Capital accumulation and peasants' disempowerment in the dairy sector in Vietnam: an institutionalist perspective

This paper presents some features of today's Vietnamese agrarian capitalism. Our study focuses on the dairy sector, which has been greatly concerned by private firms' investment and industrialization, in connexion with a dynamic peasant economy. In order to understand competition and complementarities between farmers and private firms in the dairy sector, we analyze 4 types of "social rules" that we discuss in the method section: governance structure, property rights, rules of exchange and corporate control. Our conceptual framework is applied to one of the most dynamic milk shed located in Hanoi city, where we conducted field visits. Our results show that the rise of private capitalist firms results from various economic reforms that have entirely transformed the governance structures of the whole Vietnamese economy. In the production sector, land property rights reforms have secured peasant family farms who remain the main providers of fresh milk, despite the rise of industrial farms set-up by dairy firms. The development of written contracts between companies and farmers, as well as the establishment of quality specifications, tend to make the rules of exchange more formalized. These transformations are part of a gradual change in the conceptions expressed by local stakeholders on the political project related to the sector in favor of capital accumulation in private firms. We observe that those social rules result from power relations, conflicts and alliances between actors. They also are hybridized with surviving interpersonal networks. Balancing the respective roles of farmers and private firms in the emerging market economy requires precautious policy decisions. The future of family farming relies in particular on the governance of land property rights. Farmers' future will also be heavily influenced by their capacity to engage in formalized transactions with processing industries, thereby accepting a kind of disempowerment

The Anglo-French defence partnership after the “Brexit” vote: new incentives and new dilemmas

Since the signing of the Lancaster House Treaties in 2010, the bilateral partnership between Paris and London has been a key axis for both countries’ involvement in Europe’s security and defence affairs. What impact can the result of the “Brexit” vote have on this rising partnership? This contribution argues that while the partnership will undoubtedly remain central in Europe, the two parties will in the future both face contradictory incentives. While London will have new incentives to invest in its relationship with Paris, it might also try to discourage further defence integration in the EU. On the contrary, France – which had been more forward leaning, and concerned with Britain’s lack of commitment to a bilateral relationship they considered central – will be tempted to look elsewhere. Indeed, the ambition for a militarily active European Union with a strong defence industrial base may prove contradictory with an investment in the bilateral partnership with London

Analytical approximation to the multidimensional Fokker--Planck equation with steady state

The Fokker--Planck equation is a key ingredient of many models in physics, and related subjects, and arises in a diverse array of settings. Analytical solutions are limited to special cases, and resorting to numerical simulation is often the only route available; in high dimensions, or for parametric studies, this can become unwieldy. Using asymptotic techniques, that draw upon the known Ornstein--Uhlenbeck (OU) case, we consider a mean-reverting system and obtain its representation as a product of terms, representing short-term, long-term, and medium-term behaviour. A further reduction yields a simple explicit formula, both intuitive in terms of its physical origin and fast to evaluate. We illustrate a breadth of cases, some of which are `far' from the OU model, such as double-well potentials, and even then, perhaps surprisingly, the approximation still gives very good results when compared with numerical simulations. Both one- and two-dimensional examples are considered.Comment: Updated version as publishe

Local trajectories in the Vietnamese transition to market economy: Alliances between firms, farmers and government officials in the dairy industry

Since the end of 1980s, the liberalization of the Vietnamese economy has led to the rapid emergence of a private dairy sector. This fast development can be understood as a major institutional change from centrally planned and collectivist economy to market economy. We analyze this institutional change using the political-cultural approach (Fligstein, 2001). We collected data and interviewed stakeholders in the Ba Vi District (North of Vietnam), where dairy has become an important economic activity, as well as at national level. Our approach considers the historical transformation that happened in the last 30 years. We analyze 4 types of rules (or social structures) that shape the current architecture of markets: property rights, governance structure, rules of exchange and conception of control. We show how those rules result from conflicts or alliances between farmers, firms and government officials in the attempt to stabilize the market. We consider in particular how stakeholders response to crises on the market. In Ba Vi, we observe an original market structure where the alliance between the State, the farmers and some dairy corporation has led to the emergence of an inclusive system. However, since the Melamine Crisis in 2008, and in the context of new liberal economic policies, the IDP dairy industry has become dominant in the market. In an attempt to reduce the competition for the collection of milk in the District, a new alliance between this firm and the local Government has emerged, which appears to be less inclusive. Our results also point out that the consumers and the media are playing an increasingly important role in the formation of those institutions. Through reputation and trust mechanisms, consumers are in position of legitimating – or challenging this new capitalist market structure. (Résumé d'auteur

Mesure 3d de champs cinématiques dans le cas d'un contraste non uniformément réparti.

Les techniques de corrélation d'image numérique ont récemment été étendues afin de pouvoir analyser des séquences d'images tridimensionnelles, obtenues par exemple par microtomographie X. La résolution et la résolution spatiale des champs de déformation mesurés dépendent directement de la répartition, de la taille et du contraste local des marqueurs utilisés pour réaliser l'appariement des images. Lorsqu'il est présent, le contraste naturel issu des hétérogénéités intrinsèques au matériau peut directement fournir ces marqueurs [1]. Lorsque celui-ci fait défaut, des marqueurs supplémentaires peuvent être ajoutés, mais leur répartition spatiale est difficile à maîtriser [2]. Dans les deux cas, le contraste local peut être fortement non-uniforme, contrairement à ce qui peut être obtenu avec un mouchetis de peinture en corrélation d'image de surface. Habituellement le calcul du critère de ressemblance est réalisé sur des sous-domaines espacés régulièrement. Cette discrétisation spatiale homogène facilite le post-traitement des données mais ne permet pas toujours une exploitation optimale du signal. En effet, les domaines de corrélation ne sont a priori pas centrés sur les marqueurs présentant le meilleur contraste, ce qui peut conduire à des erreurs de mesure. Il est proposé ici de déterminer la position des points de mesure (centre des domaines de corrélation) en fonction de plusieurs critères quantifiant la qualité du signal présent dans l'image. Les premières applications seront réalisées sur le matériau présenté dans [2] : des essais de traction sur une éprouvette entaillée en aluminium marqué par des inclusions de cuivre, puis sur le même matériau renforcé avec de larges particules sphériques de Zircone-Silice. Enfin, la déformation d'un alliage d'Aluminium-Cuivre en cours de solidification [3] sera analysée malgré un contraste local peu abondant dans la structure. [1] Bay ,Smith ,Fyhrie ,Saad, Digital volume correlation : three-dimensional strain mapping using X-ray tomography, Experimental Mechanics, 1999. [2] Bornert ,Chaix ,Doumalin ,Dupré ,Fournel, Jeulin, Maire, Moreaud, Moulinec, Mesure tridimensionnelle de champs cinématiques par imagerie volumique pour l'analyse des matériaux et des structures. Instrumentation, Mesure, Métrologie, 2004. [3] Limodin, Salvo, Suery, Dimichiel, In-situ investigation by X-Ray tomography of the overall and local microstructural changes occurring during partial remelting of an Al-15.8wt%Cu alloy, Acta Materialia, 2007

Milk mega farms and the new agrarian capitalism: the multiple dimensions of the current socio-technical transition in Vietnam

In the last 30 years, the Vietnamese dairy sector has gone through a deep transformation. We use the concept of “sociotechnical transition” to capture the multiple dimensions of these changes that reflect the renovation of Asian capitalism and society. Our research comprises a multi-disciplinary long term field study conducted in Hanoi Province, as well as an analysis of national regulations and secondary databases. Based on that, we identify different sociotechnical regimes that govern the dairy sector for a given period. Those regimes are defined as coherent sets of practices, techniques and social rules. From the Doi Moi reforms up to the mid-2000s, the development of Vietnamese dairy production was dominated by the complementarity between small peasant farms, private milk processors and public sector services. We propose to qualify this timeframe as a “peasant” sociotechnical regime. In the late 2000s, however, this regime ran up against questions concerning the underlying food model, mainly due to its dependence on imported milk powder. Following the 2008 melamine health crisis linked to imports from China, Vietnam entered into a “corporate” dairy development regime which gives more space to agro-industries and capitalist logics. This change of direction profoundly changed the outcome of the "transition". The emergence of mega farms holding several thousand cows reflects this change of direction pushed to the extreme. Mega farms reflect the importance of financial capital and high technologies in the transformation of Vietnam's agricultural economy. The new socio-technical regime also relies on a social construction of new food models concerned with “health safety”. But the rise of this “corporate” regime is constraint by the fact that the State, who formally owns the land, tends to preserve land-use rights for smallholder farmers. This situation results in a coexistence of the 2 sociotechnical regimes, rather than in the replacement of one by the other