Upland Transformations in Vietnam

Description

Upland Transformations in Vietnam considers the effects of economic development, authority formation and landscape change on the country's "uplands". By positioning the uplands as an integral part of political, economic and cultural processes at the national and international levels, the book shatters stereotypes of the upland regions as a separate ethnic and biophysical realm, and calls into question the assumptions that have informed research on upland areas and post-socialist transitions, and government policy for these regions.    Movements from customary to state authority or from a subsistence to a commoditized economy are neither automatic nor uniform. The case studies in this book show that events in Vietnam's uplands mirror the country's cultures, organization, landscapes and larger political economy. Negotiations over authority and economy in the uplands recursively contribute to larger processes constituting the Vietnamese state and generating social inequalities. The Vietnamese experience thus provides valuable lessons applicable to research on upland regions and post-socialist transformations in other parts of the world.   The book features work by young Vietnamese and foreign scholars deeply engaged with research on upland livelihoods and ecosystems in Vietnam. These emerging experts present cutting-edge analyses of negotiations over land, forest politics, trade relations, tourism, migration, social differentiation and cultural imaginaries based on research conducted in all major upland regions of Vietnam, including the Northern Mountains, the Truong Son Mountains and the Central Highlands. 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