Agrarian and Urban Transitions in Lâm Đồng Province, Vietnam: Adaptation or Marginalisation for Ethnic Minorities?

Abstract

The adaptation of human societies to the deep transformations imposed by the globalisation of the world economy and related changes to various environments constitutes probably the most prominent challenge for the 21st century, especially in mountainous and marginal areas occupied by ethnic minorities. In Southeast Asia, modern states are continuing to build their territorial legitimacy, integrating areas inhabited by groups that have become ethnic minorities. In Vietnam’s Lâm Đồng province, Dalat is thus more and more integrated into national and international economic networks, especially those of tourism and agricultural production (coffee, flowers, vegetables, etc.). This integration has transformed the life of the people living in nearby villages. Our hypothesis is that there is a differentiation in this process as ethnic minorities are mostly marginalised compared to Kinh (or Vietnamese) people. In this text, we examine the general context of agrarian and urban transitions and how it has affected three villages, Da Sar, Da Nhim and Da Chaïs, in Lac Duong district. This study is mostly based on fieldwork conducted in 2011 and 2012 as a comparison with previous research done since 2007 in the same area.

On ne peut parler de la ville sans parler de la campagne, on ne peut évoquer Hanoi sans parler des villages qui l’entourent et qui l’ont organisée.

We cannot speak of the city without speaking of the countryside, one cannot mention Hanoi without evoking the villages that surround it and have organized it.

Quertamp (2010, p. 110).

This text has been formerly presented at the conference of the IGU commission on Globalization, Marginalization and Regional and Local Response (C08-47) “Geographies of Marginality: The Realities of Physically Marginalized Areas”, University of Zagreb, Dubrovnik, 19–23 August 2012. The portrait of that period remains valid, especially when updates will eventually allow seeing evolution trends. Only some minor updates were made. Thanks are addressed to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for its grant to the project “Intégration des régions montagneuses d’Asie du Sud-Est continentale, 1960–2010: entre adaptation et marginalisation” (CRSH: 410-2011-2439), directed by Steve Déry and that allows fieldwork by Déry from 2011 to 2015, Boisclair in 2011 and Lucas in 2012.