Land Allocations in the Vietnamese Uplands: Negotiating Property and Authority

Abstract

"This paper examines what negotiations over property regarding land in Vietnam's uplands tell us about practices and processes constituting authority. The paper proceeds by way of two local case studies on land allocations in a Thai village in the Northern Mountains and an Ede village in the Central Highlands, complemented by a review of published research on land allocations in other upland settings. The results suggest that control over land is volatile due to competition by multiple politico-legal institutions within and outside 'the state'. As people reference their land claims to multiple institutions they connect negotiations over property in Vietnam's uplands with larger processes constituting authority at national and international scales. The processes, in turn, differentiate rural transformations in Vietnam due to variation in historical and contemporary conditions."