Variations of Late Socialist Development: Integration and Marginalization in the Northern Uplands of...

Original Article

Variations of Late Socialist Development: Integration and Marginalization in

the Northern Uplands of Vietnam and Laos

Rupert Friederichsena,* and Andreas Neefb

aManchester Metropolitan University, ManchesterbKyushu University, Fukuoka

*E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract This article analyzes the dynamics of integration and marginalization inherent in thedevelopment process experienced by the rural upland areas of Vietnam and Lao PDR. Focusing onthe post-1980s reform period, we compare the two uplands areas along the three themes ethnicdifference and hierarchy, development policies and market permeation. In both countries, the lowand differential status of ethnic minorities is reflected in policy formulation and implementation,contradicting the official rhetoric and goal of unity and equality among ethnic groups. Marketinfluences are increasingly permeating the uplands of both countries although to varying degrees,connecting them with not only national, but also global commodity markets, and leading to in-creasing differentiation within and between ethnic groups. These development trajectories integrateand marginalize ethnic minority groups and individuals simultaneously but differentially.

Cet article analyse les dynamiques d’integration et de marginalisation liees au processus de devel-oppement qui a lieu dans les regions rurales montagneuses du Vietnam et du Laos. En nous concentrantsur la periode de reformes posterieure aux annees 80, nous effectuons une comparaison de deux regionsmontagneuses, autour de trois themes: differences ethniques et hierarchie, politiques de developpement,et penetration de marche. Dans les deux pays, la situation– generalement defavorable– des minoritesethniques se reflete dans la formulation et la mise en œuvre des politiques, ce qui contredit le discours etl’objectif officiel de promotion de l’unite et de l’egalite entre les differents groupes ethniques. De plus,l’influence du marche se fait de plus en plus sentir dans les regions montagneuses des deux pays – bienqu’a des degres differents – ce qui les met en contact avec des marches non seulement nationaux maisaussi internationaux, et accroıt de ce fait la differenciation tant au sein qu’entre les differents groupesethniques. Ces trajectoires de developpement integrent et marginalisent les minorites ethniques et lesindividus de maniere simultanee mais differenciee.

European Journal of Development Research (2010) 22, 564–581. doi:10.1057/ejdr.2010.23Published online 20 May 2010

Keywords: integration; marginalization; uplands; Vietnam; Lao PDR; rural development

Introduction

Among the countries of Mainland Southeast Asia, Vietnam and Lao PDR are ethnicallythe most diverse, with both countries officially acknowledging around 50 ethnic minoritygroups, most of them concentrated in the upland regions. Scholarly interest in SoutheastAsian uplands spaces and their inhabitants has increased recently, owing to two sets ofreasons. First, Southeast Asia’s uplands regions face specific development challenges.Vietnam’s achievement of combining economic growth with poverty reduction has beenhailed as a success story by development organizations (Vietnam Consultative Group,2003, p. xi), but the fruits of economic development have been unequally distributed, with

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differences between uplands and lowlands and between ethnic majority and minoritiesremaining among the most pronounced dimensions of poverty (Minot and Baulch, 2005).Lao PDR’s achievements in economic development are more modest in scale, but havedrawn criticism for the high costs paid by ethnic minority communities (Evrard andGoudineau, 2004; Baird and Shoemaker, 2007). Second, recent theoretical work haspressed for correcting the long-dominant ‘imperial gaze’ of the social sciences, an elitistperspective, typically paying scant attention to socially marginal groups, by placing moreemphasis on the voices, perspectives, and circumstances of subordinate and marginalizedindividuals and groups (Rigg, 1997; Yukio and Wichienkeeo, 2002). This elevates thestudy of marginal uplands spaces and peoples from a topic area of professional interestonly to few disciplines such as anthropology and development studies to a more broadlyrelevant field of inquiry based on which existing narratives of, for example, decoloniza-tion, state formation and decollectivization, can be challenged and enriched in variousways. Based on work on the history of the Southeast Asian mountain massif, James Scott(2009), for instance, suggests a new genre of area studies. Spanning several states, thisregion holds general lessons concerning the state’s limits to assert authority across itsterritory, people’s capacity to evade state control and taxation, and concerning ethnicallyand culturally highly heterogeneous spaces as co-evolving together with expanding em-pires. In line with Scott’s historical analysis, this article is sceptical of claims that themodern state has effective and extensive control over Southeast Asian uplands, and in-stead assumes a complex, changing and contested interplay between the state, people’sidentities and market forces.

The basic problem that we address in this article is the ‘quality of development’ ex-perienced by traditionally marginal groups living in the Laotian and Vietnamese northernuplands. Our starting point is to acknowledge that recent socio-economic change has beenoccurring at a very fast pace and affecting local cultures and livelihoods deeply. We thenargue that this process of change is best understood as an increase in the integration of thetwo uplands regions with their national (and the global) economic, social and culturalcontexts. Crucially, integration here must be understood as an ambivalent process thatmay well contain forces of marginalization and have high social and ecological costs, inshort ‘maldevelopment’ (Bell, 1996) as an outcome. As Rigg (1997, pp. 23–29) argues, theambivalence of Southeast Asia’s recent development trajectory is most visible in thegrowth of economic dependency, rising inequality (between people, between urban andrural areas, and between regions), the undermining of local cultures and traditions, andenvironmental costs of development. This means that modernization, particularly as aconsequence of state intervention and market forces, has not only left out some groups buthas also created new forms of poverty (cf. Rigg, 2005). The quality of development in theuplands will be judged against these criteria, and by what we understand as assessmentsmade by the people living in the areas.

The next section sets out the authors’ vantage point and key concepts informingthe argument. The remainder of this article will comparatively discuss the integrationof rural uplands regions and people(s) organized under the three headlines of ethnicdifference and hierarchy, development policy and intervention, and the expansion ofmarkets. Our argument is that drawing these three dimensions of integration/marginalization together allows for a nuanced analysis of development occurringin the uplands within the context of the modern states of Lao PDR and Vietnam thatrepresents processes in their complexity and ambivalence while allowing cross-countrycomparison.

Variations of Late Socialist Development

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Studying Processes of Integration and Marginalization

This article draws on empirical data collected during the authors’ work in a long-terminterdisciplinary research programme into sustainable land use and rural development inmountainous regions of Southeast Asia (The Uplands Program)1 and on relevant Englishlanguage academic literature. The map in Figure 1 shows the fieldwork locations: Son Laprovince, where the first author worked between 2002 and 2005, and the three provincesBokeo, Sayabouri and Luang Namtha of Lao PDR, where the second author’s empiricalresearch took place in March 2007 and March 2008. Both authors conducted supple-mentary studies in Vietnam’s Bac Kan province between 1999 and 2002.

Our qualitative fieldwork used participant observation, semi-structured interviews andresearch conversations and various forms of visualized communication techniques (forexample mapping, diagramming) with respondents of ten ethnic groups (see Table 1).Fieldwork focused on villagers’ livelihoods and the village level but also involved inter-views with local government officials, and other knowledgeable village-external actors,such as traders and development experts. The qualitative nature of our empirical approachdoes not allow for simple generalizations across the extensive and highly diverse northernmountain regions of the two countries. What we aim for is transferability and con-textualization. We hope to achieve transferability by painting a picture rich enough indetail to give readers a sense of local as well as external views on dynamics and salientissues, and by organizing the disposition through the below concepts which, the literaturesuggests, do cover key issues to understand the uplands regions of Southeast Asia. Bycontextualizing our specific observations, we establish in which ways and to which degreeconditions differ across the uplands. The contextualized trajectories of rapid social,

Figure 1: Map of study areas.

Friederichsen and Neef

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political and economic change provide an outlook to the possibilities open to other, maybestill less dynamic, provinces.

To understand development in the northern uplands of Laos and Vietnam, it is helpfulto conceptualize it as involving the concurrent processes of integration and margin-alization, because this allows for seeing integration as fundamentally ambiguous.Integration is ambiguous because it includes the possibility that impoverishment, dee-pening dependency and cultural marginalization may follow integration. At the sametime, integration may as well open up new economic, cultural and social opportunitiesfor individuals with ethnic majority or minority backgrounds. This focus is sensitive to‘grey zones’ between the poles of the uplands/lowlands and ethnic majority/minoritybinaries, and brings to the fore links and sometimes blurred boundaries between thetwo sides.

Our analysis describes the specifics of social processes as a necessary basis for a cautiousnormative assessment of development trends, rather than a comprehensive coverage of thevast diversity of individuals’ and groups’ experiences of change in the two countries’northern uplands. It is based on three key themes emerging from the literature onSoutheast Asia’s uplands and ethnic minority problematic. First is the literature onethnicity and interethnic relations in Southeast Asia, mostly written by anthropologists.The overwhelming concern here is with the power exercised through the social construct ofethnic identity; that is power resting on the majority ethnic group’s imposition of theirown cultural frames of reference by means of which minority populations can be declareddeviant from that norm, backward, and in need of ‘being improved/developed’ (forexample, Chiengthong, 2003). Second is the body of literature concerned with the politicsof development and policies directed at ethnic minorities. Here the main focus is onhow majority ethnic groups mobilize notions of cultural superiority to legitimize policiesdirected at ‘developing’ ethnic minorities, and the often adverse effects that such stateaction has on ethnic minority groups (for example, Duncan, 2004). However, assessingpolicy impact must not loose sight of the gap between the states’ rhetoric of control andthe apparatus’ limits of implementing policy as well as local people’s ability to evade thestate (cf. Scott, 2009). The third strand of relevant literature is concerned with economicand ecological questions arising from agrarian and demographic change occurring in theregion’s uplands regions. Here it has been pointed out that it is particularly ethnic minorityfarmers who lose out in processes of economic differentiation and become increasinglyvulnerable to impoverishment and environmental degradation (Rambo and Jamieson,2003; Bouapao, 2005; Rigg, 2005).

Table 1: Overview of fieldwork sites and ethnic groups

Country Province District Ethnic group

Vietnam Son La Yen Chau, Mai Son Black Thai, Hmong, Kh’mu, KinhBac Kan Ba Be, Cho Don Tay, Dao, Hmong

Laos Bokeo Pha Oudom, Meung Kh’mu, Hmong, Black Thai, Black Lahu,Tai Lameth, Yuan, Lao

Luang Namtha Sing, Nalae Akha, Hmong, Kh’mu, Tai Lue,Tai Lameth

Sayabouri Sienghone, Khop Kh’mu, Hmong, Tai Lue, Lawmai



Ethnic Difference and Hierarchy

The pre-colonial Laotian and Vietnamese uplands remained largely outside the purview ofearly Vietnamese and Lao states (Proschan, 2003; Ovesen, 2004), and were only effectivelycontrolled by lowland-based centres of power, and de facto integrated into modern statesfrom the late nineteenth century onward (Pelley, 1998; Ovesen, 2004, Scott, 2009). Duringthe two countries’ anti-colonial struggle, different ethnic groups have played important,and sometimes contrasting, roles (see MacAlister (1967) for Vietnam; regarding Laos, seebelow).

In the post-colonial era, the northern Vietnamese and Laotian upland areas haveturned into national borderlands with a population comprising both the traditionaldiversity of ethnic groups plus lowland in-migrants. The unprecedented levels of post-warinternal migration have not only dramatically altered the ethnic make-up of both coun-tries’ uplands but also reflect strategic territorial priorities of the post-colonial govern-ments. In both cases, internal migration was intended to bolster control over the whole ofthe national territory, to consolidate national borders, to establish collectivized produc-tion, and to address perceived imbalances in population density. Vietnam’s ‘under-populated’ uplands were seen as the natural answer to the long-standing overpopulation ofthe delta and coastal plains, whereas the intention for the regions of northern Laos wherepopulation had been decimated during the armed conflicts was to repopulate them(Evrard and Goudineau, 2004). In Vietnam, Kinh migrants from the lowlands were settledalong central roads in so-called New Economic Zones with collectivized production(Hardy, 2003, p. 110), contributing to the increase in the northern upland population ofaround 300 per cent between 1960 and 1984 (Jamieson et al, 1998, p. 10). Resettlement innorthern Laos was a measure of the communist regime to reward some minority groupssuch as the Mon-Khmer for their loyalty in the fight against the Royalists.

These post-colonial and post-war population movements meant that in both countriesthe association of uplands¼ ethnic minorities versus lowlands¼ ethnic majority becameincreasingly weak, and everyday encounters with ethnically ‘others’ and cross-culturalfamiliarity became a matter of course for most uplands inhabitants.

The force of pressure for change on minority customs, cultures and patterns of socialorganization exerted by the expansion of the socialist states and their projects of socialistdevelopment is difficult to gauge. It is unclear to which degree economic socialist in-stitutions such as the cooperative production system and state enterprises actually tookhold in the two uplands economies. Illustrative of this is Vietnam’s Son La province whereSikor (1999) describes how Black Thai communities faced national policy intending toreplace traditional peasant agriculture, but also as making some concessions to localcustoms and culture. In Laos, the attempt of the Pathet Lao to collectivize agriculturalproduction into ‘peasant communes’ lasted only from 1978 to 1988 and appears to haveaffected only the more accessible lowlands parts of the country at the time.

Devising official and allegedly scientific ethnic classifications and the ensuing creationof an ethnic hierarchy have been recognized as key ways to harness human diversity forpolitical purposes (Keyes, 2002). Problematically, this transforms ethnicity into a matterof ‘scientific’ and administrative classification rather than self-ascribed identity. Vietna-mese post-colonial ethnographers started working in the uplands while the country wasstill at war, and established a list of 54 ethnic groups, 53 of which were termed ‘ethnicminorities’ (dan toc thieu so). This list remains the basis of official classification of ethnicgroups today (Pelley, 1998). The official characterization of minority ethnic groups chiefly



as backwards and deficient has provided the justification of development efforts as ‘help’to overcome so-called backward and harmful ways of thinking and living (cf. DangNghiem Van et al, 1993, pp. 11–15).

The various ethnic groups in Lao PDR have conventionally been categorized into threegroups: Lao Loum or lowland Lao, Lao Theung or midland Lao and Lao Sung or highlandLao as an expression of the attempt of the Pathet Lao to accord all ethnic groups a certaindegree of ‘Lao-ness’ (Evans, 2003, p. 214). While it was later replaced by other classifi-cations, for example, based on ethno-linguistic similarities2 – the tripartite categorizationalong a topographic gradient is still commonly used by local people. The Lao govern-ment’s political rhetoric – enshrined in Article 8 of the 1992 constitution – recognizes andtolerates ethnic diversity under the ‘Lao first’ umbrella (Milloy and Payne, 1997, p. 437).The rhetoric of minorities’ right to preserve and improve their own traditions and cultureis, however, in sharp contrast with Lao policies which have strongly promoted the as-similation of ethnic minorities into the Lao dominant culture.

The political use of ethnic classifications thus reveals contradictions between the idealsof unity-in-diversity, a multi-ethnic nation and fraternal solidarity on the one hand, andthe typically unquestioned notion of ethnic hierarchies. In this tension, the ideal ofequality often loses out against ‘internal orientalism’ (Schein (2000) cited in Duncan (2004,p. 11)), the mindset asserting the superiority of the lowlands majority people and thusjustifying development intervention to ‘raise the civilizational level’ of ethnic minorities –against their will if necessary (cf. Michaud, 2000).

The field of agri-‘culture’ is paradigmatic in illustrating how majority cultural notionsare mobilized to undermine ethnic minority practices. Across Southeast Asia, wet rice-based agriculture is a defining aspect of lowlands agriculture and an important (but notexclusive) cultural marker of ethnic majority groups. This contrasts with the swiddenfarming systems of some uplands ethnic minority groups. Swidden agriculturalists havebeen heavily criticized by governments across the region for cultivating their fieldsnon-permanently and relocating settlements following new clearances. Thus, swiddenagriculture and ‘migrant’ or ‘nomadic’ practices have widely been held responsible for thedestruction of the uplands’ forest resources.

The Vietnamese and the Laotian governments have both proclaimed strong policiesaimed at eradicating shifting cultivation, but the force and significance of policy im-plementation varies considerably between the two countries. Lao government documentssuch as the 2003 National Poverty Eradication Programme have expressed the govern-ment’s determination to completely eradicate shifting cultivation by 2010. In Vietnam, theFixed Cultivation, Fixed Settlement programme, promulgated in 1968, targeted uplandethnic groups and their alleged role in deforestation. This law was explicitly aimed at‘combining sedentarization with collectivization, resolving the problems of nomadicfarming and forest destruction at the same time. The resolution had three clear objectives:to achieve stable livelihoods, stable mind-frames, and ethnic unity’ (Khong Dien, 2002,p. 93). Sedentarization, therefore, is about more than simply reducing people’s mobility, itis also about making uplanders’ agricultural practices and culture follow lowlandspatterns. This devalues traditional farming practices and knowledge of complex systemssuch as ‘composite swiddening’, a combination of rotating uplands swiddens and per-manent paddy (wet rice) cultivation used by the Tai (Rambo, 1998; Tran Duc Vien, 2004).

In contradiction to the official rhetoric of unity and equality among ethnic groups,government policies have rather reflected the low and differential status of Laotian andVietnamese ethnic minorities. The impact on minority cultures of such government efforts



has therefore often been criticized, as ‘domestication’ of minorities (McCaskill andKampe, 1997) or even as the continuation of colonial practices of censorship andrepression of ethnic minority others (Pelley, 1998). The Laotian resettlement policy to‘bring uplanders down into the valleys’ stands out in its negative effects. Those resettledfind themselves in increasingly densely populated lowland areas, leaving them with limitedaccess to resources and few choices other than continuing their previous slash-and-burnagricultural practices with reduced fallow periods. Furthermore, resettlement has oftendisrupted social and economic relations and resulted in a deepening, and even creation of‘new’ poverty (Rigg, 2005). In Vietnam, the policy of bringing ‘lowlanders up into the hills’and integrating the uplands economically are the key sources of pressure on minorities toassimilate, with differential effects on individual groups (see below).

During fieldwork in both countries, differences in status between the ethnic groupswere often explicitly mentioned in interview situations, and with regard to severaldimensions such as knowledge about agricultural innovations, often with reference to‘doing business’, but also political representation – a Vietnamese Black Thai farmerasserted that ‘there are Thai people in the National Assembly, but no Kh’mu or Hmong’.A status hierarchy based on ethnicity thus exists not only as seen from the nationalpolitical centre and the ethnic majority, but also from the perspective of ethnic minorityvillagers.

The Policy and Practice of Uplands Development

The notion of an ethnic hierarchy outlined above underpins state-led development policyand interventions in the uplands, while masking the degree to which development activitiesare essentially driven by lowland agendas and interests. In addition, the gap betweenpolicy and practice is often wide, and policy outcomes are contested. In Vietnam, figuresconcerning the results of over 30 years of resettlement programmes vary widely, and thestrength of the link between resettlement and abandoning swidden cultivation is contested(cf. McElwee, 2004). In northern Laos, while official government data report a drasticdecline of swidden agriculture, studies based on satellite imagery data suggest that thearea under slash-and-burn production has actually increased in recent years (Linquistet al, 2006).

Decollectivizing Agriculture: Differential Impact of Land Allocation

Reacting to severe economic difficulties encountered by their centrally planned economiesin the mid-1980s, Vietnam and Laos have both embarked on trajectories of transitiontowards a market economy, reinstating the farm household as a central economic unit inthe agricultural sector. Vietnam’s doi moi reforms towards a ‘socialist market economy’has been studied in detail with regard to Vietnam’s lowlands (Kerkvliet, 2005), whereas thestudy of the specific nature of post-doi moi rural change in the uplands relies mostly on apatchy literature of case studies (Castella and Dang Dinh Quang, 2002; Le Trong Cuc andRambo, 2002; Tran Duc Vien et al, 2005).

Vietnam’s Land Law of 1993 foresaw the allocation of land use rights to householdsand state or private organizations for specified periods of between 20 and 50 years, thusallowing farmers to exchange, lease, inherit and mortgage land use rights. Land allocationfollowing the 1993 law created numerous tensions between customary land tenure



arrangements and the new formal rules. Sikor (1999) points out the friction between thenew law assuming fixed field boundaries and the traditionally fluid nature of Black Thailand tenure on hill slopes, where boundaries shifted from year to year according to thelabour availability within a household. In other cases, government offices issued contra-dicting land titles and the maps accompanying those land titles were highly imprecise(cf. Rambo and Tran Duc Vien, 2001; Neef et al, 2006). In a Hmong community, villagerscame into conflict over the rights to paddy rice terraces that had been constructed duringthe collective period but were located on land traditionally belonging to one clan (Corlin,2004). In a case in Bac Kan province, land allocation resulted in the concentration ofpaddy land in the hands of the pre-cooperative owners belonging to one ethnic group(Tay), whereas 20 per cent of the district’s population (mostly Hmong and Dao) were leftwithout access to paddy land (Zingerli et al, 2002, p. 260). In Son La, we have found thatformal land title does not necessarily translate into enhanced tenure security for all (Wirthet al, 2004; Neef et al, 2006). To the contrary, those Black Thai households who werepowerless in their own community received formal titles to land that was at the same timelegally declared unsuitable for agricultural use and only to be used for forestry, thusbecoming vulnerable to losing their land while receiving formal land titles.

In contrast to its socialist neighbour, the Lao government has put much less effort onclearly defining land rights of upland communities since the late 1980s. The recentlystarted land allocation process in the northern upland areas has been strongly supportedby international donors, but particularly the issuing of temporary land use certificates(TLUC) is currently one of the most controversial issues in rural development and landuse planning projects. District Agricultural and Forestry Offices issue TLUC, mostly inthe context of village-based land use planning (VLUP) and on upland fields, for a periodof 3 years. TLUCs entail a number of conditionalities, such as permanent use of the land,prohibition of sale, and acceptable land use practices depending on the slope angle. Forthe case of non-compliance, several stages of fines are foreseen. In accordance with thenational policy to phase out swidden cultivation, only up to three plots can be allocatedunder the TLUC system. TLUCs are also intended to form the basis of calculating taxduties of farmers.

Implementing the TLUC system is fraught with problems. First, villagers often declareless than three plots or try to avoid the declaration of their upland fields altogetherto avoid taxation, when in reality, farm households may use up to 20 upland plots.Second, most TLUCs are not based on exact field measurements, but rely on roughestimates, representing upland plots in a strictly rectangular shape and with a standardsize. Third, no comprehensive system of storing the TLUCs is put in place; many docu-ments get lost or become unreadable owing to inappropriate storage, and TLUCs havealso been withdrawn by local authorities after few years. In sum, instead of increasinglevels of tenure security, they tend to make upland farmers’ tenure security even moreprecarious.

Beyond the shared gap between policy rhetoric and implementation, the two cases ofpost-collective land tenure reveal important differences. In northern Lao PDR, the at-tempt to expand the land allocation process into upland areas is more recent and canhardly be called a success. The remaining ambiguities and uncertainties surrounding landallocation raise doubts whether provincial and district governments are able and willing toprovide villagers with legal certainty regarding access to and use of natural resources. InVietnam’s northern uplands, where the process of formalizing individual land tenure hasbeen ongoing for over two decades, the issue is now largely settled.



Implementing Participation? Recent Rural Development Strategies

The wider strategies for rural development applied to uplands areas show a trend fromcentralized development planning to being increasingly grass-roots and market orientedand concerned with institutional design. At least in rhetoric, increasing the levels of citizenor stakeholder participation has been a key concern of recent, often internationally backedand funded development initiatives. Since they are embedded in one-party politicalsystems, spaces for public participation in the two countries must generally be assumed tobe limited in scope, fragile and dependent on official endorsement.

In Lao PDR, the most significant milestone in the change of rural development stra-tegies was the introduction of the New Economic Mechanism (NEM) or jintanakan mai in1986. Following the failed collectivization efforts from the late 1970s onwards, it aimed atrestructuring the predominantly subsistence-oriented rural sector to meet market demands(Bouapao, 2005; Rigg, 2005). Results of the NEM have been mixed, particularly becausethe provision of agricultural inputs, agricultural extension services and marketing systemsare still little developed. A key element of Laos’ 1998–2002 Rural Development Pro-gramme is the designation of so-called ‘Focal Sites’ (Bouapao, 2005). The rationale of the‘focal site’ strategy is to concentrate development efforts in certain geographical locations,where a range of government services are supposed to be provided in a more cost-effectiveway (Rigg, 2005). International donors reportedly provide around 80 per cent of theassociated costs of such focal sites (Baird and Shoemaker, 2007), often unaware or neg-ligent of the fact that this strategy goes along with massive dislocation and resettlementswhich have profound, although often unintended impacts on the affected communities.Certain ethnic minority groups are particularly prone to being merged with groups ofother ethnic origin: in Bokeo province, Hmong communities are often established nearKh’mu villages, obviously to curb their political and social influence in this sensitive Thai-Lao border region. Resettled Kh’mu families in Sayabouri province are usually mergedinto Tai Lue communities, apparently to speed up their ‘development’ towards a lowlandeconomic and social lifestyle.

Despite the growing importance of the private sector in Vietnam, state intervention inthe uplands during doi moi has remained significant. A great number of developmentpolicies (both national and provincial), programmes and projects have been directedspecifically towards the uplands; the Asian Development Bank lists 28 policies between1989 and 1998 (ADB, 2002, p. 11). The popular slogan ‘electricity, roads, schools and[health] centers’ or dien, duong, trung, tam, summarizes the traditional focus of deve-lopment efforts. One of the central national uplands development initiatives is known asProgramme 135, initiated in 1998 and investing primarily in small infrastructure in remoteand border areas in the northern and Central Highlands. Since 1998, the activities underthe Fixed Settlement, Fixed Cultivation programme have been merged into Programme135 (ADB, 2002, p. 12).

Since the beginning of the 1990s, international development agencies have becomeimportant players by providing loans and directly engaging in state intervention in theuplands. In addition to infrastructure provision, aid organizations also promote and in-troduce a number of new institutional arrangements in order to increase governments’downward accountability and their responsiveness to local needs.

In Vietnam, the so-called Grass Roots Democracy Decree (GRDD), issued in 1998, isamong the most prominent institutional innovations, which has met great interest frominternational donors. It details areas in which the population has to be informed and



consulted, where they have the right to decide on commune-level development invest-ments, and where they should monitor the implementation of projects. However, asidefrom available case studies, it is unclear to date how the GRDD has been implemented inthe uplands. In the remote northern province of Bac Kan, agriculture and forests play acentral and contested role in farmers’ livelihoods as well as nature protection initiatives(cf. Zingerli et al, 2002). We found that officials in Cho Don commune used the threat ofnot granting land titles (so-called red book certificates) to pressure farmers into plantinghedgerows, that is adopting an unpopular soil conservation measure (similar accountshave been reported in Yen Chau district, Son La province [Iven Schad, pers. comm.]).Thus, informal bargains between farmers and local state officials seem to continue withoutmajor changes despite the GRDD.

This indicates that, although the formal space for local participation in decisions overdevelopment activities has increased, it is unclear to which degree ethnic minority stake-holders can access and occupy this space. The ensemble of international developmentactors thus promotes decentralization and local democratization, and lobbies especiallyfor the poor and marginalized, often found among the smaller ethnic groups. However,the leverage this external advocacy has had over the formulation and implementation ofpolicies remains unclear. This is due, first, to the impact of international donors beinglimited in spatial outreach owing to project boundaries. Second, even within theseboundaries, the concentration of power in the party/state apparatus remains largelyunchecked.

Studies into the practice of donor-supported Village Development Planning (VDP) aresimilarly sobering concerning the promise of introducing an empowering, bottom-upprocess of planning in ethnic minority villages. We have found that while there may nowbe new and public planning meetings held in villages, the character of villagers’ partici-pation is tokenistic and their influence on actual decision-making processes within thebureaucracy is very limited (Nguyen Duy Linh et al, 2006). Several commune officials alsocommunicated clearly to us that VDP meetings had produced unrealistic wish listsand subsequent frustration among villagers when the demands were not fulfilled byhigher-level state agencies.

In Laos, VLUP has become the method of choice for decentralized implementation ofgovernment policies and the foundation of so-called area-based rural development plan-ning. Various bi- and multilateral rural development projects, stressing the participatoryprocess of land use planning, support the approach. Yet, participation in VLUP exercisesdiffers widely between villages. In some communities only 30 per cent of the villagersparticipated in the village survey; in other cases, the land use planning team only workedwith the village committee without informing other villagers. ‘Shortcuts’ in the VLUPprocess, that is leaving out certain methodical steps, were also common. Women weregenerally underrepresented in the VLUP process.

In addition, the authoritarian culture, prevalent in the organizations implementing landuse planning, clashes with the participatory ideals of VLUP. In most cases, the land useplanning team would inform villagers about the policies with regard to land use zoningand propose a number of regulations that villagers are asked to agree upon. Yet, ‘villagecommittees have some flexibility in suggesting the fines that should be imposed on thosevillagers that do not obey the rules’ as one officer put it in an interview. In all observed andreported VLUP cases, the process has not gone beyond the stage of ‘formulating andsigning village regulations’, which means that neither a detailed land management planhad been developed nor any monitoring and evaluation activities had been conducted.



Most village committees in the surveyed villages regarded the VLUP process as anactivity that was imposed on them by district authorities. They expected that their land useactivities – and swidden cultivation in particular – would be further restricted in the process,and villagers accordingly were generally reluctant to join the local VLUP committees.

All stakeholders (village committee members, project staff, government officials atvarious levels) agreed that villagers reject the government policy of land use zoningmaking the enforcement of forest regulations a major problem. Reported difficulties in-clude that some district authorities themselves did not respect the rules and even askedvillagers to cooperate with them in illicit logging activities in protection or conservationforests; that village committees had difficulties in enforcing rules against the customaryrights of old-established families; and that new migrants had no other choice than clearingforest for swidden cultivation.

We therefore conclude that the decentralization of government in the Lao socio-poli-tical context does not signify a real devolution of power to lower levels. Rather, it tends tobe a means to achieve tighter government control over rural people generally, and ethnicminority groups in particular, without giving them decision-making power.

Market Permeation

Market forces are increasingly important, ‘internally’ in shaping uplands societies, as wellas linking the Laotian and Vietnamese uplands to larger ‘external’ circuits of money,commodities and technologies. While the crops and commodity chains of concern and thedegree of market integration differ between the two countries, both have seen environ-mental and market risks rise together with income opportunities.

Trajectories of Economic Reform: jintanakan mai and doi moi in the Uplands

Lao PDR has a history of stunted economic development. Many government-supportedcash crop promotion projects, for example, for coffee and soybean, have failed owing tothe lack of market access and limited competitiveness as compared to their neighboursChina, Vietnam and Thailand. Even today, with improved connectivity to the neighbours’rapidly growing markets, these more powerful actors still mainly control the ‘rules of thegame’.

In comparison, markets have expanded swiftly in Vietnam’s northern uplands since thebeginning of doi moi. Aside from very remote and hard to access areas, farmers havegenerally expanded and intensified cash crop production, resulting in a wide variety offarming and livelihoods systems (Castella and Dang Dinh Quang, 2002; Le Trong Cuc andRambo, 2002). Most farmers have at least reduced or even fully replaced traditionalsubsistence crops, particularly upland rice, by cash crops such as maize (Wezel et al, 2002).Farmers in valley and foothill positions, that is mostly Kinh, Black Thai and Tay, producea wide range of crops such as hybrid maize, sugarcane, cotton, vegetable, cinnamon for themarket and are also increasingly engaged in commercial animal production (especially fishand pigs) (Friederichsen, 2009). Particularly well placed, however, to exploit emergingbusiness opportunities in the uplands are Kinh settlers. Their villages’ location along mainroads, their being part of the nationally dominant culture, as well as translocal kinshiplinks ensure the uplands Kinhs’ advantageous position relative to flows of informationand commodities between uplands and the rapidly industrializing lowlands. Compared



with the other ethnic groups, Kinh farmers also have access to relatively little land, whichhas forced them into higher-value crop (for example soybean, eggplant) and animalproduction earlier on. In combination, these factors enabled many Kinh to accumulatemore wealth giving them a head start in emerging profitable off-farm activities such asprocessing, trade, and transport, construction and tourism services.

Economic Links beyond National Boundaries

Laos is experiencing the mixed blessings of the rapid expansion of rubber plantations,driven mainly by Chinese investors (for example, Shi, 2008). The Lao government hailsrubber production as a means of poverty reduction, to support fixed settlements andpermanent agricultural practices in upland areas, and therefore as a means to eliminateswidden cultivation and opium poppy production. The Chinese government, on the otherhand, supports the expansion of rubber plantations to complement its domestic productionand to keep prices of the raw material low to protect the booming Chinese rubber-pro-cessing industry. Farmers in all three studied provinces are attracted by the prospects ofachieving similar prosperity as rubber growers in Southwest China and by various in-centives, such as permanent land use certificates, temporary wave of land taxes and riskreduction through contract farming arrangements. Chinese companies also lure farmersinto the rubber business through more short-term incentives, such as paying for labourinvestments in rubber plantations, providing children toys, sleeping bags and agriculturaltools, and even compensating the loss of rice during the time when the trees are too large tobe intercropped with upland rice, but still too small to produce latex. The expansion ofrubber brings a number of negative effects. First, in several districts village forest area andresources are declining owing to encroaching rubber – against what had been set out in landuse plans – with disastrous consequences for watershed hydrology and biodiversity. Sec-ond, a dramatic impact is expected in the livestock sector. Some farmers have already soldtheir cattle and buffaloes fearing tough fines if their ruminants destroy rubber plantationsof other farmers. Others are planning to reduce their herds of ruminants. Third, rubberexpansion along with the provision of permanent land documents is leading to a rapidlyevolving land market with the prospect of land concentration in the hands of wealthierfarmers and more powerful ethnic groups. Hmong villagers, for example, are buying up-land plots to plant rubber as well as paddy fields from cash-strapped Kh’mu and Akhafarmers. In one Kh’mu village, only 15 out of more than 100 households still own paddyfields. The adjacent village’s former village headman confiscated all farmers’ land titles toprevent another such ‘sell-out’. Fourth, Chinese rubber nurseries are causing increasingtensions between communities and local authorities over land. Local authorities are hesi-tant to compensate farmers, arguing that they had not properly managed the land pre-viously. Villagers, on their part, doubt the formally temporary nature of landconcessions and do not believe that the land will be returned to them after the end of thenurseries’ 4-year lease.

Since the early 1990s, hybrid maize has become a key production line for Vietnam’smountainous regions and is arguably the most consequential twentieth century farm in-novation for the northwestern uplands. The change from maize land races to hybrid seedsresulted in massive increases of productivity and cultivated area, higher investmentsand higher returns. Between 1998 and 2002, the area under maize in Son La increased by80 per cent (up to approximately 65 000 hectares in 2002), and total production more thandoubled to 175 000 tons for the province (Tran Dinh Thao, 2005, pp. 213–216). In 2004, a



prosperous Hmong family in Yen Chau could earn some 10–15 million Vietnamese Dong(VND) per year (roughly 625–940 US$) from a harvest of 10–15 tons of maize seeds,3

equivalent to the value of a new motorbike. Most of the maize harvest is marketed andtransported to the lowlands where it is processed into animal fodder. The demand formeat, in turn, stems mainly from the relatively affluent lowland population, whose risingincomes are directly linked to Vietnam’s recent industrialization and international in-tegration. Maize production thus connects remote uplands villages via lowlands meatmarkets with the global economy.

This new maize commodity chain has great but differential impact among ethnic groupsand households. In Son La, in particular, we found that Hmong farmers have profited andhave invested in their homesteads (improved roofs, concrete flooring), motorbikes, chil-dren’s education. In one case, they even collectively financed and constructed an allweather road giving access to three villages. These activities show that from the point ofview of villagers, the advantages of integration and economic opportunity by far outweighany fears of negative consequences such as the repression of their cultural difference, asexpressed by Pelley (1998) and others. Nevertheless, this economic growth storyencounters ecological limits and broader trends of economic differentiation. Maize culti-vation on sloping land has become a major cause of soil loss, sedimentation of paddy fieldsand more frequent floods and landslides. Hill slope areas suitable for crop cultivation inmore centrally located areas are already scarce, as indicated by shortened (or abandoned)fallow periods and the disappearance of ruminant pastures in central valley locations(Neef et al, 2006). Villagers’ comments clearly show awareness of differential soil fertilityand its decline, and their attempts to react to the trend. A Thai farmer commented, ‘TheThai people used to cultivate cassava, but the soil got less fertile so when they grow maizenow they have to use a lot of fertilizer. They have to pay more money for the fertilizer[than the Hmong]’. A Hmong village headman added, ‘the soil now is exhausted but thenew varieties give still high yields. Since 2000 villagers have to use fertilizer; only somehouseholds who can afford it use fertilizer’.

In any case, recent attempts of the local administration to curb maize cultivation by‘encouraging’ farmers to grow rubber trees as an alternative to maize have encounteredfierce resistance by many farmers who are afraid of losing their lucrative, short-term incomeopportunities in return for a high-risk and long-term investment in rubber production.4

Discussion: Differences and Similarities of Northern Uplands Development in Laosand Vietnam

The notion of a hierarchy between ethnic groups, where from the ‘advanced’ status of thelowland majority follows a mandate to develop the numerous other ethnic groups, remainssalient and problematic in both Laos and Vietnam. However, the Laotian minoritiesare victims of a particularly destructive and ill-conceived resettlement programmewhere minority ethnic village communities are broken up and relocated without makingsufficient provisions to help establish new livelihoods.

Important development policies of the reform period had both integrating as well asmarginalizing effects on upland minorities. Particularly in Lao PDR, integration into thenational legal framework in the form of land allocation still provides little tenure securityto farmers. Recent efforts to extend the scope for local participation in developmentdecision-making encounter considerable resistance arising from entrenched top-downpolitical cultures, evasive ‘beneficiaries’ and other problems of implementing complex



institutional change. The space formally opened up for ethnic minority citizens’ partici-pation is thus of little use in practice for minorities to actually shape planned development.

Market forces in both countries increasingly permeate the uplands, and transform landuse and farm structures, while pushing back the subsistence economy. In this process,income opportunities widen but the exposure to risks increases as well, particularlythrough reliance on single commodities. While maize cash cropping has brought a shortperiod of economic boom to the northwestern mountains of Vietnam, heavily reliantfarmers (such as many Hmong) are now facing the ecological consequences of this form ofmarket-driven development. In the Laotian case, uplands minority groups often cannotopt out of rubber production and its mixed blessings, because the power of foreign in-vestors combined with co-opted local governments proves unchallengeable for them.

Table 2 sharpens this article’s key arguments to highlight differences as well as com-monalities of broad development trends in the two countries’ uplands. As the discussionabove has shown, however, the differentiation according to ethnic groups is crucial forunderstanding development trajectories and prospects of specific groups. In order to gaugethe chance of particular ethnic groups to benefit from and actively shape the process ofintegration, each group’s status, negotiating power vis-a-vis the state, and position in theeconomy has to be considered. Overall, the odds emerge as clearly stacked against ethnicminorities; in Lao PDR even more strongly than in Vietnam. However, given the eco-nomic success of some minority groups in specific circumstances – we repeatedly referredto the Hmong – one should not assume uniform outcomes in highly dynamic and diverseupland development arenas.

Conclusion

Important socio-cultural, political and economic aspects of upland development in Laosand Vietnam can be summarized as ‘marginalization through integration’. The degree to

Table 2: Summary of comparison between development in the Vietnamese and Laotian northernuplands

Influencingparameters

Northern uplands of Vietnam Northern uplands of Laos

Ethnicity Notion of ethnic hierarchy underpinsdevelopment policies butpossibilities for negotiating theaccommodation of minoritycustoms and values exist

Notion of ethnic hierarchy andimplementation of resettlementprogrammes threatens culturalsurvival of some minority groups

State-uplandsrelations

Decollectivization and landallocation mostly accomplished,efforts towards decentralizationand democratization withquestionable success

Unclear and uncertain property rights,weak state forms alliances withforeign investors to control ruraldevelopment

Marketpermeation

Short-term economic success ofcertain cash crops (maize) hasmasked long-term ecologicalconsequences

Growing dependence on export marketsand foreign investment, high socialand ecological risks for local peoplefrom reliance on a single-commodity(rubber) economy



which this can be called ‘development’ in the sense of positively experienced change canbest be gauged by assessing how specific groups are positioned vis-a-vis integrating forcesand what power they have to shape them. The recently resettled ethnic minority popu-lations of Laos emerged as facing the least favourable terms of integration and possessingleast agency; in Vietnam we found great differences between minorities’ capabilities to useintegration to their advantage. The ethnic majorities, however, are the best-placed groupsin both countries to exploit possibilities emerging with the uplands’ integration intomainstream society.

We argued that market integration in the uplands tends to be driven by single-commoditybooms that promise short-term increases in incomes but that are also accompanied by newrisks. In Vietnam, the maize boom has worked in favour of Hmong producers who werepreviously strongly marginalized and Kinh traders, but has had much less impact on BlackThai livelihoods. This leaves the minority groups in economic positions of high risk(Hmong) or low income (Black Thai) and only the Kinh occupying off-farm sources ofincome. If the future of rural development and poverty reduction lies primarily in‘depeasantization’ and raising off-farm opportunities rather than agricultural income(Rigg, 2006, p. 188), the majority Kinh can be expected to retain their socio-economicallyprivileged position, despite being the latest arrivals in the uplands.

The case of Laos raises the key question what impacts globalization –with a Chinesestamp on it – will have on marginal groups in the context of a weak state. Here, the keychallenge for marginal groups will be to devise ways to counter the overwhelmingcombined force of external actors and the state in order to remain at least able to satisfybasic subsistence needs.

For the broader picture of development studies in Southeast Asia, our findings point tothe question whether ethnic minorities and their traditions of disadvantage are unique orwhether their trajectories resonate with those of other – lowland, urban and rural –marginal groups. Of particular interest in this context is the historic success of uplandersto protect autonomous spaces and to evade the state’s power. Will uplanders and othermarginal groups also be able to protect vital spaces from ever more pervasive markets andhence at least partly evade external control and dependence?

Acknowledgement

The financial support of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft –DFG) for conducting the field research in Vietnam is gratefully acknowledged. The field research inLaos was made possible through a grant from the Centre of Agriculture in the Tropics andSubtropics, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, and the Eiselen Foundation Ulm, Germany. We arealso thankful for the financial and logistic support provided by IP-Consult, Stuttgart and theGerman Agency of Technical Cooperation (GTZ) during the fieldwork in Laos. The quality of thisarticle has greatly benefited from the constructive comments of two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. See www.theuplandsprogram.net.ms.2. Commonly, the various ethnic groups are categorized into Lao-Tai, Mon-Khmer, Tibeto-

Burman and Hmong-Mien.3. Personal communication Isabel Fischer 30 March 2008; data are based on a household survey

conducted in 2004.



4. An indicator for the level of conflict between farmers and the state is that researchers from ourteam were banned from entering the concerned communes in 2009.

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