Contending views and conflicts over land in the Red River delta since decollectivization

Contending Views and Conflicts over Land in the Red River Delta since Decollectivization is an anthropological study in which I offer a new approach exploring the viewpoints of various parties to analyze their attitudes, relations and conflicts over land in Vietnam's dynamic Red River delta after decollectivization. I also evaluate how and in what ways industrialization and modernization, as well as the effects of urbanization, marketization, and to a lesser extent globalization, have affected Red River Delta villagers' views and relations towards agricultural land. Drawing on various sources of data, especially ethnographic field research, I examine local responses to a number of essential land issues such as the process of agricultural decollectivization, programs for land use rights compensation, the politics of communal land management and use, and the problem of local cadre corruption in relation to land resources. My detailed descriptions and analyses of a number of land-based conflicts not only demonstrate the various meanings and values of land for the parties involved, but also show the complicated picture of attitudes, relations and conflicts over land. Moving beyond reflections of various existing theoretical perspectives on agrarian and peasant studies such as moral economy,political economy, socio-cultural dynamics, everyday politics and others, I present an overall argument of contending views as the dynamics for conflicts over land rights. More specifically, I argue that in the context of significant changes in the land tenure regime and related socio-economic programs in Vietnam, and under the effects of urbanization, marketization and globalization in the studied area since decollectivization, the meaning and value of agricultural land have increased to both villagers, the state and other parties. In such a dynamic context, diverse groups of ordinary villagers share some· common views that both agree and disagree with the view of some state institutions over decision-making, distribution, and holding of quyJn sa hitu [ownership rights], quyen quam ly (management rights], and quyen su dung [use rights] to agricultural land. The contending views toward such land rights have led a number of villagers to become involved in public resistance in land conflicts, and as a result, in the dynamics of land-based conflicts in a number of communities. These contending views and conflicts over land have affected the state in different ways, including changing state land tenure policy to accommodate the villagers' views and to resolve land-based conflicts

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

Contending views and conflicts over land in Vietnam's Red River Delta

This study offers an approach about the nature of peasants and the reasons for their political actions. It examines the views of different parties towards the question on how land should be owned, managed, used, by whom, for whose benefits, and uncover as well as explains the resulting conflicts over land rights in the Red River Delta since decollectivisation. It postulates that the contending views among parties over decision-making, distribution, and holding of land rights, create dynamics for conflicts, which take place under the form of public resistance, in a number of communities

Conflits fonciers entre l’État et les paysans : l’anthropologue confronté au terrain

Introduction Le monde paysan vietnamien est le théâtre de vives tensions et de conflits opposant les paysans aux autorités publiques. L’enjeu est la gestion de la terre qui échappe aux paysans suite à la reprise des terres qui leur ont anciennement été distribuées. Cette reprise est justifiée par les autorités par la nécessité d’implanter de nouvelles entreprises dans un contexte de forte extension urbaine. Une telle dépossession est en principe compensée par des rétributions substantielles o..

Chapter 2. Agricultural Land Claims in the Red River Delta during Decollectivization

Introduction In the 1960s, in the field of political anthropology, after the structural-functional analysis, in addition to the process approach that focuses on the processual dimension of politics, the game theory was introduced into political anthropology, and it soon became a classic approach for analyzing politics from an anthropological perspective. The game theory has been well developed in Stratagems and Spoils by Bailey. It seeks to discover the normative and pragmatic rules of politi..

Norms and Practices in Contemporary Rural Vietnam

Since the 1980s, while trying to maintain political stability and territorial integrity, the Vietnamese state has strongly moved towards the transformation of a centrally-planned economy to a more market-oriented model, in which private, foreign and joint-venture businesses are increasingly becoming the key pillars of the national economy. Another key aspect of the Đổi Mới's agenda was a fundamental shift in the party-state's foreign relations policy toward a normalization of Vietnam's diplomatic and trading relations with China, the United States, and other countries since the early 1990s. Over twenty years after the Đổi Mới renewal renovation, Vietnam has been praised by various domestic and international institutions for its “impressive” achievements in socio-economic development and poverty reduction and for its gradual liberalization and market diversification, coupled with its commitment to equality. Consequently, this has changed the relationship between the party-state and society in a number of fields, including the control of agricultural land and other forms of natural resources. Such transition marks a great change in our scholarly understanding of Vietnam. It has opened the door for intellectual exchange between academics and has resulted in a great amount of research and new knowledge/publications in different languages about various domains regarding Vietnamese society, including the relationships between the state and society at different levels and in various sectors or geographic areas. Among them, studies like those of Kerkvliet, Fforde and others, have developed the “everyday politics approach”, which examines social interactions on an everyday action basis. This approach “from below” has given a fresh impetus to the study of social relations in Vietnam. However, our observations regarding academic research show that besides a number of rich ethnographic studies, there are many analyses from different social science disciplines that give a generalized view of trends of development and change in Vietnamese society over the past decades with limited field data. This means that research projects based on first-hand data from longer periods of fieldwork and qualitative investigations are still inadequate. As a result, we are suggesting that more field-based research be carried out in order to enhance and promote our understanding of Vietnam, especially its processes of socio-political changes