Kaj Århem School of Global Studies Gothenburg University

Developmentalism, minority politics and the indigenous predicament in post-war Vietnam: an ethnographic case study
2009-2014

Against the background of the glaring discrepancy between, on the one hand, Vietnam's globally recognized development record and successful poverty-reduction program and, on the other, an enduring and disconcertingly high rate of ethnic minority poverty, the project aimed at addressing this problem through a study of: (a) state-development and conservation policies in post-war Vietnam as they bear on the country's ethnic minorities in general, and (b) a case study of the impact of these policies on the local livelihood system and moral economy of a particular ethnic minority group, the Katu in the uplands of central Vietnam, with which the project leader was familiar through previous ethnographic research.
As the project developed, the focus was progressively concentrated on the impact on Katu communities of the current national poverty-reduction strategy and land- and forest legislation, and how these policies express the specific (high-modernist) state project in Vietnam. The Katu impact study was expanded to include also the related and neighboring Trieng people and a brief comparative survey of Katu communities in Laos.
Research design and international research cooperation
The project has been hosted in Vietnam by the Institute of Vietnamese Studies and development Science (IVIDES). Apart from me, the project team included three staff-members from IVIDES (an anthropologist, a geographer and a development researcher). Fieldwork in Vietnam was carried out by the members of the project team, jointly or separately, during six field trips 2011-2013. Two project workshops have been held in the course of the project. A final in-house conference was held at IVIDES in early May 2014 where the project team presented preliminary results from the project.
Research in Vietnam was organized around three case studies: (1) one on the impact of urbanization on Katu communities in and near a district capital; (2) another study of the impact of conservation policies on mixed Trieng and Katu villages in a Nature Reserve; and (3) a broader study of the impact of poverty reduction programs and forest-land legislation on livelihood and land-use in five Katu villages in which I had worked during my previous project, thus allowing me to assess changes during a ten-year period.
The survey of Katu communities in Laos (Sekong province) was sponsored by the Academy of Social Sciences in Laos and carried out with two Laotian anthropologists during March 2010.
Results
The basic tenets of Vietnam's strategy for ethnic minority development are: settlement concentration, sedentarisation, the abolishment of mobile swidden (shifting) cultivation and the promotion of intensive wet-rice and cash-crop cultivation and industrial tree-production. A key issue in ethnic minority development is the control and management of the national forests which are home to the large majority of indigenous communities in Vietnam, including the Katu.
By law, all forests in Vietnam belong to the state. Since the early 1990s (the beginning of the so called "reform period") forest land is classified into: (a) production forest aimed at industrial tree cropping and (b) various types of protected forests excluding or strictly limiting human use. While local authorities for pragmatic reasons allow limited shifting cultivation in production forest, the current forest legislation makes no formal allowance for shifting cultivation; on the contrary, the legislation is designed explicitly to effectuate its eradication. As a result, traditional swidden cultivation has been severely aborted. To mitigate the negative effects of the reduction of swidden land, a battery of development and poverty-reduction programs targeting ethnic minority communities has been implemented.
The project has examined these issues. The principal results are:
1) The forest land available for shifting cultivation in the Katu study area has, over the past two decades, been reduced to approximately 10 % of the total forest coverage. At the same time, the development interventions in the form of subsidized cash-crop schemes and industrial tree-plantations have largely failed to compensate for the loss of cultivable forest land and the shrinking yields from swidden farming. In consequence, the local livelihood system is significantly debilitated and food security markedly reduced.
2) As a result of the current market-oriented modernization process, a cash sector is formed in Katu communities. While this cash sector has grown considerably in recent years it is essentially confined to the acquisition of "modern" prestige goods (motor bikes, TV and video players, Kinh-style housing and furniture). However, this cash sector is almost entirely detached from the traditional subsistence economy which continues alongside it. The effect is a "dual economy" consisting of an expanding cash sphere (which in poverty-reduction language translates into reduced poverty) and a separate, progressively weakened but indispensable subsistence sector. Thus, for their daily living, Katu villagers fall back on their traditional land-use and livelihood pattern. Paradoxically, then, state development programs are "subsidized", as it were, by the traditional institutions they are meant to abolish.
3) Poverty surveys and poverty-reduction projects has become a preponderant feature of everyday life in indigenous communities. Province-, district and commune offices have their own poverty specialists and poverty-reduction units. Local economies have become "projectified" in the sense of increasingly relying on a sundry of short-term projects and cash subventions. "Poverty" as a concept and social phenomenon has become institutionalized insofar as "the poor" has become a recognized social category used as a classificatory label by policymakers and privileged groups in society but also as a self-description by ethnic minority people themselves. In effect, the poverty-reduction industry produces as much as reduces poverty on a massive scale.
Emerging research questions
The project results raise many new questions. I will here point to one important issue worthy of further exploration: why do indigenous people so willingly submit to policies which evidently cause them severe economic hardships? Part of the answer seems to be a strong will to become full members of the national society. Our data suggest that ethnic minority people desire "development" as a means to become full citizens on a par with the Vietnamese majority population. In fact, it would seem that "being poor" is perceived as a step towards becoming "modern" and, thus, truly Vietnamese.
Dissemination of research results beyond academia
In an effort to reach out to a wider audience, I took the initiative to an exhibition project to popularize results from the current research project and my earlier research on the Katu in Laos and Vietnam. The exhibition - featuring photos with captions and a limited range of artifacts from Katu communities - opened in November 2013 at Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre in Luang Prabang, Laos. In 2015, the exhibition will travel to other locations in Laos and to the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi and eventually end up as a permanent exhibition in the Provincial Museum of Sekong, Laos.
Two key publications in preparation
Taming the forest, mastering people: development, conservation and the devolution of forestland in upland Vietnam:
Market-oriented economic development and forest conservation are both corner-stones of Vietnam's state policies towards its indigenous upland peoples. Current forest policies increasingly enclose the indigenous population and dramatically reduce their access to traditionally used forest land. At the same time, state-development policies push for an all-out transformation of the local subsistence-oriented economies towards market-oriented cash-crop production and small-scale agro-forestry. The paper examines the social and environmental consequences for Katu communities of these twin processes, seemingly opposed but unfolding side by side as parts of a single "sustainable-development package". It argues that the state policies engender growing inequalities and the progressive erosion of local communities while at the same time accelerating environmental destruction and, seemingly paradoxically, deepening poverty.
The institutionalization of indigenous poverty in upland Vietnam: the case of the Katu:
The paper examines the state driven social construction of poverty in indigenous upland communities in Vietnam. Through an analysis of the 2010 official poverty census in five indigenous Katu communities, the paper looks at how the survey measures and implicitly defines poverty, and how it is actually carried out at community level. The analysis suggests that the survey enacts a particular vision of development which not only is greatly at odds with local realities but also effectively contributes to redefine reality in terms of its own categories. Katu villagers increasingly see themselves as "poor" - and thus as legitimate targets for development interventions. In their own eyes, deep poverty rather than ethnic identity is what distinguishes them from the majority population. Yet, being "poor Vietnamese" rather than "Katu others" bring them closer to the majority population and into the folds of what they seem to regard as a "benevolent" state.
Publication strategy
Several papers, based on conference presentations and project reports are in preparation. The two draft papers referred to above are planned for international reviewed journals with me as principal author (to be submitted 2015). The three research reports by my local collaborators listed below are planned to be submitted with me as co-author to an English-speaking Vietnamese social science journal. Hopefully further papers will follow and, eventually, a monograph or edited volume.
 

Publications

Publications in preparation, conference presentations and unpublished project reports
Århem, K. 2012. Taming the forest, mastering people: development, conservation and the devolution of forestland in upland Vietnam. Paper presented at the EASA Conference in Paris, July 2012. (Publication in preparation).
Århem, Kaj. 2013. The institutionalization of indigenous poverty in upland Vietnam: the case of the Katu. Paper prepared for panel 13 at the EUROSEAS Conference in Lisbon, August 2013. (Publication in preparation).
Århem, Kaj. 2013. The great transformation: post-war development and the impact of forest policies on indigenous communities in the uplands of Central Vietnam. Paper presented at the panel “Indigenous Futures”, SANT Conference, Uppsala, May 2013. The panel was convened by K. Århem and I. Slotte. (An edited volume based on the panel papers is contemplated). 
Pham van Loi, 2014. The building of Tay Giang district town: the impact of urbanization on a Katu community (unpublished project report)
Pham van Loi, 2014. Changing livelihood in a Trieng-Katu community in Song Thanh Nature Reserve in Quang Nam, Vietnam, (unpublished project report)
Quang Anh, 2014. Land-use and socio-economic change in Katu villages of Avuiong commune (unpublished project report).