In the last two years I haven’t needed to send any money; instead, he has sent money to me.13

These linkages to home areas are vital both for success in making a living in the Central Highlands and as a safety net if the migrant suffers unforeseen hardship. Although migrants are allowed to move around freely, access to public services is still coupled with household registration in the place of primary residence (Hardy 2001). Smallholder farming involves a lot of investment, and one of the biggest problems faced by

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migrants is their inability to access loans and other welfare services provided through official channels at the destination. Inaccessibility and a loss of confidence in the banking sector due to the collapse of the rural banking system in the early 1990s have led many Vietnamese to rely on informal and private transfer networks (Vũ Tuấn Anh 2000). Indeed, the Vietnam Migration Survey 2004 found that throughout the Central Highlands about half of all migrants had a loan, primarily from private lenders. By comparison, non-migrant households in the Central Highlands were much more likely to have loans from credit institutions, reflecting the fact that they had the permanent household registration required to obtain loans (GSO 2005). For those who continue to try to gain access to financial support in the destination, their efforts are further hampered because access to most formal credit also requires registered land as collateral. As previously mentioned, the land registration process has been uneven throughout Vietnam, leaving remote and institutionally immature settlements such as Đăng Hà commune behind. Those who have not received their land-use certificates (Red Books) are therefore disadvantaged. Although migrants often have contacts in the destination, they are not always able to borrow from them. Many migrants therefore manage their financial requirements in the destination through their connections to family and friends at home. A migrant in Đắc Lắc province, who previously worked as a fisherman in Giao Thuỷ District, describes how he had to rely on his extensive network ties to his origin community to access loans: In Đắc Lắc my friend and the woman who recommended me [to go there] didn’t help me financially. I didn’t borrow any money in the South, I am not acquainted with anyone, and most of them are Tay people [an ethnic minority]. Instead, after I worked as a carpenter, I came back home to borrow money in order to buy land. I borrowed from several people in my home commune. Because they didn’t have much money, I borrowed some money from each person. My parents weren’t able to help. At the time, we had difficulties. They helped me in spirit.14

Stretching can also include the separation of members of a nuclear family for prolonged periods. Labour requirements on coffee farms often require both husband and wife to migrate together to the uplands. Many interviewees told us that they had to leave school-age children with their grandparents. Hong, for example explained that when his wife came back to his farm in Đắc Lắc province after having spent a period of time at home in Giao Thuỷ District, she brought one child along with her but left the other child with Hong’s parents. These are the reasons he gave:

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“My children need to go to school, and my house in Đắc Lắc is far from the school, and the education isn’t as good as in the North.”15 This was confirmed in the recent Migration Survey findings: about a quarter of the migrants surveyed in the Central Highlands had children who were not attending school. Poverty, distance and labour requirements were mentioned as major obstacles. Hence, many migrants leave their children at home to be looked after by grandparents or other relatives (GSO 2005). Elderly parents of migrants, however, frequently expressed ambivalence with respect to their children’s departure. Many parents supported their children in their migration decision and, as we saw above, often continued to provide financial support. But they still would have liked to see them return to their hometown, especially when the parents became elderly and needed support, as was the case with Kham, who had five children, all migrants: “I told them to come back here, but they don’t want to. I told them many times when I visited them. They still want to work there. Their registration and their field are still here [Giao Thuỷ District]. If the price of coffee doesn’t increase, they may come back here.”16 While it provides a safety net for the migrant if he or she decides to return, leaving land to remaining household members can also be beneficial for those who stay behind as it may increase household income from paddy farming. However, it can become a burden for those who have not got enough labour power to plough the additional paddy, or enough income from other activities to hire labourers for the additional land. Household relations, therefore, provide an important mechanism for security by redistributing resources. Yet certain activities can put unequal burdens on some members and thus limit their own ability to respond to new opportunities. Conclusion This chapter shows that migrants from the Red River Delta seize opportunities in the uplands in the form of available labour and land to farm cash crops. However, the rapid settlement of the Central Highlands region over the past two decades has resulted in many economic and demographic changes. These changes mean that opportunities and risks associated with making a living in the uplands are closely linked and that migration outcomes have become less predictable. Migrants react by adapting their migration behaviour. Thus, many migrants originating in

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the Red River Delta negotiate the household registration system to their advantage and “stretch” their livelihoods by investing resources in both origin and destination. The process of “stretching” is facilitated by the networks of migrants with members of their family and friends who still live in the home area. The continuing connections between migrants and the home community have several implications for migrant livelihoods and migration dynamics. As networks enable migrants to have continued access to resources in their community of origin such as land, loans and labour, migrants are able to “hedge their bets” while deciding whether to settle permanently in the Central Highlands, return home or move on to urban areas. For example, many migrants are able to farm coffee because they can access loans through their network contacts in the origin area. This increases the pool of resources with which migrant coffee farmers can mitigate the changes and shocks they experience in the destination. The fact that migrants move to the Central Highlands despite the continuing changes and risks discussed in this paper contradicts Stark and Levhari’s (1982) influential theory that migrant households who seek to both minimize risks and increase income tend to migrate from low-return, high-variability source areas to higher-return, lower-variability destination areas. Thus, while it is acknowledged that migration as a livelihood activity carries risks, this uncertainty is supposed to be uncorrelated to those risks faced in the sending area. However, the perceptions of risk, and their differential between origin and destination, are influenced by the connections between migrants and their families at home who function as insurance. This chapter showed that migrants from the Red River Delta continue to migrate to the Central Highlands despite a climate of decreasing opportunities and increasing risks, because their perception of the risks of both migration and cash crop farming is influenced by their knowledge that they are able to draw on their connections to those living in the lowlands in order to mitigate, or cope with, the risks encountered in the uplands. It could be argued that as a result of decades of in-migration from the delta regions, and the tendency of many of those now living in the Central Highlands to remain socio-economically connected to their lowland areas of origin, the uplands have become an extension of the lowlands. This paper thus highlights that in order to understand the role of migration in the ongoing transformation of Vietnam’s highlands we have to consider upland development and socio-economic change in the context of the regions from which migrants originate.

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Acknowledgements This research was carried out in collaboration with the Center for Environment Research, Education and Development in Hanoi and was made possible through a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and a small grant from the British Academy’s Committee for Southeast Asian Studies. I wish to thank Jennifer Sowerwine, Đặn Thuý Nga and Dương Bích Hạnh for their insightful comments. Notes 1. The term “Central Highlands” denotes both an administrative unit and a geographic region. The past two decades have seen several administrative boundary changes. Today the region officially includes Gia Lai, Kon Tum, Đắc Lắc and Đắc Nông provinces. The former Central Highlands province of Lâm Đồng and bordering areas that display similar agro-ecological characteristics located in Bình Phước and Đồng Nai provinces are together considered to be part of the geographic region known as Tây Nguyên (Nguyễn Trần Cầu 1995). 2. Research assistance was provided by Lương Quang Huy, Ngô Cẩm Thanh, Đặng Thuý Nga and Mai Thị Trinh. 3. Census data shows that between 1994 and 1999 about 6.5 per cent of Vietnam’s population over the age of five changed their place of residence. It has been estimated that more than 250,000 migrants moved into the Central Highlands during this period alone. However, these figures of permanent migration are likely to underestimate the true extent of population movement within Vietnam, as the census data does not allow analysts to identify temporary, circular and returning moves (Djamba et al. 1999; GSO 2001, 2005). 4. Resolution 10, passed in 1988, granted rights to individuals to lease land and is a keystone in Vietnam’s land reform. In 1993, this law was extended by granting five additional rights: the right to transfer, exchange, inherit, rent and mortgage land. Land-use certificates, or “Red Books”, were allocated through the commune-level People’s Committee. 5. State farms and state forest enterprises together claimed 86 per cent of all land in Đắc Lắc province between 1970 and the 1980s (Đặng Nghiêm Vạn 1989). 6. Between 1943 and 1995 the area covered by forest declined from 93 per cent to 57 per cent (Võ Trí Chung et al. 1998), while the area planted with coffee trees grew by 15 per cent per year after 1990 to a total of nearly 400,000 hectares in 1999 (ICARD and Oxfam 2002, Giovannucci et al. 2004). 7. In 1943, 95 per cent of the population in the Central Highlands belonged to indigenous ethnic minority groups (Rambo and Jamieson 2003). Today, Kinh represent 2.7 million out of the 4.1 million total population in all four Central Highlands provinces (GSO 2001). 8. Interview, Giao Thuỷ District, Feb. 2001.

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9. “Stage” migration from one destination to another has not been sufficiently investigated in the case of Vietnam (Douglass et al. 2002). Many migrants we spoke to in Cát Tiên National Park did mention that they had bought their house and/or land from another migrant who left for the city. 10. Interview, Chairman of the Migration Division of the Agricultural Department, Hanoi, Mar. 2001. 11. Throughout this chapter I use first names only, in order to protect the interviewees’ identities. 12. Interviews, Giao Thuỷ District, Jan. 2001, Dec. 2004. 13. Interview, Giao Thuỷ District, Feb. 2001. 14. Interview, Giao Thuỷ District, Feb. 2001. 15. Interview, Giao Thuỷ District, Feb. 2001. 16. Interview, Giao Thuỷ District, Feb. 2001.

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11

Changing Labour Relations in a Hmong Village in Sa Pa, Northwestern Vietnam

Dương Bích Hạnh1

Introduction Since the beginning of the 1990s, the Hmong2 in Lao Chải village, located in Sa Pa District, in Vietnam’s northwestern province of Lào Cai, have seen great shifts in their traditional economic systems. New forms of family, gender and labour relations that are not traditionally Hmong have also emerged. Many of these changes can be attributed to an intensifying process of contact and integration of the village within Vietnamese society at large, brought about primarily by rapid tourism development in the area. In this chapter I will document and discuss these shifts in traditional economic and labour relations, thus shedding light on the current debate on recent changes in Vietnam’s uplands. The chapter uses information collected using anthropological research, mainly through in-depth interviews and participant observation, in both Sa Pa town and Lao Chải village. I went to Sa Pa for preliminary field research in 1999 and spent most of the two years between October 2000 and August 2002 in the area, primarily in Sa Pa town, with daily visits and a few short stays in Lao Chải village. Since then I have returned to Sa Pa many times, most recently in August 2009. Sa Pa and the Hmong Development of Sa Pa Sa Pa, located more than 350 kilometres from Hanoi, was a charming summer resort in the 1920s and 1930s. Archival documents and stories 244

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of elderly Sa Pa residents recall a European-style mountain town with more than 200 villas, housing officials of colonial society and their family members during the hot summer months.3 As Sa Pa transformed into a colonial resort, the indigenous residents of the area, primarily Hmong and Dao, stayed rather removed from the scene in town, living their traditional life of working the lowland and upland fields, and making indigo and hemp. Most former French villas were set on fire by the Việt Minh in 1947 to prevent the return of French troops at the start of the First Indochina War. For decades after this, Sa Pa was forgotten by most outsiders and experienced no significant development, except waves of immigrants, primarily in the 1960s, under the New Economic Zone programme sponsored by the government. The labour immigrants, most of whom were Kinh, set up vegetable farms and built temporary houses, and concentrated in the central part of town, leaving the vast surrounding areas to the ethnic minorities. The early 1990s marked a significant turning point in Sa Pa’s history. With the coming (back) to Sa Pa of foreign tourists then, and Vietnamese tourists a few years later, the influx of ethnic minorities from surrounding villages, interventions by district authorities, the setting up of travel agencies, and the establishment of new hotels, bars and restaurants by Kinh residents, Sa Pa has become a town full of new sorts of interaction, a bustling “contact zone” (Pratt 1992). The development of tourism in Sa Pa has brought to the town an ever-increasing number of Hmong girls and women from Lao Chải (and a smaller number of Hmong and some Dao from other villages surrounding Sa Pa) to engage in activities unknown in traditional village life. In the beginning, Hmong and Dao girls and women engaged in selling handicraft pieces, ranging from old garments pulled from dark and dusty attic rooms to more recent innovations with Hmong/Dao embroidery patterns—such as hats, blankets, shirts, pillow covers and bags. The handicraft business in town attracted not only local Hmong and Dao, but also Hmong from other districts of Lào Cai province and even other provinces in the Northern Mountain Region. Besides buying and selling handicrafts, many girls found work as tour guides, either on a freelance basis or in formal employment with travel agencies or hotels in town. The girls’ and women’s participation in these activities has brought about significant changes in gender, family and labour relations in Sa Pa. Although there are women and girls from both Hmong and Dao groups in Sa Pa, this chapter focuses on the Hmong sellers and tour

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guides, especially the Hmong girls, whose ages range from the early to late teens. It shows how their participation in tourism-related activities has begun to establish different types of labour relations not only within, but also beyond, Hmong society, which was traditionally segregated not by any type of labour division but by gender and, to a lesser extent, age. The following sections provide an introduction to and the dominant discourse about the Hmong in Vietnam. By paying special attention to traditional and current divisions of labour, this chapter aims to shed light on recent socio-economic and cultural changes among the Hmong in Sa Pa. Traditional Hmong Division of Labour and Labour Relations Traditionally, Hmong labour is divided primarily by gender and, to a lesser extent, by age. Household or domestic tasks are usually the responsibility of women. Both sexes participate in fieldwork, although certain activities—such as ploughing and clearing forests—are done only by men (Cooper 1984: 116). As they grow up, all girls learn to do and later take responsibility for household tasks such as cooking, collecting water and feeding pigs, and fieldwork such as clearing fields, transplanting seedlings and harvesting crops. The gender division of labour extends to other fields of work such as handicrafts, where women make cloth, sew and embroider clothing, while men make baskets and work silver for jewellery and iron for tools (Symonds 2004: xxvii–viii). In general, the same situation existed among the Hmong in Lao Chải village. In discussions of labour relations among the Hmong elsewhere, primarily in Thailand, where most of the work on the Hmong has been conducted (Geddes 1976, Cooper 1984, Michaud 1997), there is a consensus that wage labour is rather uncommon in Hmong society. At the time William Geddes did his fieldwork in Meto village in 1964–65, paid labour, irrigated rice and large-scale cash crops other than opium were unknown to the Hmong in Thailand. Robert Cooper identified five basic forms of work organization: cooperation, direct paid labour, indirect paid labour, commercial labour and labour exchange. However, he acknowledged that direct paid labour existed only in the opium economy (Cooper 1984: 100–26). Jean Michaud agreed that the exchange of labour in return for produce had never been customary and wrote that its presence “displays the inauguration of inegalitarian relationship based on a disparity of property as the means of production” (1997: 223–4).

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The Hmong Economy in Lao Chải Village The Hmong, who came to the northern part of Indochina from China’s rugged mountainous regions of Guizhou and the neighbouring provinces of Hunan, Guangxi, Yunnan and Sichuan over the last 200–300 years, form one of the 54 recognized ethnic groups in Vietnam.4 In 1999 the number of Hmong in Vietnam was estimated to be almost 800,000 (roughly 1 per cent of the country’s population) (Khổng Diễn 2002b), making this the eighth-largest ethnic group in the country. The Hmong in Vietnam live mainly in the north and northwestern mountainous areas, although recently many have also migrated to settle in the Central Highlands. The Hmong are one of seven ethnic groups in Sa Pa District, with their population accounting for more than 53 per cent of the district population (Sa Pa District People’s Committee 2008). In Sa Pa, the Hmong live in villages surrounding the district town, while the Kinh live in town, and other ethnic groups such as the Dao, Tày, Giáy and Xa Phó live a bit farther away. The Hmong also cohabit with other ethnic groups in some villages, such as with the Dao in Tả Phìn or with the Giáy in Tả Van. The Hmong of Lao Chải, who make up the majority of the Hmong working in Sa Pa town, are called Black Hmong by outsiders due to the dark indigo colour of their clothes. They consider themselves to be Hmong Lees (Green Hmong).5 Villagers told me that the Hmong had settled in this land six or seven generations ago, and that the first generation had had the best life because the land was good and the people were few. Unlike other Hmong groups within Vietnam’s territory who practise shifting cultivation on upland fields, the Hmong of Lao Chải grow wet rice on terraced fields constructed over many generations, as well as other crops such as corn, cassava and beans on upland fields. The wet-rice terraces have given the Hmong in Lao Chải a more stable residency, while the majority of Hmong in Vietnam are considered rather unstable, having a high rate of migration and depending for their livelihoods on swidden cultivation (Nguyễn Văn Thắng 1995, Vương Duy Quang 2004).6 In the middle of 2002, Lao Chải had approximately 2,500 residents living in 393 households. Rapid population growth had made land a critical issue, with little land available for terraced field construction. Technical interventions were adopted, such as the use of fertilizers and new breeds of rice (often referred to as Cob tsib—Vietnamese—rice), which became more readily available when trade with China was resumed after the border war of 1979. Although life in the village has improved significantly in recent years, 45 per cent of villagers still live below the poverty line and are vulnerable to food shortages for three to six months every year.

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The situation in Lao Chải is not nearly as difficult as that in many other corners of the country.7 Nevertheless, Lao Chải does resemble other upland villages that lie scattered about the northern mountainous regions of Vietnam in many ways. Despite the common belief, northern upland villages and towns have always been linked to the lowlands, primarily through a network of traders and immigrants (Hardy 2003b, Salemink and Winkels this volume). In the case of Lao Chải, villagers have always maintained connections with the outside world, due to their need for salt, metals and matches and for their supply of opium. The linkages between the Hmong and the outside world intensified with the recruitment of the former by both the French and the Việt Minh during the First Indochina War (1947–54), causing them to fight in wars beyond their interest and understanding. Later, inclusion of the Hmong into the socialist system of collectivization in the late 1950s, despite its failure, made the Hmong in Vietnam in general and the Hmong in Lao Chải in particular an integral part of the Vietnamese nation. The more recent opening up of the country to the market economy has made linkages between the Hmong villages of Lao Chải and the outside world stronger than ever. As well as agriculture (primarily rice and corn) and some opium production (banned in the early 1990s), the Hmong in Lao Chải also took part in other income-generating activities, many of which involved intensive interaction with outsiders, such as panning for gold in Mường Hoa River or logging in the forests surrounding the village. In the last decade, villagers of Lao Chải have begun to participate in the cardamom business, bringing them into contact not only with the traders who come to collect the goods, but also with the Chinese market, where the cardamom is eventually sold. However, since the early 1990s the situation in Lao Chải has changed even more dramatically with the development of tourism in Sa Pa, 6.4 kilometres up the road. The new forms of connectedness between the once-remote village and the onceforgotten town have undoubtedly created major changes within the Hmong community in Lao Chải. The changes that have occurred in the realm of labour relations will be the focus of the rest of this chapter. Changes in Labour Relations The Shift towards a Cash Economy For many years after the Hmong girls and women from Lao Chải arrived in Sa Pa town, the cash-generating activities of tour guiding by the Hmong girls and selling by the Hmong women (and to some extent

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girls) remained supplementary to agricultural and household work. This is clear from the fact that the number of women and girls present on Sa Pa’s streets during specific months corresponded less to tourist numbers in town than to the Hmong agricultural calendar. In general, more people came to town during idle times, when rice had been transplanted or a crop had been harvested. In April Sa Pa began to get more crowded with local Hmong, with the peak around July-August. Before the Lunar New Year (which often falls between mid-January and mid-February), the town again got very busy. After the New Year, however, many old women and young girls stayed in the village to celebrate subsequent festivals and to start working in the fields. During idle times, the schedule of the girls and old Hmong women in town throughout the week very much corresponded to the visiting cycle of tourists, the majority of whom arrived in Sa Pa around the middle of the week. Around Thursday, the town as well as the guest houses where Hmong girls and women stayed began to get busy, reaching a peak on Saturday, when a wave of tourists flowed into Sa Pa in search of the mythical “love market”8 and Dao from surrounding villages came to town to sell their produce, buy industrial products, and meet friends and relatives. On Sunday, Hmong from the villages came to Sa Pa town for market day, but at the same time many Hmong sellers went home, since most of the tourists had left for Bắc Hà, a district on the other side of Lào Cai town, to visit another market frequented by the Bắc Hà Hmong, whose colourful clothing gave the market the reputation of being “more authentic” than the Sa Pa market. On Monday and Tuesday the town became relatively deserted, but it regained its lively spirit around the middle of the week. The correspondence between the numbers of tourists and the numbers of Hmong girls and old women in town can be explained simply by the fact that more tourists in town meant a seller’s chances of making a sale were better. Early in the week, when the streets were empty, there was no reason to hang around in town while plenty of tasks still needed to be carried out at home in the village. In the years between the early 1990s and 2001–2, the number of Hmong women and girls in town during idle and busy agricultural times reflected the (un)importance of the new work in town. At that time, nobody considered the income earned by Hmong women and girls from handicraft sales and guide work to be significant. People attributed the recent increase in wealth of some village families to the number of cardamom bushes they owned deep in the heart of the forest. Hmong families interviewed in Lao Chải used the new income from tourism work

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only as a supplement to buy a little extra food or a little extra clothing for their children. Nobody expected to cover large household expenses with it, let alone depend on it for a living. As time passed and the number of tourists in Sa Pa increased, an increasing number of girls found stable work with hotels and travel agencies. Handicraft sales also rose, although to a lesser degree. One could see more girls and women in town at any time of day, any day of the week, any week of the year. Handicraft sales and tour guiding for the Hmong girls and women of Lao Chải had become more like professions than sporadic supplementary activities. This was especially true for the girls, whose income from tourism work increased to the point where the more successful among them could earn as much as a few million dong a month and thus become the main contributors to family finances. Older Hmong women earned much less, since other activities kept them home during busy agricultural times, but in most cases they also turned handicraft selling into their “profession”. A definite shift towards a cash economy had taken place among the Hmong in Lao Chải and a few other surrounding villages. Changes in Division of Labour within Hmong Families While some Hmong girls who came to work in Sa Pa town decided to stay single for much longer than the norm, other girls found the ones they loved and ended up getting married. Some, such as Thoj, gave up their lives in town to move back to the village, while others, such as Aiv, tried to juggle the roles of being a good wife and a good worker. Things were not easy for either group. Being busy with bearing and taking care of two children, Thoj missed the chance to take a course to become an “official” tour guide,9 and when she and her husband decided that the extra income she could make in town was needed, Thoj had to enter the market again by selling handicrafts, which generated a smaller and less stable income than tour guiding. However, Thoj decided to be persistent and still came to town almost every day, waiting for new opportunities to come up. Aiv, on the other hand, chose to continue working from the beginning of her married life, and her marriage fell apart partly because of this decision. Aiv moved on and is now in a happy marriage with a two-year-old daughter, and she is still working full-time for a hotel/travel agency in town. The participation of a married Hmong girl in tourism-related activities in Sa Pa town is possible only if the couple reach an agreement. Moreover,

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many Hmong girls nowadays want to start a nuclear family after getting married—an arrangement feasible only if the husband supports the idea.10 Thus, a new form of labour division has arisen within young Hmong families, with husbands staying home to take care of household tasks and children and wives working in town, making money to support the family. Domestic chores once carried out primarily by girls and women—such as looking after children, cooking, cleaning and collecting firewood—have entered the male domain, or at least have come to be shared by men and women. Husbands who stay at home also cover other tasks such as working in the field, although married Hmong girls often take time off to help their husbands during busy agricultural seasons. Thoj told me, “Sometimes I come home and dinner has not been cooked, so I call out to him [her husband], pretend to be angry, and he hurries up and gets back from whatever he is doing to set the fire to cook something quick so that I can eat. I don’t even have to lift a finger.” Interviews indicate that Thoj’s experience is not unusual in the lives of Hmong females in Sa Pa. Employer-Employee Relations In 2001, some of the Sa Pa hotels that ran travel agencies as part of their business started hiring Hmong girls as tour guides. Prior to this, all guide services were provided by Kinh who lived in the area or came from other provinces. At some stage, however, having noticed how close the girls became to tourists and having often heard stories from happy, excited tourists about treks in the company of Hmong girls, the hotel owners realized that the Hmong girls—whom they had never held in high regard—could help them increase their profits. From then on, when all their own guides had been booked up for the day, instead of “borrowing” Kinh guides from neighbouring hotels, they hired Hmong girls. Out of the dozens of Hmong girls who knew their way around the villages far better than any Kinh guide, who spoke English as least as well as any Kinh guide, and who often accepted a lower rate than Kinh guides, the hotel owners chose the older girls. Gradually, as the number of tourists requiring guides for treks increased, more Hmong girls were hired, some on a monthly basis, with a fixed monthly salary (around 100,000 dong) and a trip allowance (30,000–50,000 dong, depending on the length of trek). Sometimes the girls would get paid only for treks and not a fixed monthly salary. As of December 2007, the daily rate was 80,000–140,000 dong, depending on the guide’s experience. If extra guides were needed, a girl who worked at a hotel would hurry into the street in search of friends

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who could take these jobs. As the relationship between Hmong girls and hotel managers became more intertwined, those working on a freelance basis started going around to several hotels every morning to see whether their guiding services were required. Most of the girls enjoy their work as guides immensely, as it allows them to walk freely outside, make friends with tourists and, at the end of the day, receive tips that can amount to as much as—or even more than— their daily wage. But the additional work required by hotels, referred to in local Hmong dialect as ua nu,11 is not always pleasant. Sometimes before a trip a girl will be asked to follow the hotel owner with a huge basket on her back to help carry the produce to be used in the hotel kitchen that day. On days when she is not needed as a guide, or even when she comes back from a tour, she is supposed to remain in the hotel to help with other tasks such as washing and drying bed sheets and pillow covers, cleaning the rooms, or picking vegetables for use in the kitchen. For many Hmong girls a reason to leave the village was to get away from ua nu at home, which they tend to consider very khwv (hard). But ua nu in the hotels is no less khwv. There are not only new tasks to learn, such as waiting tables and making beds, but also familiar tasks at a more challenging level—washing huge loads of clothes and bed sheets for guests rather than only for family members, cleaning many rooms rather than only quickly sweeping a dirt floor. Although none of the Hmong girls who were interviewed enjoyed doing ua nu in the hotels, most saw it as part of their job and tried to do it as well as they could. Work in hotels places girls under the strict supervision of hotel owners, which none are quite used to. They also have to adapt to a working discipline previously alien to them. Mrs Hồng, the owner of a popular hotel in town, complained about how hard it was to get Hmong girls to work as a guide: sometimes they simply did not feel like working, or they were busy hanging out with their tourist friends, or they had to go back to the village. Paj was a typical case, and Mrs Hồng, a very kind and gentle woman, having put up with it as long as she could, finally told Paj that if she worked for her she would have to listen to her, and she could no longer mus coj ke (go on treks) only when she felt like it. Mrs Hồng’s words were effective: since then Paj has never refused any offer. Apart from having to report to work regularly whether they want to or not, the Hmong girls are also requested by their employers to follow basic standards of guiding, such as memorizing enough information about the area and talking to tourists during the treks. Despite all these challenges, a few ambitious girls have strived to excel at their work.

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Laj, for example, has become one of the two main staff members of a hotel/travel agency and in this role has taken on many additional responsibilities and tasks. Although the Hmong girls have been placed under a new kind of supervision and discipline, their working environment is nowhere near as rigid as one might expect it to be. Being in high demand, the girls freely switch from one hotel to another travel agency at dizzying speed. Pay differentials are not the reason, since Sa Pa business owners normally make sure not to pay higher than their neighbours. Rather, a girl leaves one place to work in another if she has close friends working there, or if she has had some disagreement with the owner. Employment at hotels and tour agencies in Sa Pa has also caused some changes in the everyday behaviour of the Hmong girls. They have become more punctual and more responsible. When I first went to Sa Pa, in late 2000, I could never be sure whether the Hmong girls I had made appointments with would come and meet me on time or turn up at all. However, towards the end of my research and during my later visits, they always kept appointments. By the time this article was being completed, as the girls’ working lives became busier, the girls would call me on my mobile phone to let me know if they could not keep an appointment. As the Sa Pa District government becomes more vigorous in its efforts to make Sa Pa a neat and orderly place (with no stray street vendors or freelance tour guides), the jobs provided by hotels and travel agencies in town become more attractive to the girls, who still need incomes large enough for them to fulfil their roles as good daughters and wives or continue to lead the new lifestyles they have grown to enjoy in town, or both. Importantly, the Hmong girls’ new forms of employment do not position them at a lower level in their relations with Kinh, for the hotel and travel agency owners and managers now need the Hmong girls as much as the girls need them. Being authentically Hmong, the girls are an asset to hotels and travel agencies in that hotel guests and tourists usually desire contact with them, and so a girl who leaves her job in one place can easily find employment in another. While older Hmong women, unlike the girls, tend not to be employed formally by local businesses, many of them are employed in a looser sense: they are often contracted by local handicraft shops to make pieces of embroidery to be applied to modern products to give them an ethnic touch. Although this contract arrangement is not as binding as the Hmong girls’ employment with the hotels and travel agencies, it too requires compliance with certain standards, such as product quality and deadlines.

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At the same time, such work reinforces the status of Hmong women as wage labourers rather than being solely dependent on agricultural work as they once were in the village. Steady employment has led to a significant decrease in the amount of time the girls, and to a certain extent the women, have to help their families back home. Now, instead of leaving work in town to go back to the village to transplant rice or help with the harvest, the Hmong girls give their parents money so they can hire extra labour. The girls’ work in tourism and the income the work generates for them can thus be seen not only to have led to a change in gender roles, as briefly mentioned above (for more details, see Dương Bích Hạnh 2006), but also to have created new kinds of labour relations. In Hmong society, labour was always divided by gender and age, and was always performed by farming families for themselves or as payment in kind to help neighbours and fellow villagers. With this current development, there is some potential for Hmong society to be segregated into strata where members of families with no or little extra cash income become wage labourers for families short on labour. Producer-Consumer Relations The full-time jobs that many girls have taken on not only reduce the amount of time they have to help their families back home, but also take from the time they have for their own leisure. In the past, the girls would take a couple of weeks off to attend different festivals during the Lunar New Year, to visit friends, or simply to stand by the side of the road in large groups and stare down into the valley, waiting to be spotted by local boys. These days, disciplined work regimes do not allow them as much time as they once had for ritualistic or aimless pleasures. In the past, the advent of the Lunar New Year was always a special occasion, when the girls rushed to finish their embroidery (“It is shameful not to have shiny new clothes for the New Year,” I was told by many girls). At such times I often noticed embroideries-in-progress in the girls’ bags, and as soon as the girls sat down anywhere, whether in my room or on the sidewalk, they would pull out the pieces and immediately start embroidering. Sometimes I would find a whole group of girls sitting in their guest house in the middle of the day, embroidering away and chatting quietly among themselves, heedless of the bustling crowds in the streets. The girls would later attach these pieces of embroidery to new sets of clothes, mostly with their mothers’ help, and the girl with the shiniest

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new clothes with the prettiest embroidered patterns would surely look proud—and attract the most attention from the opposite sex—during the New Year festival. Nowadays, few full-time workers have the time to make new clothes for the Lunar New Year. “When I come home at night, I’m often so tired that I just want to go to sleep,” many girls told me. However, not having new clothes to wear for the New Year is unthinkable. A clever new arrangement has been set up—whether by the girls or by the older women, I am not sure. I observed several transactions on the street where young Hmong buyers looked over a few small pieces of embroidery offered by older Hmong sellers. Such transactions may happen spontaneously, but Hmong girls also place orders and pay the women for their time and the materials. Hence, the Hmong women no longer sew only to sell to tourists or provide contract work for owners of handicraft shops. They work hard every day, sitting behind their little tables piled high with pillow covers and shirt collars, carefully stitching pieces for another group of customers—the Hmong girls, who tend to be much pickier than tourists. After all, although the girls no longer fully participate in traditional Hmong life, they still feel that they need to look beautiful and have new clothes for the New Year. Producer-Distributor/Intermediary Relations For the whole day Xais had been following her new friends—a couple of young American women, Sue and Liz, who were backpacking around the country for a few weeks—whom she had met early that morning. They were having a great time wandering up and down the main street in town, eating their lunch of bread, banana and yoghurt on their way to visit a nearby waterfall. As Sue and Liz were going to start a three-day trek organized by a local travel agency early the next day, the three friends bid goodbye at dusk. Xais seized the opportunity to tie a couple of little strings around Sue’s and Liz’s wrists to signify their new friendship and politely ask whether the two would be interested in a few handicraft items that had been draped over her bag. The two American women looked over the stock with half-hearted interest. They were getting tired and wanted to rest, but they also wanted to help Xais by buying a little something to show their appreciation for her company for the whole day. Liz found a couple of pillow covers that she said she might use, but their purplish tone did not attract her. Xais said that her mother would have pillow covers in other shades and invited Sue and Liz to walk with her over to the textile

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market, where a handful of older women, both Hmong and Dao, were packing up their sales for the day. Xais’ mother was not there, but another woman had some pillows dyed in orange that interested Liz. Xais helped to facilitate the transaction, and everybody was happy: Liz was happy to have got what she wanted, the old Hmong woman was happy to have made a sale, and Xais was happy since she was going to get a little money from the old woman as a token of her gratitude for Xais’ help. As the above narrative shows, while on the one hand the significance of handicrafts as aids in courtship creates the conditions for a producerconsumer relationship between Hmong women and girls, on the other hand their importance as in-demand commodities places the girls in the position of distributors to the old women’s producers. Or, as Mr Zuon, the owner of a guest house where most Hmong girls stayed when they first came to town, put it, “Hmong women know how to sew; Hmong girls know how to speak English.” The Hmong girls’ ability to communicate with tourists, their “cuteness” in the eyes of tourists, and their intelligent sales strategies make them very successful sellers. The Hmong women, on the other hand, are generally regarded by tourists as overly aggressive. Moreover, the Hmong girls often have much easier access to tourists during their treks or during hours of roaming the street. The older Hmong women, on the other hand, often locate themselves, voluntarily or involuntarily, in the textile market, on the second floor of the market building, which is not necessarily obvious to many tourists. Making the situation beneficial for both groups, the girls help the old women sell their pieces. The arrangement, however, is rather ad hoc: sometimes a girl gains nothing from helping a woman sell, because the two are somehow related. Sometimes a girl receives a few thousand dong as a small “thank you” for helping a woman sell a piece, as in Xais’ case. More business-minded girls might receive pieces on consignment and keep any extra money they can make above the price their suppliers set for them. Conclusion In this chapter I have discussed several new sets of relations that have recently arisen among the Hmong and between the Hmong and the Kinh in Sa Pa town and surrounding villages. In the past, the gendered division of labour was clear and was the only division of labour that existed in Hmong villages: certain tasks were more likely to be done by men and others by women. In Lao Chải today, not only has the gendered division of labour been shifting (for example, some women are now making money

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while their husbands take care of the household), but new forms of labour division have also appeared—such as that between producer and consumer and between employer and employee. These new divisions of labour have also appeared beyond the Hmong village in Sa Pa town, where new forms of labour relations have also come into being, such as that between producer and distributor. Thus, the Hmong of Lao Chải village are no longer related to one another only through kinship, but also through other types of relations. Meanwhile, through full-time work for hotels and travel agencies, primarily as tour guides but also as kitchen hands and room cleaners, the Hmong girls have begun to experience the commoditization of their labour, which has placed them in a different form of relationship vis-à-vis ethnic Kinh in town. Through this relationship, the girls have become subject to new regimes of order and discipline. These new sets of relations have arisen primarily due to the rapid development of the tourism industry in the area. Although Lao Chải village in particular, and Vietnam’s uplands in general, have always been in contact with the lowlands and the outside world, in recent years processes of contact and integration have greatly intensified, dramatically transforming the upland society, economy and landscape, and presenting local Hmong and other residents with many new opportunities and challenges. Notes 1. The research for this chapter was conducted with a fellowship from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC, United States), and the write-up was done during the author’s tenure as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), University of Wollongong, Australia. The author wishes to thank SSRC, the Endeavour Awards Program and CAPSTRANS for their support. Special thanks go to the volume editors, Nicholas Tapp and participants of the workshop on “Montane Choices and Outcomes: Contemporary Transformations of Vietnam’s Uplands”, held in Hanoi in January 2007. 2. “H’Mong”, “H’mong”, “H’mông” and “Mông” are other spellings found in Vietnamese writing. According to the Romanized Popular Alphabet (RPA), the Hmong writing system developed in the early 1950s by a team of French and American missionary-linguists, the name of the ethnic group is “Hmoob”. In Vietnam, the Hmong are one of the 53 ethnic minority groups that together account for almost 15 per cent of the national population. 3. For a more detailed account on colonial Sa Pa, see Michaud 2001. 4. For a brief history of Hmong migration to Vietnam, see Dương Bích Hạnh 2006. For more detailed accounts, see Savina (1924), Geddes (1976), Mottin (1980),

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Cư Hoà Vần and Hoàng Nam (1994), Culas and Michaud (2004) and Michaud (2004). 5. For the latest discussion on the classification of different Hmong subgroups, see Tapp 2006. 6. Lao Chải is not the only case of stable residency dependent on wet-rice cultivation among the Hmong. Claes Corlin found similar stable residency in other locations: Nậm Ty commune in Hoàng Su Phì, Hà Giang; Hang Đá commune in Sa Pa, Lào Cai; and Mỗ Đề commune in Mu Căng Chải, Yên Bái. This, Corlin (2004: 312) acknowledges, contradicts the common image of Hmong as semi-nomadic, pioneering shifting cultivators, moving to a new place as soon as the soil is exhausted. The Hmong in Sichuan, where Nicholas Tapp (2002) did his research, also grow wet rice. 7. This observation has been made by others (e.g., Tapp 2006). People often attribute the better-off situation in Lao Chải to the development of tourism. However, I suspect that the Hmong in Lao Chải might have enjoyed a better life than their counterparts in other parts of the country even before tourism came in, thanks to the terraced fields and some other income-generating activities, which will be discussed below. 8. “Love market” is a term (curiously, used only in English and Vietnamese, not in Hmong) that refers to a Saturday night market where local Hmong and Dao youth meet and socialize. The gathering used to take place in Sa Pa town, but nowadays, under the scrutiny of the “tourist gaze”, it has become almost nonexistent. The term “love market”, coined by non-Hmong, obviously embraces exoticism. 9. Around 2003–4, the district government, in collaboration with an NGO, organized training courses for Hmong girls who wanted to work as tour guides for travel agencies in town. After the courses were completed, name badges were issued. Girls were allowed to work as tour guides only if they had such name badges. This made it difficult for many girls, such as Thoj, who missed the training but wanted to become tour guides later on. 10. Traditionally, young Hmong couples often live with the husband’s family for many years after getting married before they move to a separate house to start their own family. 11. In White Hmong dialect, ua nu normally means “hard work”, while ua haujlwm means “other types of work”, such as housework. In the local Hmong dialect, ua nu is often used to refer to all types of work, both hard and light.

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Postscript: Towards a Conjunctural Analysis Tania Murray Li

This book offers rich resources for thinking about the uplands in conjunctural terms. I have in mind the kind of analysis proposed by the geographer Doreen Massey, who argues for an understanding of the specificity of a place not as an expression of its essence, but rather as the outcome of the ways it has been “constructed out of a particular constellation of relations, articulated together at a particular locus” (1993: 66). Three key relations I highlighted in my examination of the Indonesian uplands (1999b)— relations of marginality, power and production—seem to be salient in Vietnam as well, where they are articulated together in distinctive ways. Marginality In Vietnam, as in Indonesia, the positioning of the uplands as the margin or the “other” of civilization, and its characterization in terms of apparently isolated, culturally distinct peoples and places “without history”, is a myth that belies the dense traffic between uplands and lowlands over several centuries, a traffic interrupted only when colonial powers intervened to reshape routes and spaces for ease of rule. The tenacity of the myth is remarkable, and the material presented in this book offers important insights on the purpose it serves in licensing particular forms of intervention: the uplands as a frontier to be settled, wasteland to be brought into productive use, water resources to be tapped, minerals to be mined, forest to be exploited or conserved, poverty to be reduced, and backward people to be civilized. An important goal of this book is to unsettle this set of place-myths by replacing them with more nuanced analyses of the diversity of practices and flows constituting upland spaces. I tried something similar a decade ago, but the myths persist. Their longevity, I would like to suggest, is not simply a confirmation 259

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that practitioners don’t read scholarly work, or that nothing has changed. Rather, it is an indication that myths continue to be woven into new assemblages. Circa 2010, for example, in both Indonesia and Vietnam, a UN and donor-sponsored global programme to tackle global warming by “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation” (REDD) recalled all the presumed deficiencies of the uplands (poverty, backwardness, forest destruction) and reproduced them for new ends. Power A relational understanding of power enriches many of the chapters in this volume. There are plenty of examples of top-down schemes that reshape people’s lives in drastic and damaging ways: resettlement, eviction, forest enclosure, speculation, and the steering of state land and subsidies away from “the poor”, their intended beneficiaries, into the hands of party cadres or local elites. In Vietnam, as in Indonesia, often it is not material resources (land, capital) that beget power but rather the reverse: a person who holds office ends up holding land. Yet top-down schemes and attempts to grab resources don’t always succeed, as they are contested or undermined by actors wielding countervailing powers: competing government agencies or transnational donors with competing visions of how resources should be used; villagers making moral claims against local officials or patrons; negotiation or quiet evasion of rules, and crossing of boundaries; and forms of solidarity rooted in kinship and community, among others. As the authors demonstrate, the provision of roads that ease state supervision, from one perspective, also enables uplanders to break out from monopolistic trade and credit relations, and receive better prices for their products. Uplanders are not unilateral victims, but nor are they victors in their encounters with power. Rather, they are engaged in ongoing struggles, sometimes achieving small victories or compromises, but still lacking in secure access to land or other resources. Production The continued relevance of land in upland livelihoods stands out in these studies; so too does the role of markets in drawing uplanders into new spaces and new forms of production. In Vietnam, as in Indonesia, agriculture is expanding into forests, and it is also intensifying, as former swidden lands are planted with cash crops such as coffee and cassava. Counter to prevailing assumptions about farmer preferences for subsistence security, some upland farmers take the risk of converting

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all their land to a lucrative cash crop, intent on making all the money they can before boom turns, inevitably, to bust; some are more cautious, keeping various options open. In one case reported in this book (Chapter 9), speculation made land itself a “boom” commodity, and uplanders were eager to sell their land at inflated prices while they could. Having come to see themselves as backward, both through the discourse of others and through their own observations and comparisons, they wanted to become “modern farmers” and, just as important, “modern consumers”, equipped with a motorcycle, fridge and TV. While in many contexts the way to achieve consumer goals is to move to the city, both Vietnam and Indonesia continue to have active land frontiers, fuelled by rural-to-rural migration and the willingness of “land pioneers” to endure harsh conditions in order to establish new smallholdings. Some of the pioneers are pulled in by the hope of riches. Others move to the forest because they have lost land somewhere else, through failed ventures, debt or top-down enclosures. The importance of the land frontier as a “safety valve” relieving livelihood pressures in the lowland agricultural cores cannot be overstated. If REDD and related conservation schemes, backed by donor resources, succeed in closing the land frontier without providing new employment, landless ex-farmers from the uplands and the lowlands will have nowhere to turn but the cities, as margins and centres become ever-more densely linked. Many of the relations I have described above are not distinctive to Vietnam or to Indonesia. They are found to varying degrees, and in different configurations, across Southeast Asia’s upland regions. Yet there are elements deriving from Vietnam’s unique colonial and socialist history that are quite distinctive. One feature I found especially striking was the density of French colonial investment in bounding, mapping, describing and—in effect—constituting distinctive upland “minorities”, an endeavour that continued into the nationalist period, albeit under a different rationale. Parallel efforts were much lighter, and less consequential, in the territory that became Indonesia. From Vietnam’s socialist period, there are practices of collectivism and concepts of popular entitlement that still have resonance, together with a land law that continues to reserve the state’s right to reallocate land periodically. Whether this set of concepts, practices and laws will be sufficient to modify the pattern of increasing inequalities that is accompanying Vietnam’s impressive growth is still to be seen. Meanwhile, readers can learn a great deal from this book about how key sets of social, economic and political relations are currently being reconfigured in upland locales, and gain insights that travel well to other conjunctures, each with its own distinctive articulation.

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Contributors

Dương Bích Hạnh completed a PhD on the Hmong girls of Sa Pa at the University of Washington and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wollongong. She currently manages the culture programme of UNESCO at the latter’s Hanoi office. Rikke Folving Ginzburg received her PhD from the Department of Geography and Geology at the University of Copenhagen. She is currently working for the National Survey and Cadastre, Danish Ministry of the Environment. Hoàng Cầm received his PhD from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington. He is now a Researcher at the Institute of Cultural Studies in the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, Hanoi. Stephen J. Leisz is Assistant Professor of Geography in the Department of Anthropology at Colorado State University. He was previously a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies of Kyoto University and held research appointments at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu and the University of Copenhagen. His research examines patterns and causes of land-use changes in Vietnam’s uplands. Tania Murray Li is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, where she holds the Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy and Culture of Asia. Her books include The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics (Duke University Press, 2007) and Transforming the Indonesian Uplands: Marginality, Power and Production (Routledge, 1999). She has published widely on agrarian transitions, class formation, development, land struggles, community and indigeneity in Asia, with a particular focus on Indonesia. 292

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Pamela McElwee is Assistant Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies and School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. She works on the environmental impacts of globalization, with a geographic emphasis on Vietnam. Nghiêm Phương Tuyến holds a PhD from Kyoto University and is now a Senior Researcher at the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies at Vietnam National University, Hanoi. Her research analyzes resource use and livelihood changes in Vietnam’s uplands. Nguyễn Thanh Lâm is the Executive Director of the Center for Agricultural Research and Ecological Studies, Hanoi University of Agriculture. He is a soil scientist whose work for the past 13 years has focused on farming system changes in the uplands of Vietnam. Kjeld Rasmussen is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Geology at the University of Copenhagen. His recent research has focused on land use, agricultural systems and climate change mitigation in West Africa and Vietnam. Jeff Romm is Professor of Resource Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has conducted extensive research on the social dynamics driving natural resource management, including empirical research in India, the Philippines, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam. Oscar Salemink is Professor in the Anthropology of Asia at the University of Copenhagen. His research examines religious and cultural change in Vietnam, with a particular interest in ethnic minority-majority relations. Thomas Sikor is Reader of International Development at the University of East Anglia. He has conducted extensive research on resource use and livelihood changes in Vietnam’s uplands, and more recently has engaged in comparative research on post-socialist transformations in Albania, Romania and Vietnam. Jennifer Sowerwine is a Research Associate at the University of California at Berkeley. Her research focuses on state-minority relations around resource use, sustainable food systems, and the politics of agrarian transformations in Vietnam and in California’s Central Valley.

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Tô Xuân Phúc holds a PhD from Humboldt University, Berlin, and was a postdoctoral fellow in anthropology at the University of Toronto in 2007–9. His research interests lie with processes of social differentiation and conflicts over access to natural resources in Vietnam. He currently works as a Research Associate with Forest Trends Association in Hanoi. Trần Đức Viên is the Rector of the Hanoi University of Agriculture. His research since the early 1980s has examined upland farming and livelihood systems as well as transitions that these systems are undergoing. Alexandra Winkels is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of East Anglia and Academic Mentor at Cambridge University. Her research examines migration and livelihood strategies, with a geographic emphasis on Southeast Asia. Masayuki Yanagisawa holds a PhD from Kyoto University and is Associate Professor in the Center for Integrated Area Studies at Kyoto University. His research analyzes agro-ecological history in Vietnam.

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Index

1994 Labour Law, 172 1988 Land Law, 82, 116, 172 1993 Land Law, 82, 115, 152 1994 land allocation, 151 2004 Land Law, 227

Black Flags, 42, 44 “black market”, 167, 170–2 Cả River Valley, 118, 120, 123, 139–40, 142 Cẩm Xuyên, 80, 84–90 Cần hamlet, 117–20, 123, 125–30, 134–6, 138–44 canna, 168, 174, 185–6, 190–1, 194, 197–8, 202, 206, 218, 227 capitalism, 19, 22–3 cassava, 19–20, 171, 173, 175–80, 184–6, 190–2, 194, 200–2, 204, 206, 212, 214, 218, 260 Cau Maa, 39, 46 Central Highlands, 3, 8, 12, 21, 32, 38–40, 45, 47, 63–4, 72, 146, 148– 50, 153, 157, 160, 210, 228–34, 236–42, 247 Chàm/Cham, 31–3, 35, 38–9, 45, 49 A, 154 B, 153–5, 157–8, 162 Cochinchina, 32–3, 35, 38–9, 79 colonial administration, 39–40, 61, 78–9 empire, 31 government, 12 period/times, 51, 53–4, 57, 61 powers, 58, 259 regime/state, 28, 41, 43, 48, 61, 119, 149 rule, 40, 44, 81 colonialism, 52, 56, 58, 64, 185 Commission d’Exploration du Mekong of 1866–68, 39

agricultural collectivization, 8, 147 production, 13, 20, 115–6, 166, 169, 171 products, 172, 186, 218, 221, 227 agriculture, 13, 17, 21–2, 83, 90, 107, 111, 116–7, 122, 124, 132, 140–1, 145, 166, 173, 184, 215, 227–8, 230, 232, 260, see also swidden agriculture Annam, 36–8, 42, 78–9 authority, 14–9, 22–3, 33, 37–8, 41, 44–5, 50–2, 54, 56–7, 59, 62, 66, 68–71, 103, 108, 110, 147–50, 154–5, 158–62, 184, 195, 199, 201 Ba Vi commune, 208, 211 District, 189, 211, 213 Forest Enterprise, 214 Mountain, 3, 21, 185–7, 193–5, 198, 202, 204–5, 216 National Park, 188, 191, 194, 202, 220, 223 village, 187, 189, 191, 197, 199 Bảo Thắng District, 166–70 Forest Enterprise, 168–9 295

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common property regimes (CPRs), 75–6, 82–4, 87–91 Communist Party of Vietnam, 64, 81 CPRs, see common property regimes customs, 45, 62, 66, 78, 86–7 customary arrangements, 12–3, 148, 152–4, 157–8, 161 chiefs, 42 claims, 199, 201 institutions, 22, 102 law, 41, 78, 87, 96 management, 94, 102, 111 practices, 14, 111, 184 regulations, 14, 156–7 rights, 94, 103, 108 rules, 96–7, 113 tenure systems, 124, 139, 194 Đắc Lắc province, 235, 237, 239–40, 242 Đại Việt, 34 Đăng Hà commune, 234–5, 239 Đàng Trong, 29, 33–6, 44 Đàng Ngoài, 29, 33–6, 44 Dao, 19–21, 159, 175–6, 178, 180, 184–6, 205, 208–9, 211, 214–6, 225–6, 245, 247, 249, 256 deforestation, 12, 17, 27, 52, 63, 65, 115 Đèo lineage, 15, 30, 44, 46, see also Ðèo Văn Trí Ðèo Văn Trí, 42–3, see also Ðèo lineage Điện Biên Phủ, 43–4, 47–8 Đổi Mới, 13, 82, 90, 94, 100, 104–5, 107, 110–1, 119, 166, 203, 230, see also economic liberalization Đồng Văn plateau, 65 Dutch East Indies, 31 Company (VOC), 35–6 economic crisis of 1930s, 61 development, 8, 17, 100, 172, 230

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Index



exchange, 15, 29, 45, 47, 228 exploitation, 60 growth, 13, 225 liberalization, 65, 94, 166–7, 172, 179, 187, 209, see also Đổi Mới order, 22 reforms, 13, 22, 104–5, 184, 203 relations, 49, 52, 90, 244, 261 zones, 12, 72, 166, 230 Êđê, 38, 41, 150, 153–6 ethnicity, 2–3, 23, 35, 56, 61, 76, 175 First Indochina War, 63, 72, 245, 248 Five Million Hectare Reforestation Programme (5MHRP), 83–6, 173 forest, 3, 5, 12–3, 16–20, 23, 31–2, 34–5, 37, 46, 55–6, 59–63, 65, 70, 75–7, 80–7, 89–90, 92–117, 119– 20, 122, 125, 127, 131–2, 135, 142, 144, 146–7, 150, 152–8, 160–1, 168–71, 173, 179, 183–5, 187, 189, 192–4, 196–200, 202, 208, 210, 218–9, 221, 223, 225, 227, 233, 242, 246, 248–9, 259–61 Forest Protection Department, 3, 223, see also state forest enterprises (SFEs) Unit (FPU), 92, 98–103, 150–2, 155, see also state forest enterprises (SFEs) French mission civilatrice, 16, see also mission civilisatrice Gia Long, 36 Giao Thuỷ District, 229, 235–40 globalization, 29 Hà Tây province, 3, 185, 205, 211, 213, 226 Hà Tĩnh province, 17, 77, 79–80, 84, 158 Hanoi, 3, 27, 36, 48, 58, 94, 100, 106, 108–9, 117, 168, 170, 185, 205, 208, 211–3, 218–20, 226–7, 231, 242, 244, 257

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Index

Hmông, 21–2, 41, 110, 244–58 migration, 257 Hồ Chí Minh, 63, 80 City, 236 Hòa Bình Dam, 94 Hội An, 34, 49 Hợp Nhất hamlet, 187, 189–90, 221 Huế, 15, 38–9, 42, 77 identity, 95, 209, 217, 234 ethnic, 16, 61, 95 Khau Li forest, 97, 101–4, 106 Kinh, 12, 14, 19–20, 28, 39, 51–2, 55, 67, 71–2, 77, 84, 87, 98, 166, 175– 6, 178, 180, 209, 215–6, 225–7, 242, 245, 247, 251, 253, 257 institutions, 53 majority, 1, 3 mandarins, 41 -style houses, 217 traders, 103, 108, 110 Krông Bông Forest Enterprise, 153 labour, 19, 21–2, 43, 71, 89–90, 95–6, 118, 120–1, 140, 142, 173, 190, 193, 195–6, 199, 204, 206, 216, 231–2, 234, 237–41, 245–6, 250–1, 254, 256–7 force, 120, 222 market, 20, 107, 184, 204 relations, 21, 244–6, 248, 254, 257 Lai Châu, 42–3, 47 land allocation, 13–4, 17–8, 23, 115, 119, 125, 131–2, 134, 138–9, 146–8, 150, 153, 155, 158–9 policies, 116–7, 136, 139, 141, 143–4 land tenure certificates (LTCs), 82–3 land-use certificates (LUCs), 214, 220 Lạng Sơn province, 156, 172–3 Lào Cai province, 19, 166, 168, 170–1, 176–8, 244–5, 249 Lao Chải village, 244–50, 256–8 Lê Dynasty, 49, 72

Upland Transformation combined t297 297

297

long-distance trade, 15, 20, 30–1, 40, 46–7 LTCs, see land tenure certificates LUCs, see land-use certificates Lưu Phong hamlet, 117, 119–20, 123, 126–7, 129–30, 134–6, 139–44 Ma hamlet, 117, 120–1, 123, 126–7, 129, 131, 134–6, 139, 141–4 MARD, see Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Development market commodity, 19–20, 184, 203, 209–10, 226 domestic, 105, 107 economy, 107, 111, 186, 204, 248 exchanges, 105 forces, 94, 135, 144, 172, 183, 185, 203, 220 formation, 19–20, 210 global, 210 land, 78, 205, 208–9, 211–5, 217–21, 223–5, 227, 232 liberalization, 171, 183 lowlands, 93, 108, 110, 135, 208, 210, 228 network, 8, 165–6, 170–1, 173, 180–1 relations, 19 system, 165–6, 172, 179 Mekong Delta, 3, 33, 79, 230 River, 32, 39 migration, 12–3, 228–32, 234–6, 240–3 internal, 229 mass, 233 patterns, 229 rural-urban, 21 Minh Mạng, 36–7 Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Development (MARD), 99 mission civilisatrice, 29, 55, 58, see also French mission civilatrice modernity, 61, 215, 217, 222, 224, 226

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298

Montagnards, 40, 49, 64 Muang Tấc, 95, 97–113 Nà Pản, 150–4, 157–9 Nam Bộ, 65 Nam Tiến movement, 57, 77 National economy, 228 nationalization of forest, 17, 81, 99, 102, 111, 147, 149 New Economic Zones, 12, 245 Nghệ An province, 79, 116–7, 144 Nghệ Tĩnh uprising, 79 Nghĩa Lộ province, 114 Nguyễn Dynasty/lords, 30, 32–3, 35–7, 72 non-timber forest products (NTFPs), 122, 125, 131–2, 135–6, 138, 141–4, 171, 181 Northern Mountain Region, 12, 49–50, 63, 116, 146, 148, 150, 166, 173, 182, 230, 245 NTFPs, see non-timber forest products opium trade, 15, 43, 46 Phủ Yên district, 37, 98–9, 103, 108–9, 113–4 poverty, 8, 173, 183, 240, 260 line, 216, 247 precolonial history, 23 period/times, 17, 28–30, 38, 44–5, 48, 57, 90 Vietnam, 15, 78 Quảng Ngãi province, 36, 235 Quê hamlet, 117, 121–3, 126–7, 129, 132–6, 138, 140–4 Red River Delta, 3, 12, 21, 36, 41, 50, 72, 166, 169, 228–31, 234, 237–8, 240–1 REDD, see Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation

Upland Transformation combined t298 298

Index

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD), 260–1 Re-greening of Bare Land and Denuded Hills Programme (1993–99), 173 rural-urban interactions, 165 RVAC programmes, 117, 122, 135, 140–1, 143–4 Sa Pa District, 21–2, 244–51, 253, 256–8 Second Indochina War, 72, 119–20, 122, 231 SFEs, see state forest enterprises Sổ, 186–7, 189–90, 193, 206, 208, 212–4, 216, 219, 221, 225 social inequality, 23 Sơn La province, 92, 94, 100–1, 113–4, 150 South China Sea, 29 state forest enterprises (SFEs), 63, 65, 81, 153–5, 157–8, 160–1, 242, see also forest protection department and forest protection unit (FPU) state formation, 15, 33 statecraft, 17–8, 42, 53–4, 67, 71 swidden agriculture, 59–60, 67, 83, 185, 210 cultivation system, 12, 16, 52, 117, 119–22, 138–9, 142–3, 211, 215, 227, 247 fields, 60, 70, 96, 119, 131, 138–9, 176, 185–6, 194–5, 199, 201–2, 221, 223, see also swidden lands lands, 189, 194, 198, 200–2, 204, 212, 260, see also swidden fields practices, 12 rice, 172, 174 Tây Nguyên, 228 Tây Sơn rebellion, 35–7, 50 territorialization, 18, 29, 48, 207 internal, 17 state, 19, 99–100, 111

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Index

territory, 17, 37–8, 43, 45–6, 56–7, 95–7, 102, 117, 122, 132, 168, 170–1, 247, 261 national, 3 Thái, 17, 39, 42–4, 46, 72, 92, 95, 97–8, 104, 107, 109–10, 113, 117, 123, 150–1, 166, 218, 227 Thiệu Trị, 36, 38 Tonkin, 33, 38, 41–3, 61, 79, see also Đàng Ngoài tourism, 22, 213, 227, 244–6, 248–50, 254, 258 industry, 257 Trì Quang, 176, 178–9 Trịnh lords, 33, 35–6 Tự Đức, 36, 38

Upland Transformation combined t299 299

299

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 66–7 United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), 194, 196, 204 upland-lowland dichotomy/lowland: highland binary, 1, 24, 52–4, 65, 67–8, 70, 150, 161 VAC programme, 122 Việt Bắc, 156–7 Việt Minh, 44, 80, 98, 113, 230, 245, 248 WFP, see United Nations World Food Programme World Bank, 66–7

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300

Upland Transformation combined t300 300

Index

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Index

Upland Transformation combined t301 301

301

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302

Upland Transformation combined t302 302

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