Negotiating Agrarian Transition: Peasant’s Improvisation to State Economic Policy

1. Negotiating Agrarian Transition: Peasant’s Improvisation to State Economic Policy - A Case Study in a Craft Peasantry Community in Northern Vietnam - Nguyen Phuong Le RCSD

2. Structure of Presentation • Introduction • Agrarian Transformation as Ongoing Process of Negotiation • Overview of The Village • Peasant’s Negotiation for Their Survival in The Period of Collectivization • Economic Liberalization: Peasant’s Negotiation for Livelihood Articulation • “Just Being a Peasant”: Negotiating by Identity Construction • Conclusion

3. Introduction • Vietnamese state has defined peasant economy as a traditional and backward sector which needs to be modernized • Since the mid-1950s,national leaders have promulgated a number of policies and programs in order to transform and to develop peasant economy • Two big projects strongly influencing agrarian transition are collectivization from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s and de-collectivization since the early 1980s onward • Under both projects, state has attempted to bring peasants out of the subsistence sphere • Peasants have known how to improvise the state’s policies in different contexts for their livelihoods

4. Introduction • The paper aims to answer three questions: (i) How have craft-peasants negotiated with agricultural transition in response to the change of state’s economic policies? (ii) Why do people decide to keep small farming in articulation with craft making in Doi Moi period? (iii) How do they negotiate with state’s policies by constructing their identities?

5. Agrarian Transformation as Ongoing Process of Negotiation State-led Policy of Agrarian Transition in Vietnam First project: Collectivization was a “top-down” program which was implemented since the mid-1950s in Northern Vietnam • Collectivize all means of production • Transfer from small, backward and fragmented peasants to consolidated, big and public farms • Modern agriculture had been built based on Taylorist principles in order to produce more efficiently • Almost all individual economic activities were prohibited • Peasants lived mainly on the distribution from the results of the collective works

6. Agrarian Transformation as Ongoing Process of Negotiation State-led Policy of Agrarian Transition in Vietnam Second project: In the period of de-collectivization or economic liberalization, peasant household is considered as autonomous economic unit, but stuck to the sphere of subsistence, therefore it needs to be transformed into the market-oriented economy • Rural economy will be developed in the trends of industrialization and commercialization • A part of rural labor force will be moved to non-farm sector • Agriculture will be developed in the trend of commoditization • Small scale farming will gradually be disappeared

7. Agrarian Transformation as Ongoing Process of Negotiation Peasants - The Key Actors Determining The Trends of Agrarian Transformation • Scott (1985): “Everyday forms of peasant’s resistance” • Kerkvliet (2005): “Everyday politics” As active agents, peasants don’t totally comply to as well as don’t entirely resist state’s policies in both collectivization and de-collectivization periods Instead, they know how to improvise those policies for their livelihood strategies

8. Bac Ninh Province Vietnam The Village Kim Thieu Village Hanoi Capital

9. The Village • Kim Thieu village located in Bac Ninh province, Red River delta, Northern Vietnam • Total households = 320, of which 264 hhs engaging in woodcarving • Woodcarving is an age-old traditional industry, but it has revived and developed since the early 1990s following the state’s program of rural industrialization • Arable land area per capita is about 200 m2 • Craft making activity occupies a significant proportion of labor force and of total income of households • 70% of engaged woodcarving households still do farming as a livelihood strategy • Villagers’ livelihoods have varied so much in accordance to the changes of state’s policy from collectivization regime to the de-collectivization period

10. State’s Regulations and Peasant’s Negotiation in the Period of Collectivization Collectivization: State’s Regulations • 95% of cultivated land, labor, draft animals and other productive assets were collectivized • Almost 100 per cent of villagers reluctantly participated in either agricultural or handicraft cooperative, though “voluntarism” was emphasized as the most important principle of collectivization • Although Vietnamese state did not force people to become cooperative members, national policies seemed to prevent them from individual economic activities • Non-cooperative members who were labeled “rule breakers” or “rebellions” were excluded from communal activities • There were about ten persons in Kim Thieu village did not join cooperative because they could make their living better from individual activities

11. State’s Regulations and Peasant’s Negotiation in the Period of Collectivization Collectivization: State’s Regulations • People collectively worked in the cooperative fields • Cooperative members were assigned to specific tasks relevant to their age, skill, health and educational attainment • A certain number of work-points were given to different kinds of work • All the peasant’s basic demands were distributed by cooperatives based on the work-points what they got from doing the collective works • Apart from working in the collective fields, villagers were allowed to cultivate in the private plots

12. State’s Regulations and Peasant’s Negotiation in the Period of Collectivization Improvisation to State’s Regulations: Everyday Practices (1) “Social capital” played a crucial role in making peasant’s living: • A good relationship with cooperative leaders helped peasants to get higher work-points by doing easier tasks • In the case of underemployment, having good relationship with local leaders could bring peasant more jobs such as raising collective draft animals, planting subsidiary crops and doing some minor tasks • Cooperative cadres’ relatives used to be distributed products with higher quality, even quantity Because of the discrimination among cooperative members, most of them did not take interest in their work. The quality of collective work was below people’s capacity.

13. State’s Regulations and Peasant’s Negotiation in the Period of Collectivization Improvisation to State’s Regulations: Everyday Practices (2) Individual tactics were used in making villagers’ benefit: - Work a few hours each day and a little work each hour - Hide/steal the collective produces - Mix rubbish with manure which had to be sent to cooperative - Ignore some parts of the collective field when irrigating, weeding and fertilizing (3) The auxiliary economic activities were developed: - Cultivate in the individual plots and garden - Raise small animals and poultry at home - Tofu and alcohol making - Trade sweet potato and cassava from mountainous areas to village - Handicraft cooperative members did the outwork for woodcarving traders in neighbor village

14. State’s Regulations and Peasant’s Negotiation in the Period of Collectivization Economic Policy Changes: Outcome of Negotiation Process • Peasants neglected the collective work due to the income from cooperative reduced • They invested most of their time in “subsidiary” economic activities • A number of cooperative members pretended to be absent to avoid the collective tasks • Several villagers lived on the earnings not from the cooperative’s distribution • The implicit withdrawal of cooperative members could be seen as the starting point for renovation of state’s economic policy

15. Economic Liberalization: Negotiation for Livelihood Articulation De-collectivization: New Regulations for Rural Economy • Peasant households have been considered as autonomous economic units and allocated farmland for long-term use • Rural economy needs to be industrialized and commercialized in order to produce commodities for both domestic and global markets • “Leaving the rice field but not the countryside” is one of the most influential state’s program in rural industrialization • Traditional craft occupations including woodcarving are encouraged to revive and develop in Red River delta • In the context of reduction of natural resources, woodcarvers have to face with state’s regulations of forest protection

16. De-collectivization: New Regulations for Rural Economy Aside from state’s regulations, village producers have to meet international customers’ demand or global regulations of woodcarvings such as material, quality and models Economic Liberalization: Negotiation for Livelihood Articulation

17. Economic Liberalization: Negotiation for Livelihood Articulation Livelihood Articulation: Local Response to “New Regulations” • 30 per cent of households give up farming but still keep their farmland by lending it to other villagers because of their land rights in long-term • 70 per cent of households keep small farming, though most of their income is generated from woodcarving industry because: • Livelihood security in the context of instability of global market • Food quality and safety • Cultural value of farm produce and farm work • Villagers can keep small farming together with woodcarving based on re-division of labor at both extra- and intra-family levels • Authorities’ expectation of disappearance of small-subsistence farming will be difficultly realized

18. Local Response to “New Regulations” What species of timber should be carved have been regulated by Chinese customers, not by producers in Kim Thieu village To deal with state’s regulations of forest protection and global demand of timber species, producers have to import wood from Lao, Cambodia, Indonesia and other countries Economic Liberalization: Negotiation for Livelihood Articulation

19. Local Response to “New Regulations” They also persuade Chinese customers to accept new species of timber which have never been bought before To stick many small wood pieces together into a bigger one is the most popular tactics by which producers can make a big things at lower cost Claiming woodcarving industry as a “traditional” occupation allows villagers to bargain monopoly price with Chinese customers Economic Liberalization: Negotiation for Livelihood Articulation

20. “Just Being a Peasant”: Negotiating by Identity Construction • National Statistical Office has categorized rural households and labors into agricultural-based, combination of on-farm and non-farm and non-farm-based ones • It is impossible to classify villagers into such groups in Kim Thieu • Most of villagers define themselves as peasants while most of their time and energy are devoted to woodcarving industry because: - Special relations to farmland - State’s policies on taxes and fees for non-farm sectors - Socialist state’s perception of “basic class” in the Independent time - Cultural meaning of “being a peasant” • Peasant’s status is not fixed. Villagers also define themselves as craftsmen in some cases • They construct their identity in accordance with specific context to negotiate with state’s policies

21. Conclusion • Vietnamese state’s economic policies have tended to steer the orientation of agrarian transformation • National authorities have expected that agriculture and rural economy would be transformed into the trend of industrialization and commoditization at large scale with the support of modern technologies • National leaders predicted small subsistence farming will be gradually disappeared • Vietnamese peasants have not explicitly resisted or struggled to state’s development programs, but they have improvised them to make their own benefits • Peasants have determined the process of agrarian transition themselves by manipulation of state’s policies • By doing this, peasants create the multiple trends of agrarian transformation

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