NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE

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3 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE

4 Cover, maps and Layout: Mikael Brodu ISBN IRASEC, October 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or means, without prior permission of the author or the publisher. The opinions expressed in these papers are solely those of the author(s).

5 A collection under the supervision of Benoît de Tréglodé Norms and Practices in Contemporary Rural Vietnam Social Interaction between Authorities and People Christian Culas, Nguyễn Văn Sửu & Nguyễn Thị Thanh Bình Edited by Christian Culas & Nguyễn Văn Sửu Carnet de l Irasec / Occasional Paper n 15

6 L Institut de recherche sur l Asie du Sud-Est contemporaine (USR 3142 UMIFRE 22 CNRS MAEE) s intéresse depuis 2001 aux évolutions politiques, sociales et environnementales en cours dans les onze pays de la région. Basé à Bangkok, l Institut fait appel à des chercheurs de tous horizons disciplinaires et académiques qu il associe au gré des problématiques. Il privilégie autant que possible les démarches transversales. The Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia (USR 3142 UMIFRE 22), based in Bangkok, Thailand, calls on specialists from all academic fields to study the important social, political, economic and environmental developments that affect, together or separately, the eleven countries of the region (Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Viet Nam). COMITÉ DE PILOTAGE Bénédict BRAC de LA PERRIÈRE (Case-CNRS-EHESS) Stéphane DOVERT (MAEE) Guy FAURE (CNRS-IAO) Christophe JAFFRELOT (CNRS- Ceri) Christian LECHERVY (MAEE) Jean-Francois SABOURET (CNRS) Benoît de TRÉGLODÉ (Irasec) Marie-Sybille de VIENNE (Inalco) COMITÉ SCIENTIFIQUE Jean BAFFIE (CNRS - Irsea) Romain BERTRAND (CNRS-Ceri) Sophie BOISSEAU du ROCHER (Asia Centre-Sc. Po) Christian CULAS (CNRS-Irasec) Alain FOREST (Paris VII) Emmanuel POISSON (Paris VII) Yves GOUDINEAU (EFEO) William GUERAICHE (Université américaine de Dubai) Jacques IVANOFF (CNRS-Irasec) Rémy MADINIER (CNRS-Irasec) Vatthana PHOLSENA (CNRS-IAO) Hugues TERTRAIS (Paris I)

7 Table of Contents Localisation maps Introduction by Christian Culas & Nguyen Van Suu Social Interaction between Authorities and People in Contemporary Rural Vietnam: Evidence from Three Case Studies...13 Chapter 1 by Christian Culas A failed "success story" for Tourist Development Projects in Tam Dao: Gaps between Laws and their Application...21 Introduction...21 I - Temples, Farmers and Tourist projects: are these the key ingredients in the making of a success story? Den Thong village and Tay Thien Temples Agriculture and tourism: income security and opportunities Why tourism services have not yet become the main activities of Den Thong villagers?...29 II - A brief history of local projects in Den Thong village Project 1: Building a parking lot in the heart of the rice fields ( ) Project 2 Phase 1: Extension of the tourist area to 51 ha, resulting in the village centre being consumed ( ) Project 2 Phase 2: Tourist complex zone of 163 ha over four villages ( ) Project 3: Tay Thien Cableway and Tourist complex area for 170 ha on four villages ( )...40 III - Sources of tension and conflicts between local administration and villagers How land was "officially" reclaimed three months before the official decision of the province One law, two practical applications With official decisions often being contradictory, how can one find a suitable solution?...47 IV - What are the possibilities to file a complaint or to have one s rights recognized? Requests of information and complaint procedures Forms of resistance to the tourism development projects

8 V - Key elements in understanding the current tensions between villagers and local authorities Questions about the future of the village: are they taken into account in projects? Who are considered project stakeholders and by whom? Assumptions on the basis of the relationship between authorities and the people VI - What are the possibilities of governance within a complex legal framework? A hierarchy of norms at the foundation of law Forms of local governance and expressions of civil society Conclusion Chapter 2 by Nguyen Van Suu Agricultural Land Claims in the Red River Delta during Decollectivization...79 Introduction I - State Laws and Regulations about Claims to Land in Contemporary Vietnam II - The Practices of Villagers Claims to Land since the Decollectivization Period: The Case of Red River Delta Villages...83 III - Consequences: Local Conflicts IV - Implications: The Importance of Property Rights Conclusion Chapter 3 by Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh Practical Norms and Gaining Legitimacy in Ha Nam Province...99 I - Profane Power II - Tolerance and Sentiment in the Building of Legitimacy III - Rebuilding Trust and Decision: Enter into the Hearts of People IV - Conclusion Bibliography

9 Vietnam Ha Giang Cao Bang Lai Chau Dien Bien Lao Cai Tuyen Bac Can Quang Yen Bai Lang Son Son La Ha Noi Quang Ninh Tuyen Quang Thanh Hoa Thai Nguyen Lang Son Phu Tho Vinh Phuc Ha Bac Giang Noi Bac Ninh Ha Hai Tay Hung Duong Yen Hoa Binh Ha Hai Nam Phong Ninh Binh Thai Binh Nam Dinh Nghe An Thanh Hoa Hai Phong Thai Binh Nam Dinh Ha Tinh Quang Binh Quang Tri Thua Thien-Hue Da Nang Hô Chi Minh Tay Ninh Binh Phuoc Binh Duong Quang Nam Quang Ngai Dong Nai Kon Tum Long An Dong An Thap Giang Tien Giang Gia Lai Binh Dinh Can Tho Kien Giang Hau Giang Vinh Long Tra Vinh Ben Tre Ba Ria- Vung Tau Dac Lac Phu Yen Bac Lieu Soc Trang An Giang Tay Ninh Binh Phuoc Dak Nong Lam Dong Binh Thuan Hô Chi Minh-Ville Khanh Hoa Ninh Thuan The following provinces are municipalities with the province status: Ha Noi (Thu Do Ha Noi) Hai Phong (Thanh Pho Hai Phong) Da Nang (Thanh Pho Da Nang) Hô Chi Minh (Thanh Pho Hô Chi Minh) Can Tho (Thanh Pho Can Tho) Kien Giang Ca Mau km 7

10 Northern Vietnam CHINA Lai Chau Dien Bien LAOS Lao Cai Son La CHINA Ha Giang Cao Bang Tuyen Quang Bac Can Yen Bai Thai Nguyen Lang Son Phu Tho Hoa Binh Vinh Phuc Thanh Hoa Ha Tay Ha Noi Ha Nam Ninh Binh Bac Ninh Hung Yen Nam Dinh Bac Giang Hai Duong Thai Binh Quang Ninh Hai Phong Nghe An km In grey, the 3 provinces where field studies were conducted 8

11 Bac Ninh Province BAC GIANG Yen Phong Bac Ninh Tu Son Tien Du Que Vo Gia Binh HA NOI Thuan Thanh Luong Tai HUNG YEN HAI DUONG The * marks where field studies were conducted 9

12 Ha Nam Province HA TAY HUNG YEN Duy Tien Kim Bang THAI BINH Ly Nhan Phu Ly Binh Luc HOA BINH Thanh Liem NAM DINH NINH BINH The * marks where field studies were conducted 10

13 Vinh Phuc Province TUYEN QUANG THAI NGUYEN Tam Dao Lap Thach Tam Duong Vinh Yen Binh Xuyen Phuc Yen PHU THO HA NOI Vinh Tuong Yen Lac Me Linh HA TAY The * marks where field studies were conducted 11

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15 Introduction Social Interaction between Authorities and People in Contemporary Rural Vietnam: Evidence from Three Case Studies Christian Culas & Nguyen Van Suu Since the 1980s, while trying to maintain political stability and territorial integrity, the Vietnamese state has strongly moved towards the transformation of a centrally-planned economy to a more market-oriented model, in which private, foreign and joint-venture businesses are increasingly becoming the key pillars of the national economy. Another key aspect of the Đổi Mới s agenda was a fundamental shift in the party-state s foreign relations policy toward a normalization of Vietnam s diplomatic and trading relations with China, the United States, and other countries since the early 1990s. Over twenty years after the Đổi Mới renewal renovation, Vietnam has been praised by various domestic and international institutions for its impressive achievements in socioeconomic development and poverty reduction and for its gradual liberalization and market diversification, coupled with its commitment to equality. Consequently, this has changed the relationship between the party-state and society in a number of fields, including the control of agricultural land and other forms of natural resources. Such transition marks a great change in our scholarly understanding of Vietnam. It has opened the door for intellectual exchange between academics and has resulted in a great amount of research and new knowledge/publications in different languages about various domains regarding Vietnamese society, including the relationships between the state and society at different levels and in various sectors or geographic areas. Among them, studies like those of 13

16 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM Kerkvliet, 1 Fforde 2 and others 3, have developed the everyday politics approach, which examines social interactions on an everyday action basis. This approach "from below" has given a fresh impetus to the study of social relations in Vietnam. However, our observations regarding academic research show that besides a number of rich ethnographic studies, there are many analyses from different social science disciplines that give a generalized view of trends of development and change in Vietnamese society over the past decades with limited field data. This means that research projects based on first-hand data from longer periods of fieldwork and qualitative investigations are still inadequate. As a result, we are suggesting that more field-based research be carried out in order to enhance and promote our understanding of Vietnam, especially its processes of sociopolitical changes. This Occasional Paper will contribute useful elements for understanding the social, political and economic dimensions of contemporary rural Vietnam. For epistemological and methodological reasons, the observations on social interactions in this paper were often made at a micro-level: individual actors/farmers, family, village/community. This has enabled the authors to engage in thorough descriptions and multi-layer analyses and to provide 1 Ben Kerkvliet 1995 Village-State Relations in Vietnam: The Effects of Everyday Politics on Decollectivization, Journal of Asian Studies, 54 (2): ; Ben Kerkvliet 2001 An approach for analyzing state society relations in Vietnam, Sojourn, 16 (2): ; Ben Kerkvliet 2003 Authorities and the people: An analysis of state society relations in Vietnam in Luong Van Hy (ed.) Postwar Vietnam: Dynamics of a transforming society, Singapore : ISEAS, pp ; Ben Kerkvliet 2005 The Power of Everyday Politics: How Vietnamese Peasants Transformed National Policy, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2 Fforde Adam, 1986, The unimplementability of policy and the notion of law in Vietnamese Communist thought, Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science. No. 1.; Fforde A., 2003, Decentralisation in Vietnam Working Effectively at Provincial and Local Government Level A Comparative Analysis of Long An and Quang Ngai Provinces. Report by A. Fforde and Associates Pty Ltd for AusAID. November 2003, Online, p. 92; Fforde A., 2005a, Vietnam in 2004: Popular Authority Seeking Power, Asian Survey. January/February 45 (1): ; Fforde A., 2005b, Farmers' Organizations in Vietnam - Rural Members of an Emerging Civil Society? in Towards Good Society: Civil Society Actors, the State, and the Business Class in Southeast Asia -Facilitators or Impediments to a Strong, Democratic, and Fair Society? Berlin, Heinrich Boell Foundation, pp David W. H. Koh Wards of Hanoi. Singapore: ISEAS.; Vasavakul Thaveeporn, 2006, Public Administration Reform and Practices of Co-Governance: Towards a Change in Governance and Governance Cultures in Vietnam in Active Citizens Under Political Wraps: Experiences from Myanmar/Burma and Vietnam, The Heinrich Boell Foundation, Southeast Asia Regional Office, pp

17 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE explanations from a variety of perspectives, all based on first-hand field data. Furthermore, this methodology has enabled them to assume that, in order to understand a complex system of socio-political interactions in transition such as in contemporary rural Vietnam, it is necessary to begin with concrete situations, to describe the specific context of each situation and to analyze the many articulations underpinning the observed actions. Regarding the issue of social interaction between the people and authorities respectively, 4 we call for research to avoid seeing the state organization in Vietnam as a single institution with a mono-focus orientation. This means it is necessary to describe the party-state system with its different levels and its various institutions, which on the one hand pursue a single aim of socialist orientation, while sometimes and in some cases entail a number of actions that are often contradictory or competitive to each other. 5 The social and cultural anthropological approaches used in this paper provide us with the capacity to give a field-based description of socio-political situations in Vietnam in order to enter the heart of human relationships, their dynamics and their real or apparent contradictions. The pre-established and less flexible methods would not have this ability to stick to different observable realities. By studying data from daily actions, we can highlight a few principles on how the relationship between population and authorities could make possible the chances for good governance and civil society expression. In addition to the different chapters in this study, with each being based on specific cases, 6, the overall goal of this Occasional Paper is to offer a new look into the social interactions between the different actors/institutions in contemporary rural Vietnam, especially local and higher central authorities with 4 Joel S. Migdal The state in society: An approach to struggles for domination in J. S. Migdal, A. Kohli, and V. Shue (eds.) State power and social forces: Domination and transformations in the Third World,, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, pp. 1 34; Ben Kerkvliet 2001, An approach for analyzing state society relations in Vietnam, Sojourn, 16 (2): ; Ben Kerkvliet 2003 Authorities and the people. 5 Ben Kerkvliet 2003, Authorities and the people ; David Koh 2006, Wards of Hanoi ; for a Thai case, see Andrew Turton 1989 Local powers and rural differentiation in G. Heart, A. Turton, and B. While (eds.) Agrarian transformations: Local processes and the state in Southeast Asia, University of California Press, pp In what follows, we do not always distinguish between different forms of administration (groups, committees, boards and institutions) and local authorities (state officials) because they usually operate together. 15

18 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM different actors of society, including farmers, entrepreneurs, local cadres, intellectuals, etc. This occasional paper emphasizes several points: First, this study is to prioritize some "methods of approach to reality is that are as flexible as possible and most productive empirically 7. What the authors want to highlight are the views of different actors and different perspectives: those of various administrative bodies, the legal entity, the local group (farmers, traders, women, etc.) in order to be able to analyze their interactions and the power games that are established. Secondly, tensions seem to be dominant in all three case studies. However, we are not claiming that this reflects a general situation. This is, however, the case in the areas where fieldwork for this study was conducted. This is related to governance and especially "good governance", which is the objective of many development projects, and has a direct relationship with the norms and their applications. Norms and their application will be two transversal topics in this study. Governance can be defined descriptively as one form of balance between official norms (laws, regulations) and enforcement of these norms (the actual practices observed). The game plays between norms and practices are also a major theme in our research. Similar to China and other countries, it is argued that in Vietnam there are significant differences between official norms governing these institutions (the Communist Party, People's Committee, People's Council, etc.) and the real behaviour of their agents 8. It is the articulation of these differences that will bear our analysis. Again, the qualitative approach will stay closer to the realities and their complexity. Thirdly, for each case study, understanding the contexts in which words and actions are expressed to show the relationships between population and authorities are important. Strong causal links exist between the social, political and economic contexts as well as the quality of their relationships, and therefore will be discussed in detail throughout the text. On the other hand, the relationships between population and authorities are an important part of the 7 Olivier de Sardan (2008 : 6). 8 The official standards are not confined to laws or legal rules (rules of law). For example, they may take on the form of special agreements, local ordinances, administrative or professional procedures; but in the field of public policy or professional practice, they are necessarily formalized or codified, and express requirements, like in a "manual". In other words, official norms are; in this field, close enough to the sense that the neo-institutionalists give the word "institution" (rules of the game). (According to Olivier de Sardan 2009a: 1). 16

19 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE governance process 9, consequently a crucial observation spot of social and political life and a true place of debate in Vietnam 10. Fourthly, we believe that our descriptions can be of valuable evidence in present relevant situations and of use to assess the current history of sociopolitical changes, assuming that current transformation processes will directly affect these relationships. These descriptions and interpretations are also arguments to show that the transition process in the economic and legal spheres (especially in the production of laws) are much more advanced than in politics, including forms of local governance and civil society expression. We will look at every social situation, their legal frameworks and the issues underpinning their implementation. Our approach to society will not be normative. We do not seek to define what is "good", correct or not. Instead, we are trying to describe and uncover how relationships between population and authorities "work" in different realities, therefore, new empirical evidence in the debate on the causality between the development of governance and civil society and economic development (measured primarily by growth). This debate was launched by Janos Kornai in his book The Road to a Free Economy. Shifting from a Socialist System: The Example of Hungary (1990). Since then, further studies have been made on these assertions both on China 11, on Cuba 12 and on Vietnam 13, with even a global perspective in a comparative analysis of economic performance and governance of the above countries by two economists from the French Development Agency (AFD), Nicolas Meisel and Jacques Ould Aoudia (2008). 14 In brief, all links of direct cause and effect between the economic development and the development of governance and civil society are at their best just hypothetical in orientation and in many welldocumented cases irrelevant. 9 "By taking the concept of "governance" in a purely descriptive, analytical and empirical method, we will define it as an organized form of any issue of public goods and services or collective according to specific logical norms. This issue can occur in a liberal or bureaucratic way, centralized or decentralized, client or despotic, formal or informal, market-oriented or the state. It may be efficient or not, focus on quality goods and services or not." (Olivier de Sardan 2009a: 4). 10 Salemink 2003, Vasavakul Sing Ming (1996) and White, Howell and Shang (1996). 12 Betancourt (2007). 13 Beresford and Dang (2000) and Paquet (2004) , Is Good Governance : a Good Development Strategy? Paris : Agence Française de Développement (AFD), Working Paper N 58, January 2008, p

20 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM Each chapter in the book is a specific case study of social interactions between people and authorities around three main themes related to the relationship between population and authorities in contemporary rural Vietnam: 1) the build up phase of tension and conflict with attempts at conciliation and bottlenecks; 2) the conflict phase in itself with the respective actions of parties to defend their positions; 4) the post-conflict phase when the situation returns to normal, whether it was resolved or not. We noticed immediately that there was a phase 3, which deals with the tensions in conflict transformation in other aspects, but this is not discussed in detail here, even if it is implicit in the three chapters. In chapter one, A failed «success story» for Tourist Development Projects in Tam Dao: Gaps between Laws and their Application, Christian Culas examines a buffer zone village of Tam Dao National Park, which received four successive development projects in tourism since The author sees the projects and their applications as an arena in which specific exchanges between villagers and the various administrations in village take place. This shows the genesis of tensions and conflicts around the purchase of land and promises of direct employment in projects for expropriated villagers, as well as repeated attempts from farmers to request clarification and justification on projects. This explains the modes of expression and protest the villagers use against the administration. In chapter two, entitled Agricultural Land Claims in the Red River Delta during Decollectivization, Nguyen Van Suu analyses and explains conflicts over the holding and utilization of certain areas of agricultural land between groups of villagers, and between villagers and cadres in Bắc Ninh province. The author also illustrates the forms and the extent of such conflicts and exposes the root of collective claims to land by villagers during the process of agricultural decollectivization. Throughout the chapter, he argues that there exists not only a major gap between official norms and the practices of the villagers, but also a space for the villagers to move around what the party-state wants to do and how the people in society struggle for their daily needs. All of the above shows the importance of land property rights and indicate how the everyday practices of land holdings and land use have influenced the official norms of the party-state over the question of land ownership, management and land use in contemporary Vietnamese society. In chapter three, Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh offers a case study of Practical Norms and Gaining Legitimacy in Hà Nam Province, which shows, in a post- 18

21 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE conflict context, how local officials are "assessed", appreciated or rejected by villagers according to various criteria. These criteria are both objective, such as corruption and governance effectiveness, but also more subjective (criteria) such as the adaptation of the "envelope theory" (to pay the administrative legal fee or not) depending on the level of wealth seekers and their family and emotional proximity. Ms Binh s article also shows how the application of certain national guidelines for local cultural expression, such as the renovation of Đình temples and pagodas, can be initiated by local officials to anticipate or meet the demand of the village for identity and symbolic expressions. For their part, villagers are actively involved in renovations and cultural incentives controlled by the Partystate, but have also rediscovered the concrete symbol of their local identity, which had remained silent for 50 years. The game of power and authority are organized symmetrically, but not always in a balanced manner, making it difficult or improbable to formulate an explanation with nomological arguments or simply in terms of linear causality. 19

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23 Chapter 1 A failed "success story" for Tourist Development Projects in Tam Dao: Gaps between Laws and their Application Christian Culas Introduction The main objective of this paper is to describe and to understand the various relationships between villagers and local authorities through different tourism development projects in rural areas. These links, relationships, tensions, conflicts and various negotiation methods will bring to light how different groups of local actors can use, and sometimes abuse rules and norms, and even the law, to their advantage. Based on one specific case study, we will analyse the main sources of tension and conflict. Furthermore, we will examine Vietnamese administrative procedures and the possibility for people to communicate with authorities. This research paper is based on the case of the village of Đền Thõng, which is the centre of the four tourism projects included in this study, and on four neighbouring villages within the Đại Đình commune. Despite the geographic and demographic limits of this research work, we consider that the issues observed within this site are not isolated cases, and that they reveal more general problems concerning the relationship between the population and administrative bodies in rural Vietnam. Our second objective is to show that the detailed situations exposed herein (with) can be thought of as revealing the more or less common relationship patterns between the population and local authorities. 21

24 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM The research site 15, Đền Thõng village (Đại Đình commune, Tam Đảo district, Vĩnh Phúc province), is located on the Tam Đảo massif piedmont. The famous Tây Thiên complex of Buddhist temples belongs to Đền Thõng village territories. Đền Thõng is an agricultural village, in a buffer zone within Tam Đảo National Park, that has benefitted from a significant source of income from tourist services over the last ten years. On their own initiative, either with very little or no support from the government, local farmers have progressively been trying to transform their professional activities in order to integrate an increasing number of tourism services and trade. Between 2005 and 2013, the government, the Communist Party Congress and Vĩnh Phúc provincial authorities have planned to organize four tourism projects centred on the Tây Thiên temples and Đền Thõng village. These projects were, are and will be organized on an individual case basis, and thus take on various sizes and forms in order to suit different objectives. These projects have had a profound impact on the economic and social life of local villagers. The idea of writing this paper stemmed directly from situations we observed in July 2008 and September 2009 in Đền Thõng village. Indeed, the villagers stand at the crossroads of several important issues that are key in understanding the changes in Vietnamese society since the reforms of the Đổi Mới renovation. Firstly, these development projects are either entirely or partly State-run as part of a series modernization programmes taking place in rural 15 Fieldwork data has been collected in July 2008 and September 2009 during the Training Workshop Anthropological Survey Methodology on Tam Dao Summer School 2008 and 2009 organized by Claude Arditi (EHESS Paris), Christian Culas (CNRS IRASEC) and Olivier Tessier (EFEO Hà Nội). Each year, a group of 16 to 20 trainees and coordinators (Claude Arditi, Christian Culas and Olivier Tessier) have collected data and documents in the commune and villages for one week, and presented a first level of analysis for Tam Dao Summer School. I would like to sincerely thank Claude Arditi, Olivier Tessier and the trainees for their work and their knowledge of the local situation. Full texts of 2008 workshops have been published (see Culas and Tessier, 2008). There are documents available online in French and Vietnamese: PRINTMcenter=&mot_cle_show=&ID_document=594; Full texts of 2009 workshops are published in Arditi, Culas and Tessier «Atelier. Enquêtes de terrain : méthodes et flexibilité. Formation en sociologie et anthropologie et organisation du recueil des données», in Lagrée S., Cling J.-P., Razafindrakoto M., Roubaud F. (eds.), Les Journées de Tam Đảo. Stratégies de réduction de la pauvreté : approches méthodologiques et transversales, Université d été en Sciences Sociales, 2010, Editions Tri Thuc, Hà Nội. [ available online for free in July 2010 in French and Vietnamese]. 22

25 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE Vietnam. Here, we are trying to understand how large-scale development projects at national or provincial levels can integrate social, economic and relational local practices. Other issues that arise involve preparations for such projects, such as feasability surveys, studies on their eventual social, economic and environmental impact and the prominence given to local people. As these projects require a significant degree of communication between the various administrative bodies and the villagers who are directly affected by them, we will try to understand the mode of contact, exchange and perhaps dialogue and negotiation between them. Finally, the logical continuation of the previous question, through the degree of communication and exchange that can be observed around tourism development projects, leads to asking what forms of governance can become more effective and what is the role of civil society groups in the dialogue between macro (State, province) and micro (village, families) levels? For methodological reasons, this paper includes a long descriptive section which will allow the reader to enter the local context, sometimes complex and multifaceted, and will raise the villagers' positions on various projects, particularly those in which compensation is offered for expropriated land and for future insurance. Then, we will analyze in detail the relationship between villagers, government administration and private companies involved in these projects. In the first chapter, we will introduce the main social and economic components of the village. In the second, we will give a summary of the four projects, focusing on their impact on village land management and the panel of compensation put forward by local authorities. In the third, we will analyse some major communication and understanding problems between villagers and local authorities. In the fourth, we will show the main possibilities for villagers to make demands and complaints to have their rights recognized, and the villagers' reaction to this issue. In the fifth, we will explain some key elements in understanding the current conflict between villagers and local authorities. In the sixth, we will show how the problems experienced by this village are part of more widespead issues on the hierarchy of norms and local governance. In the conclusion, we will try explain why, after a variety of five-year relationships with different administrations and despite a majority of villagers supporting the implementation of new projects and the transformation of their professional activities, many are now opposing them as the conditions in which they are being established do not appear positive and do not represent enough security for the future. 23

26 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM I - Temples, Farmers and Tourist projects: are these the key ingredients in the making of a success story? 1 - Den Thong village and Tay Thien Temples Đền Thõng is one of the 15 rural villages within Đại Đình commune, in Tam Đảo district, Vĩnh Phúc province, and is located 80km North of Hà Nội City. The population is made up of 699 habitants (160 families), of which 60% are ethnic Kinh (Vietnam's national ethnic group) and 40% are ethnic Sán Dìu (Miao-Yao linguistic family). Inter-ethnic marriages between them are highly common. For this study, there is no significant difference between Sán Dìu and Kinh farmers. The projects affect all lands. According to the 2007 commune data, 70 families (38% of the total population) are involved in regular services and commercial activities that are directly and indirectly related to tourism. During the annual religious festival, almost all the villagers work for tourist purposes. The average income for Đền Thõng is 6.5 million VND 16 per person per year. At the commune level, the average income is 5.5 million VND per person per year. In the village, the number of families "officially classified" as "poor" is estimated at 9.4%, amply less than at the commune level, which is 21.5%. Comparisons between income, percentage of poor households and living conditions in Đại Đình commune and Đền Thõng village clearly show that the economic situation is much better in Đền Thõng than Đại Đình 17 as a whole. However, not a single main road goes through this village and means of communication are poor. As a result, special means must be taken to go there. This village is located on the buffer zone, in the western part of Tam Đảo National Park. Located 30km from Tam Đảo city, the Đền Thõng-Tây Thiên site is well-known for its pagoda, beautiful forests, streams, waterfalls, and grottoes. From the centre of the village in the National Park, a mere 5km trail along the river takes one to Tây Thiên Quốc Mẫu Temple 18, at the height of a complex of several Buddhist temples including Thiền Viện Trúc Lâm Tây 16 In , one euro = 25,000 VND. 17 Culas and Tessier, Literally "Temple of East Heaven National Mother". 24

27 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE Thiên, a famous centre of Vietnamese Zen Buddhism 19 and many pagodas in the mountain. This complex was classified as a "National Historic and Cultural Heritage" site by the Ministry of Culture and Information 20. Tây Thiên remarkable Bouddhist temples The site, with its temples and pagoda, situated in a valley, counts among the most meaningful places for Buddhism in Vietnam. Tây Thiên is located northwest to Chat Dau Valley in the Tam Đảo National Park area. The site contains 4 temples and pagodas, situated a beautiful valley with a river and a waterfall. Tây Thiên is known to be the source area for Buddhism in Vietnam. The whole area has a size of approximately 250 ha. The valley and its temples can be visited on a hiking trail within 6 hrs walk (including return to the entrance). The trail is approximately 5 Km long (one way) and easily accessible because of its hiking trail with natural stone pavement and stairs at the steeper parts. During the period between February and April (the first two months of the Lunar Calendar), the site is visited by up to 1000 visitors per day, who are coming for the Festival. This event is celebrated according to the Lunar calendar. Tây Thiên is a wellknown location for fulfilling wishes, which are addressed to the temples 21. Before , Đền Thõng was a quiet agricultural village with some complementary economic activities centred on the mountain forest in the eastern side of the territory and some seasonal migrations for work. 1996, the date of Tam Đảo National Park's creation 22, marked the beginning of the first religious tourists coming to visit the modest and difficult to access Tây Thiên Quốc Mẫu Temple 23 at an altitude of 530m. Since then, some local families have started to organize part of their space and time to provide services, religious materials (incense, candles, flowers, votive objects, etc.), food and beverage, especially for pilgrimages that take place within the first two months of the Lunar calendar. 19 With the Dalat Truc Lam Monastery and Truc Lam Yen Tu, Tây Thiên is one of three biggest monasteries in Vietnam. It was totally rebuilt in by the best craftsmen in Vietnam, for 30 billion VND (1.2 million euros). 20 Decision 1371/QD-VHTT, 3 rd August Otto, 2006, p March 6 th 1996, the Prime Minister issued Decision No. 136/TTg. On June 15 th 1996, Tam Đảo National Park was established with a total area of 36,883 ha at an altitude of 100 m a.s.l upwards. 23 For example, the book Vietnam's Famous Pagodas (originally in Vietnamese) published in 1995 by Vo Van Tuong and Huynh Nhu Phuong (Art Publisher) does not mention the name of Tây Thien Temple or other pagodas in this area. 25

28 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM Limits of Official Data Official data on the economic and social activities of the commune's People s Committee are not perfectly reliable for two reasons. First, data collectors are not experts, but rather civil servants, nurses, and local teachers, who are often poorly trained, provided with few tools, and almost no methodology. They do, however, collect required data willingly in order to provide the People's Committee with information to draft reports. Second, these reports are written with targeted objectives. Party instructions, as well as those of the province and district, are sometimes divergent or even contradictory. These reports are used to prove good results have been achieved at the economic and cultural 24 level, which can provide access to the status of cultural family, then cultural village and cultural commune. These reports can also be useful during periods of difficulty or of dynamic growth in allowing the commune to obtain aid and other developmental support from the province. These reports are written with two goals in mind: showing higher authorities that the commune has good results and highlighting the difficulties in obtaining development grants. All these reasons show that the contents of these reports are "oriented" and therefore must be used cautiously after a critical reading and contextualization. Without detailed knowledge of the situation, it is impossible to interpret these reports responsibly and effectively. 2 - Agriculture and tourism: income security and opportunities We will be studying the local situation on a more descriptive level based on survey data and opinion polls. Interviews were carried out with a variety of people ranging from the vice-president of the People s Committee of Đại Đình to the itinerant vendors who are regularly pursued by the police, and also include several officials from the village of Đền Thõng, religious leaders and laymen of different temples, the majority of store owners with shops leading up to the temple, the Director of Hotel Văn Hóa, and of course the many villagers who have been "expropriated" for different projects. The objective is to 24 In this specific context the notion of "culture" refers to specific social standards applied first at family level (gia đình văn hoá). The four main criteria: a) have a stable economic life that gradually develops, b) have a cultural, moral, healthy and wealthy (such as children s school attendance, respect of moral values: no conflicts, no gambling, no drugs, no prostitution, etc.), c) have a clean and beautiful environment and landscape, d) implementing the law properly and the options and policies of the Party and State (Minister of Culture Information of Vietnam, 01/02/2002, Decision No. 01/2002/QD-BVHTT). 26

29 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE understand the reasons and constraints of the development of tourism in this rural area that lies far from main roads. The Đền Thõng village economy is organized around three different complementary activities. The primary source is agriculture (rice, livestock, vegetables, charcoal production, tea, and alpine medicinal plants). The second source of income comes from the influx of cash from the many migrants such as masons, carpenters, and an increasing number of factory workers. The third source of income comes from tourism-related activities: the sale of religious goods, food and beverage, and a delivery service for pilgrim offerings along the 5km path up the mountain to Đền Thương temple. This last activity is physically demanding and poorly paid. It is therefore handed over to the peasants in the outlying villages of Đền Thõng. Đền Thõng is the district's main attraction after Tam Đảo city. The Zen Monastry and Meditation Institute of Trúc Lâm Tây Thiên and Tây Thiên pagoda and temples network offer an unique cultural, tourist and natural potential, especially for religious pilgrims during the first two months of the Lunar calendar (February to April). Nevertheless, this famous religious spot is deserted the rest of the year. The main difference between Đền Thõng and other villages in the proximity of Tây Thiên is their capacity to generate significant yet irregular income from tourist services since the mid-1990s. On the one hand, in the interviews carried out, those responsible for Đại Đình commune s People Committee and Đền Thõng village regard the current economic transformation of Đền Thõng village in a positive angle, giving us figures on the income per inhabitant, the very low percentage of "poor" households, and highlighting the fact that 100% of households are made of brick and that there is at least one motorbike per family, etc. On the other hand, farmers and families who engage in mixed activities (agriculture and tourism) clearly outlined other complex elements of reality. Each family emphasized the economic difficulties and the lack of confidence in the future of the area's economy. Many families underlined their current economic and social difficulties by enumerating the family members who worked outside the village and the commune. They thus emphasized that despite having a slightly higher income thanks to tourism, they still had to migrate to find jobs. 27

30 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM There are many reasons to migrate, with commune services ranked as the main factors in their decision to leave (Collectif ). Among the important factors highlighted by the villagers are the "lack of good farm land" and the "low yields of local crops", which together are economically unprofitable. The second factor is related to the lack of investment or the inability to develop secondary economic activities such as raising livestock, growing medicinal herbs, or creating small businesses. The third is characterized by the more or less forceful rejection of rural lifestyles. This stems from the specific position of migrants with diplomas from urban institutions as well as those who have spent many years in an urban context and who only return to their villages a few days each year. They often return for the lunar New Year holidays or for large family events such as weddings, construction of new homes, or funerals 26. Personal accounts, as told by families and data colected from the 2008 socio-economic development report, contrasts with the consensual discourse held by local authorities who insist on the good economic performance of the village. For many farmers, the future is very dark and uncertain: locally, employment opportunities are scarce, there are too few outlets for their crops, and there no possibilities for career advancement 27. This is why these economic migrations are thought to be vital. Even though migration is short-term with long periods back in the home village, especially to participate in the economic activities of the festival in the first months of the year, its tendency is on the rise. We will see further along this study that the different tourist projects have diminished the available surface of farm lands to such an extent that villagers have stated that if there is not a massive number of non-agricultural jobs created very quickly, dozens if not hundreds of families may have to migrate to survive in these new conditions. Migrants work as construction labourers in Hà Nội and Hồ Chí Minh city, as well as in factories surrounding the major cities. Families have stated that a large part of their earnings is sent back to family members in the village to help them directly. Many families hope that the tourism projects will soon materialize so that their husbands, brothers and children can come back to live in their home villages. Since 2000, in addition to the flow of 25 Socio-economic Development Report , Đại Đình commune, Interviews made in 2008 and Culas and Tessier,

31 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE seasonal migrants that are a part of village tradition, long-term migration has become more and more common. There is no doubt that tourism, in different aspects, contributes to improve the quality of life in Đèn Thõng village and a few surrounding villages because Tây Thiên temple and its festival attract thousands of tourists and pilgrims every year. But several Đèn Thõng villagers said, "profits from tourism vary depending on the kind of activities and location." The first shopkeepers, who bought their land and built shop in 1994, three years after the Tây Thiên temples were classified as a National Historic and Cultural Heritage site (1991), took up the best business shops along the path leading from the valley until Tây Thiên Temple. Newcomers do not have a choice in terms of location to set-up shop and must deal with the increase of land price 28. This new form of local competition has started to create strong tensions between villagers because of the pressure on land acquisition for small business developments. Several times during interviews, villagers emphasized this new problem and did not have any solution to reduce the tensions. We made the following notes from the interviews and economic reports to allow an overview of the contrasting economic situation of the village: in the claims made by local leaders, the economic results are good and the future seems assured; however, according to local villagers, their life is difficult, sources of income are limited, and the future does not only seem uncertain, it looks darker. We will see below that these contrasts in opinion between official discourses (relay of national instructions and propaganda) and information given by villagers (with questions unanswered) are probably a sign of profound disagreement on how to understand the economic reality and the future of local development projects. 3 - Why tourism services have not yet become the main activities of Den Thong villagers? All tourist development projects planed in Đền Thõng are based the same hypothesis: because the project requires a big part of the agricultural and housing lands, villagers should invest in tourism services. This implicitly assumes that these new activities could be profitable for local families, and that 28 Culas and Tessier, 2009, p. 312 and interviews made in

32 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM the villagers should accept this major change. We will see below that this assumption is based on the authorities' low level of awareness of social and economic realities in the villages, and no surveys have been conducted to assess the profitability of these new activities and to record the will of the people to participate in various projects. Now, let s look at how, despite the supposedly high tourism potential, only some families have converted their business to tourism. From fieldwork data, we have defined three main reasons. Firstly, it is because tourist activities in Đền Thõng-Tây Thiên are only concentrated in two months per year (March-April). Some texts from the provincial administration tout the qualities of this site and its high potential of attraction, and refer to the passage of 2000 pilgrims per day to make offerings to the three temples in the mountains. However, they neglect to mention that these streams of pilgrims and visitors are concentrated within a very short period. To quantify these statements, we made a graph from the Hotel Văn Hóa s Customers Register, the only hotel in Đền Thõng, from May 2006 to April Guests Number of customers at Hotel Văn Hóa ( ) 0 May 2006 Jun 2006 Jul 2006 Aug 2006 Sep 2006 Oct 2006 Nov 2006 Dec 2006 Jan 2007 Feb 2007 Mar 2007 Apr 2007 Source: Culas and Tessier, 2009, p

33 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE Customers during the months of March and April represent 83% of the yearly total. The most active three months are March, April and May, which is 89.4% of the annual total. It should be noted that most pilgrims and visitors do not spend the night in Đền Thõng, but in absence of other forms of quantitative data (there are no records of the numbers of pilgrims and visitors, no official parking tickets), the above figures best help to explain why the villagers insist on saying that tourism activities do not thrive all year round. In Đèn Thõng, the tourist trade is thus merely one among other components of the local economy, after agriculture and the influx of money sent by migrants. We know that this situation is common to many seasonal attractions in rural areas. In this context, the "sustainable development" of commercial activities in the village is not guaranteed. Local practices and interviews show that most Đền Thõng households who left agricultural work to become fully involved in the tourist trade are failing 29. Many reasons can explain these failures: lack of experience in tourism services, investment in a non-profitable store in brick, irregularity of tourists, etc. But these failures are particularly hard for households that have lost their farmland by "expropriation" in 2005 and 2007 for the development of Tây Thiên tourist Project 2 Phase 1 (51 ha). Pressure on land acquisition at the village level is high, and today the "expropriated households do not have the possibility to rent or buy "quality" farmland in the vicinity, as they were able to do before these projects. All of the above helps to understand the farmers position vis-à-vis the expropriation of large areas of farmland. Secondly, due to the number of shops selling ritual and religious material and food and beverage being already significant and all of them being located in the best business locations on the trail leading to the temples, new shops, on less strategic places, would have less income. According to their experiences, people say that establishing new stalls on the pilgrimage route may reduce the income of former traders and bring about new difficulties 30. The third reason is that since 1998, when the first shop in concrete and bricks was built, every year the number of tourists has not been regular. For example, between 1997 and 1998, there was an 11% decrease. Between 2002 and 2003, because of the global SARS epidemic, the decrease was around 16%. However, tourist activities increased by 17.8% between 2006 and But 29 Interview in Interviews made in 2008 and

34 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM between 2008 and 2009, we notice a decrease of 11%. These figures for the number of tourists for the whole of Vietnam 31 give us an idea of the unpredictable variations that may affect this site. They can also show how difficult it is for local shopkeepers to put their trust in an activity such as tourism to become the family's main, and sometimes only, source of income. The above reasons show that the villagers see tourism only as a complementary activity, because of the short period in which the pilgrimages take place and the uncontrollable movements from one year to the other. Most villagers are interested in investing in tourism services, but for the majority, they are not worth abandoning farming altogether, which has throughout the years provided a modest but very stable income. However, the expropriation of land belonging to families for projects has deprived them of 80% of their irrigated rice fields. The choices available to them are limited. Some try to find alternatives between rice cultivation and tourism activities at 100%. This is the case with wild pig and porcupine farms. But by participating in the state s interests, they can receive state grants, because the goal for this region is to develop tourism on a massive scale 32. Many times during interviews, villagers said they did not understand the state s stubbornness and the fact that local authorities are pushing so strongly to move solely towards tourism. The villagers try proposals to diversify their income with fruits and flowers grown from domestic or wild areas (orchids) and with medicinal plants, but their demands do not reflect the interests of the state. The smoke-and-mirrors nature of this tourism scheme and the lack of study in these projects profitability are preventing other possibilities for integrated and sustainable development from taking shape, even when they are at the initiative of the villagers themselves. II - A brief history of local projects in Den Thong village Between 2005 and 2010, Đền Thõng village received three development projects, with the second project being organized in two different phases. We will make a short introduction to each project with the key elements (technical, financial, economic, social and legal implications) necessary to understand them and to reveal how control over land changes over time. 31 General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 32 For details, see Chap. V Some keys to understand the current tensions between villagers and local authorities, 3.b) The character "priority" of major development projects and law enforcement. 32

35 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE Poster of the Tây Thiên temples complex (Photo: Team Tam Dao Summer School 22/09/2009). 1 - Project 1: Building a parking lot in the heart of the rice fields ( ) Project 1 is entitled "Construction of a parking lot in Đền Thõng. From October-November 2005, 1.05ha of terrain was purchased from 38 families at the request of the Tam Đảo district People s Committee and the Đại Đình commune People s Committee. The land represented Đền Thõng's irrigated rice fields and produced 2 harvests a year. Filling and grading of the lot took place very quickly so that the car park would be functional for the Inauguration of the Meditation centre and the Zen Monastery of Thien Truc Lam Tay, on November 27 th In May 2005, at a formal meeting, commune and village authorities announced the recovery of square meters of land, which was to be allocated to private company Bình Minh for the construction and operation of car parks at Đền Thõng. According to the meeting announcement, each household with land in the recovered area would be compensated with 9,843,000 VND/sào 33, vocational training, exemption from registration fees for educational purposes and financial assistance for students. Vĩnh Phúc Province's People's Committee published the Official Decision 34 concerning the operation of land recovery for the development of tourism activities on January 25 th 2006, i.e. three months after the implementation, construction, and economic 33 Pháp Lý 09/2009. One sào = 360m² VND/sào = 394 euro/sào. 34 Decision N 226/QĐ. 33

36 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM development of the parking lot. We will see how the allocation of "reclaimed land" before the official provincial decision would constitute the core of a protracted conflict. 34 Eight feet tree front of Đền Thõng temple (Source: C. Culas 21/09/2009)

37 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE To buy these lands, intermediaries of the Bình Minh Company have met many difficulties. Here are the main reasons that we have collected from villagers. Some families accepted their proposals easily because they have other lands. Others hesitated but were not given time to think it through, because authorities, sometimes with the help of the police 35, pushed them to sign, while others refused because this is their best land for rice production. Facing farmers that were too hesitant, intermediaries of Bình Minh Company told them this is a project supported by the People s Committee of Vĩnh Phúc Province and Tam Đảo district 36. As a result, many farmers ended up accepting out of respect towards an official adminstrative decision. 2 - Project 2 Phase 1: Extension of the tourist area to 51 ha, resulting in the village centre being consumed ( ) Project 2 Phase 1 began in 2007 and was extended over a two-year period. Its goal was to build a complex for spiritual tourism over 51.1ha 37 of land named «The Famous site of Tây Thiên Tam Đảo Vĩnh Phúc 38». The project went well beyond the central area of the village of Đền Thõng. A development map on both sides of the river Suối Trường Sinh was produced in It went more than 3km from the temple in the village of Đền Thõng, above the Đền Thượng through the Silver Waterfall. On the map, we can see many solid structures, probably old and new stores 39. All the land purhased or recovered belonged to the village of Đền Thõng, with the majority of the best rice fields disappearing under roads and buildings. More than 60 families were forced to sell their land at a compensatory rate of 12.6 million VND/sào 40 Villagers were promised compensation in paddy, tourism training courses for themselves and their children, exemption from registration fees for educational purposes and financial assistance for students, 35 Interviews made in 2008 and 2009, and Pháp Lý, 09/ Interviews made in The 30ha announced in the media does not include the roads and empty spaces of the central part of the project. The central project's total area is in fact 51.1 ha. We do not have the exact surface information regarding the project that involves the land running along the river beds of the stream that runs from Den Thuong temple. However, it does cover several hectars. 38 Khu trung tâm lễ hội Tây Thiên 39 Map reproduced in Otto, 2006, p. 46. We have not presented it here because of the poor quality of the document Euros/sào. 35

38 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM since they would no longer be able to live from farming. The project is under the administrative responsibility of the Tam Đảo district People s Committee, while the Lạc Hồng Company is in charge of building and operating the site. This project has had a significant impact on productive activities and household economics due to the expropriation of rice fields and the ensuing prohibition to farm them. This new context forced villagers to participate more actively in tourism whenever possible or to migrate to other regions where more stable work was available. General map of the "Tây Thiên - Tam Đảo - Vinh Phuc Famous Site " , total area of 51.1 ha. (Source C. Culas 07/2008) One of the main differences between Project 1 and Project 2 Phase 1 is the creation in 2006 of the Tây Thiên Tourism Management Board whose intension is to develop ecotourism in co-operation with Tam Đảo National Park and the Buffer Zone Management Project (TDMP) 41. This initiative carried the promise for better functioning projects and especially greater communication between local populations and authorities. We will see a little later that the Tây 41 Otto, 2006, p

39 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE Thiên Tourism Management Board follows the top-down management logic most often seen in Vietnam. 3 - Project 2 Phase 2: Tourist complex zone of 163 ha over four villages ( ) The Project 2 Phase 2 has officially been designated as the Development Projects for Construction in the Central Area for the Tây Thiên Festival 42. It involves the building of a tourism complex providing spiritual, cultural and leisure activities year-round. The duration of the construction project is scheduled to last two years ( ). Four villages in the commune of Đài Dinh will be included in the project area: Đền Thõng, Sơn Đình, Ấp Đồn, Đồng Lính. The total project area is 163 ha 43. Đền Thõng village is the central area in the project and ha of agricultural land, houses and businesses will be expropriated. The rate of compensation provided goes up to 31.6 million VND/sào 44. The official decision of Vĩnh Phúc province s People s Committee 45 involves the moving and relocation of 163 households and 800 people. Some households lost 80% of their productive land, their homes, their businesses and their cemeteries m² for resettlement will be reserved, but no information on surface areas for residential and commercial purposes has been given. The precise location of new houses and shops has not yet been shown. Many key issues arise in daily papers. Despite the villagers repeated requests from the commune, district and provincial officials do not provide them with answers. This phase of the project is under the administrative responsibility of Vĩnh Phúc province s People s Committee. The construction and operation of the site is entrusted to the Lạc Hồng Company. According to the provincial decision of 27/07/2009, the schedule for the implementation of the work is as follows: 8/2009: Publishing the Decision of the general plan for compensation from those who have recovered the land 9/2009: Promulgating the Decision of land recovery and doing a detailed census of land and property 12/2009: Checking and approving the compensation plan details 42 Dự án đầu tư xây dựng phát triển khu trung tâm lễ hội Tây Thiên. 43 baotuyenquang.com.vn Theo VNN 06/12/ Euros/sào. The cost of land according to their status has been published on 27/07/2009 by «Decision N 2279/QD-UBND» Vĩnh Phúc province s People s Committee. 45 Decision N 2279/QD-UBND, 27/07/2009: "Approval of the general plan of compensation, support and settlement services to the book: the central area of Tây Thiên cultural festival. 37

40 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM For our study, it is interesting to note that the Inauguration of the official opening session of the Đền Thõng-Tây Thiên cable took place on December 5 th 2009 (see illustration below). Thus, the early stages of construction of Project 3 (Cable car system and more) will take place even before the compensation plan for Project 2 Phase 2 has been checked and approved. As Project 2 Phase 2 and Project 3 use basically the same areas of land expropriated, it is very likely that works (05/12/2009) have commenced before the whole legal process has been completed (late December 2009). This specific issue is one of the main causes of tensions between villagers and authorities. The first reason for these tensions being: the project starting before the official opening date is considered by authorities as "out of regulations promulgated in the official decisions." Below, we discuss in detail the case of land expropriation in the parking lot in November 2005, whose "formal decision of expropriation" was only received in January Second temple (Đền Cậu) along the trail. In , a cable station will be built here at an altitude of 120 m. (Source: C. Culas 21/09/2009) 38

41 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE General map "Development Projects for Construction in the Central Area for the Tây Thiên Festival" , total area 163ha (including the surface of Project 2 Phase 2). (Source: N.H. Manh, 22/09/2009) 39

42 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM 4 - Project 3: Tay Thien Cableway and Tourist complex area for 170 ha on four villages ( ) December 5 th 2009: Opening cerenony of Tây Thiên cableway project. Comrades: Trịnh Đình Dũng, member of Party Central Committee, Secretary; Nguyễn Ngọc Phi, Deputy Secretary of Provincial Committee, president of province s People s Committee; Phùng Quang Hùng, member of Standing Provincial Party Committee, Permanent Vice-Chairman of province s People s Committee and delegates participating in inaugurating the construction of the cultural centre and festivals Tây Thiên cableway project. (Source: Vĩnh Phúc Province official website, Quang Nam 46 ) Project 3 is called Tây Thiên Cultural Centre Festival and Cable Car Project for the Relics of the Famous Site of Tây Thiên. 47. The opening cerenony of the Tây Thiên cableway was held on December 5 th 2009 with in the presence of important personalities from the country and the region. This project is under the administrative responsibility of Vĩnh Phúc Province People's 46 ARTICLE&website_id=1&channel_id=314&parent_channel_id=312&article_id=14145, accessed 24/02/ Trung tâm văn hóa lễ hội Tây Thiên và dự án cáp treo lên khu di tích thắng cảnh Tây Thiên, from 06/12/

43 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE Committee. The investments come from the State budget and the Lac Hong Company is responsible for operating the site. The main differences between Project 2 Phase 2 and Project 3 are: 1. The project s thematic focuses on a cultural festival and the relics of the Tây Thiên temples this guidance is summarized by the slogan: «Đến với Phật, về với Mẫu» ("Come to the Buddha, return to the Mother 48 ). 2. The construction of a cable car to reach the temple that lies above, Đền Thượng (see illustration Main entrance ), with three intermediate stations to reach the temples of Đền Cậu and Đền Cô and the "Silver Waterfall 3. The programming of the project is different in time. The total area of the project is 170 ha 49. The total project costs amount to 547 billion VND 50. There are some contradictions between the different sources of information on Project 3. Step 1 ( ) mobilized 482 billion VND 52 for the Tây Thiên cable (2400m long), for the cultural centre for festivals and for resettlement areas for expropriated inhabitants. Step 1 of this project will see constructions over ha, with 1.73 ha devoted specifically for the cableway with 3 intermediate stations 53. The most important part of the cable will be inside Tam Đảo National Park. Works concretely started in December 2009 and will be completed in French company Poma will build the cable. However, we could not find any sources giving financial details or surface estimates for Step 2 ( ). We only know that the province wants to increase tourism and administrative services, such as postal services and banking, and develop a rural market. It is surprising that Step 1 will develop over an area of ha and will utilize 482 billion VND, while the development of the ha remaining will use only 65 billion VND. Step 1 has 16% less surface area yet uses 88% more of the budget. 48 Here, Mẫu ( Mother ), in the religious and mythical context, as in Tây Thiên Quốc Mẫu Temple (literally "Temple of East Heaven National Mother") Around million euros vietnamnet.vn, 05/12/ million Euros. 53 Official website of Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Sport. 54 vietnamnet.vn, 05/12/

44 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM We have also noted that Project 3 of the draft no longer involves construction such as the building of hotels, restaurants, spas, etc. It was precisely around this infrastructure and its potential demand for staff that villagers whose possessions have been expropriated hoped to gain from. But again, official documents and communications made by local authorities do not let the villagers have a clear vision of their future and nor of the opportunities for mass conversion (163 families) to tourism services 55. Villagers interviewed in 2008 and 2009 only have vague information on current projects. They say the authorities and the Tây Thiên Tourism Management Board do not inform them of anything. Only a few people have seen project map of 163 ha Project 2 Phase 2 (see illustration) but without understanding how the project will be organized in terms of space and time. For example, Mr. T.V.S. from Đền Thõng, one of the interviewees, said in September 2009: Since 2006, I am opposed to the project of the parking lot and other larger ones, because there are legal problems. I have discussed these problems with my family, my neighbours and my friends in the village. I was directly threatened with being arrested by the district police if I did not stop rallying people against the project. I heard of a big project on the river Suối Trường Sinh which descends from the Valley of the Temples: a 70m high dam with an artificial waterfall and pass underneath the road, there is a lake with a bridge, with same design of the Perfume Pagoda Rumours or relevant information? Among official documents, the "Detailed Planning for buildings (at 1/2000e scale), central area for Tây Thiên festivals, Project plan to use land" map (see illustration) dated July 2009, signed by provincial, district and communal authorities, points out the creation of an island in the northern lake that is 400m wide by 450m long (18ha.), with a bridge for access. The development on the river Suối Trường Sinh does not appear on the maps that we have obtained. In September 2009, we also met a geometer team that was laying landmarks for future construction. When asked what will be built here or there, they said they did not know the specific objective of their work, and were not aware of the cable car. They have obviously been instructed not to give information on the project. 55 According to official website of Vĩnh Phúc province: _vp=news&in=viewst&sid=1711, Consulted 15/

45 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE Project 3 is probably an extension or transformation of Project 2 Phase 2, but the types of planned construction and timings are different. We do not have access to official documents of Project 3, such as administrative decisions and a map of how the land shall be used. III - Sources of tension and conflicts between local administration and villagers A synthesis of the tension and conflicts will help us to have an overview of the situation. In 2005, 1.05 ha of the best paddy fields were expropriated without official permission. In 2007, these expropriations reached 51 ha in the heart of the village, and farmers are still waiting in vain for the infrastructure (restaurants, hotels, tourist information centre, etc.) and what would be given in compensation for the deadweight losses due to the sale of their land. Until now (March 2010) nothing has been done. No precise information has been given, no explanation has been advanced by the authorities, despite numerous formal and informal requests. In 2009, the phenomenon reached a considerable scale: a 170 ha project, with ha expropriating all of Đền Thõng s best rice fields and those of three neighbouring villages, and most houses and shops in the centre of Đền Thõng and its tombs 56. The need for replacement activities is becoming urgent. Migration to the cities could be accelerated due to the lack of land, and the authorities have not provided specifics, either in terms of relocation (where, when? under what conditions?), or in terms of new business activities (which jobs? for whom? what types of training?). Based on the important issues that give rise to the conflict between authorities and villagers, we propose an analysis of the complex processes at the foundations of these tensions. All the relationship issues were collected during the 2008 and 2009 interviews, and some were detailed in Gia đình & Xã hội (Family & Society Journal) and Pháp Lý (Legal Journal). For this chapter, we will retain only those that allow us to highlight functional or structural problems in exchanges between the administration and the population. Other problems, such as those 56 Decision N 2279/QD-UBND on 27/07/2009, «Approval of plan for compensation, support and settlement services to the project: the cultural center area of the festival Tây Thiên», Vĩnh Phúc province s People Committee. 43

46 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM related to corruption, insider trading, and abuse of power by officials and local police will not be discussed here. The newspapers have amply covered the topic. The analysis of tension and conflict can primarily be found in a grid proposed by Albert Hirschman in his book Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organisations, and States (1970). In different political contexts, he shows that relations between conflicting social groups can be described and analyzed in 3 complementary angles: Loyalty: it is the acceptance, without visible resistance 57, of constraints and pressures produced by one group over another. Voice: the group that suffers the constraints will speak out to try to start a dialogue, a negotiation with the antagonist group. Exit: it is the refusal of the group to enter a forced relationship with the oppressor group, the action of avoiding contact. 1 - How land was "officially" reclaimed three months before the official decision of the province On January 25 th 2006, Vĩnh Phúc Province People's Committee Decision No. 226/QĐ-UBND concerning the recovery of m 2 of land in the area of Tây Thiên (Đài Dinh commune, Tam Đảo District) to be allocated to the People's Committee of Tam Đảo District to build a parking lot on the Tây Thiên site was made. In fact, the surface of the parking lot was already filled and levelled on November 27 th 2005 for the inaugural ceremony of Tây Thiên's Trúc Lâm Zen Monastery. Villagers pointed out that in fact the land in question had been recovered, developed, and paid off through the car park rental three months before the publication of the province's official decision. They state that this shows that the local district and the commune authorities made all these transactions before receiving the written agreement from the province 58. The first issue is that the province's official decision giving the order to "recover" Đền Thõng's land came 3 months after the implementation of the decisions taken by the district and commune. This seeming "detail" will become the crux of conflicts between villagers and district and commune authorities, which had still not been resolved in March For everyday forms of resistance, often invisible and difficult to grasp in sociological surveys, see Michel de Certeau, in L Invention du quotidien (The Invention of Everyday), 1981: the «stratégies d accommodement», compromise strategies of social groups without official power. 58 Đền Thõng villagers letter of complaint (2009) and Gia đình & Xã hội, 22/01/

47 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE The villagers understood that the district and commune authorities did not comply with the province s decisions regarding the procedures for expropriation and compensation. They also know they have very few effective means to claim recognition for their rights. This leads to a loss of confidence in local authorities. Several villagers expressed directly, and sometimes forcefully in the 2008 and 2009 interviews, this "broken social contract" between the population, politicians and administrators. 2 - One law, two practical applications Since 2008, several joint letters of complaint from the inhabitants of Đền Thõng were first sent to the commune, then to the district. No answer was ever received and no actions were taken. In 2009, a delegation of women from the village 59 went to Vĩnh Phúc Province People's Committee, after having made an appointment with the authorities to present a letter of complaint signed by 28 households whose land had been recovered (đất thu hồi) for the car park project in The province level contacts refused to meet with them, arguing their letter was not acceptable because it had not been filled in properly and was not a photocopy of the original. They were advised to redo these documents and make another appointment. These statements angered the women because they were only too aware how difficult it had been to obtain the signatures for their collective letter. To repeat the process with each family and explain the province's refusal would very likely put the village women in a difficult spot. Firstly (November 2005), the commune and the district would sell the land of Đền Thõng village to a private company before they had the provincial decision of land recovery from the State. In a second step, when the villagers would want to enforce their rights for compensation for expropriation as specified in the decision of the province (N 226, 25 Janvier 2006), the district and the commune would use the following argument: The decision of land recovery by the People's Committee of the province is not accompanied by an original: the commune does not have the original version but only a photocopy 60. And because a photocopy does not have the same legal value, the district and commune refuse to apply the province's decision the People's Committee of Tam Đảo district should decide on the detailed recovery of lands. In other words, the district and the commune are responsible for applying the 59 Data from 2008 and 2009 interviews. 60 Gia đình & Xã hội, 20/01/

48 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM law on individual land recovery according to the needs of the country's economic development (Land Act 2003, article 39, see note above). Legally, this means that in addition to paying for the recovered surfaces, families would obtain other compensations such as rice, training programs and financial support for study. Following several requests from those whose possessions have been expropriated, the district and the commune People's Committee responded that these were reclaimed lands that did not benefit from an expropriation decision. 61 For five years, it has not been possible to find a solution: each administrative body denied responsibility and claimed it lied with other governing bodies. In March 2010, no detailed decision on the expropriation had yet to be taken. The farmers fought to demand the decision be applied in its integrity. In January 2010, an inhabitant of Đền Thõng specified: We need a written decision that details the terms instead of mere oral promises 62. In one situation, when the farmers demanded their rights be applied concerning state expropriated lands, the district and the commune answered that a simple photocopy was insufficient to implement the law on land compensation. However, a simple photocopy allowed the district and the commune to sell the villagers' land to a private company to build a car park in November The power of photocopies is therefore relative to the context in which it is used and also relative to the interests of those it can defend. In another case, the delegation of women was not able to present their letter of complaint at the provincial level because it was only a photocopy. A photocopy therefore can be used by authorities when needed, even if this means transgressing laws on the sale of land in Đền Thõng in November However, authorities are very strict about the uselessness of photocopies in terms of requests from the population. The same law does not apply in the same terms or with the same rigour depending on whether it deals with administrative documents that are useful for authorities or a document formulating demands written by farmers. In these conditions, the fiduciary relationship with authorities and the law are broken, with direct consequences on the villagers who are henceforth wary of the authorities proposals and constraints, even if they know that these constraints can be good for the future. Any future project will be under great suspicion and will probably meet active resistance. 61 Pháp Lý, 09/ Gia đình & Xã hội, 20/01/

49 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE 3 - With official decisions often being contradictory, how can one find a suitable solution? At a May 2005 briefing in the commune, officials announced that 10,554.7m² of land will be expropriated for the tourism project launched by the province 63 and that the compensation would amount to 9,843,000 VND/sào. The compensation will be the provision of training and 108 kg of paddy/sào for five years for members of households whose property has been expropriated. During the meeting, the villagers did not ask to see official documents that specified the circumstances. They simply trusted the local authority they dealt with. We have seen that the province issued a decision in January 2006 asking the district and the commune to implement the recovery of land for Đền Thõng village. Furthermore, on May 15 th 2009, According to the Inter-Service Guide N 241 People's Committee of Vĩnh Phúc province 64 on compensation income restricted to households, with regard to individuals who provide land to the state for the purpose of developing the economy, following the recovery decision, and with regard to the land that the state has recovered from 1/1/1997 to 31/12/2013, persons affected will receive the assistance of 108kg of paddy/sào per year for 5 consecutive years 65. Despite provincial decisions published in 2006 and 2009 and despite oral promises from the district and the commune since 2005, when villagers asked to receive training and paddy compensation for lands expropriated for the purpose of provincial development, they were faced with categorical refusal from the district and commune. More precisely, "[the district and commune authorities] have responded that the land for the construction of the parking by Bình Minh Company was recovered without the Decision of recovery, which is why the local government does not certify [the compensation] 66. The people wondered: This land reclamation by district People's Committee of Tam Đảo has made the decision without recovery? Have they violated the land law of 2003 or not? [ ] One would think that the People's 63 In May 2005, information from Commune People's Committee information mentioned 10,554.7m², but Vĩnh Phúc Province People's Committee Decision No. 226/QĐ-UBND (25/01/2006) concerned the recovery of 10,723 m 2. Which is the correct figure? 64 «Implementation of Resolution No. 20/2008 of the People's Council of Vĩnh Phúc Province». 65 Gia đình & Xã hội, 20/01/ Pháp Lý 09/

50 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM Committee of Vĩnh Phúc province and relevant bodies should arrive early to consider the recovery of land in the Đại Đình commune and the role of individuals involved 67. In an official statement "in response to motions of voters at the 15th meeting of the People's Council of the province 68 ", on July 22 nd 2009, Vĩnh Phúc Province's People s Committee requested that the district authorities "inform the public beforehand on projects that take place in the territory of Đại Đình commune, in accordance to Article 39 of the Land Law 69 of 2003, which states the reallocation of land to the state (recovery-expropriation) must be publicly announced within 90 days. Moreover, in the same document, the province of Vĩnh Phúc asked its department to build and Tam Đảo district to work with residents to report details of the land reclaimed for parking and to ensure the smooth running of the project. This is the only answer that the province gave villagers. It only repeats the contents of previous decisions, without indicating the date of deposit for the records, or specifying that compensation must be granted by the National Land Act (2003) and by the province s Inter-guide service in This response will have no effect on the the district and commune s refusal. On February 3 rd 2010, a key cadre of the Party and of People s Council of Đại Đồng commune said that so far there is still no decision from the district on the recovery of detailed area of reclaimed land [at Đền Thõng]. 70 A sentence from the collective letter of complaint from Đền Thõng residents 71 to the province in 2009 sums up the situation: If the recovery of land has really made the decision without recovery of the province, then it is an illegal action and is misleading. 67 Pháp Lý 09/ «Sở Tài nguyên và Môi trường: Trả lời kiến nghị của cử tri tại kỳ họp thứ 15 HĐND tỉnh.» «Land Law 2003, Article 39 «Recovering land for use for purposes of defense, security, national interests, public interests. 1. The State shall recover land, pay compensations, clear ground after the land use plannings and/or plans are publicized or when the investment projects with the land use demands being in line with the land use plannings and/or plans are considered and approved by competent State agencies. 2. At least ninety (90) days before land recovery, for agricultural land, and 180 days, for non-agricultural land, the competent State agencies shall have to notify the persons with land to be recovered of the reasons for recovery, time and plan for evacuation, the overall schemes for compensations, ground clearance and resettlement.» 70 Gia đình & Xã hội, 03/02/ Collected during surveys from

51 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE These examples show stark contradictions between official provincial decisions and the district and commune s refusal in applying them. From a legal standpoint, it is surprising that this refusal to apply the law has not resulted in the province resorting to taking measures of control and coercion. To describe the case of Đền Thõng land reclaimed by the district outside the legal framework, the Family and Society Journal (22/01/2010) entitled an article with the traditional saying «Tiền trảm, hậu tấu» which literally translates to Beheading someone before making his report to the king. In other words, an official of lower rank did something far beyond his or her jurisdiction prior to requesting permission from their superior. Thus, summarizing the abuse of local power and virtually assured that there will be no prosecution for the perpetrators of such abuses, it can also create a sense of impunity among authorities that villagers openly criticize. The same problem of non-compliance with national laws on the protection of national parks was so acute in 2007 in the case of the "Ecological Tourism Tam Đảo 2 and Tây Thiên" project, managed by Vĩnh Phúc province s People s Committee, that some newspapers referred to it with the following title: Economic development, but it must respect the law! 72 We address here the much more general problem of articulation between the legal system and its application in Vietnam 73. As in all modern legal systems, Vietnamese law provides for a hierarchy of standards to define which authorities have more power of control than others. For example, as far as Planning and Land Use is concerned, Land Law of 2003 is clear: «Land Act 2003: Article 26. Competence to decide on, consider and approve the land use plannings and plans 1. The National Assembly decides on the land use plannings and plans of the whole country, which are submitted by the Government. 2. The Government considers and approves the land use plannings and plans of the provinces and centrally-run cities. 3. The provincial/municipal People's Committees consider and approve the land use plannings and plans of their immediate subordinate administrative units. 4. The People's Committees of the rural districts, provincial capitals or towns consider and approve the commune land use plannings and plans prescribed in Clause 4, Article 25 of this Law.» «Article The People's Committees of communes not located in areas of urbanized during a cycle of land use, organize the preparation of development plans and land use in their respective territories 74.» 72 «Phát triển kinh tế nhưng phải tôn trọng luật pháp!» (Thien Nhien [Nature], 15/08/2007). 73 See Hoang Ngoc Giao, Official translation. 49

52 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM In a more general view, the Land Law, Policy, Law and Development Institute says: Most scholars and officials have offered [ ] the main reasons to account for the increase in citizens complaints about the administrative activities of the state's organs. [ ] The legal system of Vietnam is still inadequate in many regards, overlapping, and contradictory in content. [ ] As such, the implementation of laws produces many contradictions, damaging the rights and interests of citizens, and therefore, generating complaints. Not only is it not an effective tool in assisting state administrative organs to settle citizens complaints, but the mechanism itself has become a factor stimulating the increase of complaints and making those complaints even more complicated and long lasting 75. The case presented above shows that laws are not always met and that the villagers do not have the legal instruments, nor the power to enforce their rights. In addition, a law that is not accompanied by means of control and coercion in the event of non-compliance has few chances to be implemented. This was the situation as observed at Đền Thõng village for 5 years. IV - What are the possibilities to file a complaint or to have one s rights recognized? We will see that the means of expression and the channels used by villagers to make their voices heard by authorities have evolved over time. We will try to give a more complete panorama of these collective actions. On the other hand, we will see that, in response to villages requests, provincial, district and communal levels of communication remained low and often contradictory. 1 - Requests of information and complaint procedures As a first recourse, villagers need to inform officials then request a meeting with them. Since 2006, several villagers who have not received 108 kg paddy per sao of rice field that was expropriated had asked to meet the Chairman of Commune s People s Committee, and the President of District s People s Committee: they requested explanations and compensations as their lawful right 75 Hoang Ngoc Giao, 2009, p

53 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE according to a 2006 provincial decision. The commune answered that they had no information on this subject on the grounds that land management belonged to the district and the province. Finally, the district refused to consider their request to meet them. This first form of collective action is characterized by a demand for dialogue and explanation. It corresponds to the type of relationship known as "Voice" (see Hirschman, 1970). The aim of these actions is to try to resolve tensions and conflicts by sharing and negotiating. In this case, it is a series of unilateral actions initiated by villagers. In their view, the different administrative institutions failed to meet the demands of the people. The lack of response will generate forms of collective actions that will be discussed below. For villagers, participation and non-participation in project meetings are also a means to express their rejection of existing communication methods. A large group of villagers were called in and came to official meetings. They told us if the officials discourses are ambiguous and if they refuse to answer questions, the villagers leave the meeting as a sign of protesting. This happened several times in 2008 and One example was told with irony by many Đền Thõng inhabitants about a meeting held at the Commune s People's Committee in August 2009 with about 40 heads of families from the four villages affected by the project (Project 2 Phase 2 and Project 3). Local authorities were represented by an engineer of the development plan and some commune officials, but representatives of the district and the province were absent. All the villagers noted the harm of this absence. Commune authorities keep repeating that "they do not have all the information on projects, and have no power of decision on expropriation and compensation. Under these prevalent conditions, many of them refuse to go to formal meetings on these projects that they describe as "masquerade". The refusal to participate is a way for the villagers to show their objection. This specific position can be qualified as passive resistance, a form of protest that has already been heavily used by pacific leaders like Gandhi in India. In Hirschman s analytical frame, "exit" means the release of the exchange, and the distancing of the mutual relationship. In the passage of "Voice" to "Exit", there is a deterioration in the quality of exchanges with a view to resolve tensions. For several years, different groups of villagers have written collective letters of complaint delivered by hand to the Commune People's Committee and 51

54 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM District People's Committee 76. Finally in 2009, they wrote to the Province People s Committee. We have in our possession a copy of a letter of complaint from last spring 2009 to the Province People s Committee. The letter is signed by 28 families who demanded that the decisions of the province be respected in terms of compensation for land expropriated by the state. We have seen earlier how such letters were received. Since none of these governing bodies have responded to their repeated requests, several villagers plan to bring the case before the authorities of Hà Nội. But they know that such a move has virtually no chance of success if it is not backed by powerful personalities. 2 - Forms of resistance to the tourism development projects Since September 2009, villagers have upped their protest via physical actions against arrangements of expropriated land. For example, on September 23 rd, 2009, in late morning, a truck was bringing a bulldozer on the land to be developed near the car park. The bulldozer s task was to level the land, which immediately brought about twenty villagers running, or riding on bicycles and motorbikes to oppose the work of the bulldower. The discussion between farmers, the site manager and the driver of the bulldozer took about 30 minutes, but given the villagers strong determination, and their threats if the machine moved any soil, the bulldozer did not get its work done that day. 52 Conflict between villagers and a bulldozer driver on the task of extending the parking area: 23/09/2009 (Source N. T. Quỳnh ) 76 According to interviews made in 2009 and Gia đình & Xã hội, 20/01/2010.

55 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE In November 2009, villagers were informed of the Official Opening ceremony of Tây Thiên cableway, which would be held in the presence of important personalities from the country and the region at the beginning of December On November 20 th, 2009, they decided to block the entrance to the car park, so that authorities could not park for the ceremony, as well as urged for the Bình Minh conpany not to continue to make profit with from this parking area while operating without official permission. Therefore the district police had to intervene to open the parking, because this event came just few days before the grand opening special event of Tây Thiên cableway (05/12/2009) 77. On November 20, 2009, the Gateway parking is blocked by the villagers, a few days before the Official Opening ceremony of Tây Thiên cableway 78. On his inteview to Family and Society Journal 79 (20/01/2010), a key cadre of the Party and of the People s Council of Đại Đồng commune said Obstacles to the recovery of land for parking construction in 2005 cause many difficulties for local authorities. In November 2009, District police intervened. The day 77 Gia đình & Xã hội, 20/01/ /01/ /khuat-tat-quanh-bai-do-xe-khu-danh-thang-tay-thien-vinh-phuc-tinh-chua-quyet-huyen-da-lam -xong.htm, Gia đình & Xã hội, 22/1/ Gia đình & Xã hội. 53

56 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM before the ceremony for the construction of the Tây Thiên cable, he and some leaders of the commune had to go to each person to persuade them because officials were afraid of difficulties with the people on the day of the big ceremony. Mr. T.V.B., from Đền Thõng village, said: «November 20, 2009, the district police came to the village and called on the people to come to voice their remarks and express their wishes for them to be heard by higher levels of administration. In the minutes prepared by the police, it said that in one month, if nobody could solve this case, the people will block the parking lot. But more than a month later, in these administrative levels cared to to solve this problem. Until 23/12/2009 [ ] we, the people again blocked the door of the parking. If any administrative person cannot resolve this matter, we will continue to block the car park. Because as long as there is no decision of recovery, these lands remain our property 80. Between 2006 and 2009, the villagers moved from passive resistance in their writing letters of protest to concrete actions against the projects imposed on their village. As for the various authorities, no strong signal has been issued to resolve this problem. Only when the authorities realized that the villagers would probably use the Opening Ceremony of the cable work and the presence of many members of the media to express their discontent that officials came to reassure the villagers. The police then recorded grievances and complaints from residents. But since November 2009, no authority has helped to unblock the situation of expropriated land. To complete the overview of the relationship between population and administrations, we will describe the case of a Đền Thõng trading family living mainly from tourism and agricultural land rented to others. In interviews (2009), the head of the family presented the different phases of tourism projects as totally positive changes, noting that many villagers did not understand the value of these projects. After several hours of interviews, we learned that this family sold the land in Project 1 ( ) project. But it has also bought large lots of land on the boundaries of the 51-hectare project - Project 2 Phase 1. This family made a good deal because the lands purchased in 2007 were at very low price, but the land bought by the project Project 2 Phase 2 in 2009, was at a higher rate. While most villagers are unaware of the details of these projects, how has this family been able to invest in land that would soon take on more 80 Gia đình & Xã hội, 20/01/

57 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE value? In a second interview with another member of this family, we learned that a son of the family works in a department of the district that manages Đền Thõng s tourism projects. It is through "insider" information that the family was able to make a successful real estate transaction, while the majority of villagers feel cheated by the projects. Through Hirschman s analysis, the position of this family is "Loyalty": they accept - even support - the positions of administrative bodies on projects, and this for two reasons. The first: the family is itself directly involved in the administrative system, therefore it belongs simultaneously to two groups: the villagers and the administration. The second: this family has used confidential information about the land and plans to make a good real estate transaction. This particular example can show that the social groups involved do not have exclusive positions. Some families and some people 81 belong simultaneously to two or several groups with divergent interests on tourism projects. This set of multiple memberships is also an important factor in understanding how social dynamics can be organized beyond the dual approach. V - Key elements in understanding the current tensions between villagers and local authorities Since November 2005, relations between villagers and authorities have continued to deteriorate to such an extent that by 2009, the villagers displayed acts of physical resistance against the implementation of projects on their land. Tensions and conflicts are certainly due to a series of factors, both structural and human. The space allotted here does not allow us develop them all in detail. For this reason, and because of the communication problems observed here that overlap those observed in many development projects, we shall first present the villagers with repeated questions about their future in unfamiliar projects they did not master. Then we shall look for who are considered the "actors involved in the project, otherwise known as the "stakeholders" in the vocabulary of development. Finally, we shall advance three possible explanations for 81 Gia đình & Xã hội Newspaper (22/01/2010) describes an interview with an officer from the District who claims to be the main shareholder of Bình Minh Company. This company owns the car park of 1.05 ha and is responsible for its operation. We know from other interviews (2009) that this officer is also the one who pushed the villagers to sign sales deeds for their land in Proceeds from the sale of parking tickets for the project - Phase 3 will be considerable (see figure for location of parking in the centre of this project). 55

58 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM understanding the basis of relations between villagers and authorities around these projects. 1 - Questions about the future of the village: are they taken into account in projects? During 2008 and 2009 interviews, we noted the points that villagers raised. They, in turn, asked us, the researchers, many questions about current projects and their future potential. Two major problems appear through their questions. a) What are the means and ways to run seasonal and religious tourism as a regular yearly leisure activity? - How will the authorities and private companies be able to attract tourists every month of the year, in Đền Thõng - Tây Thiên, while the great pilgrimage takes place only two months a year? - Most Đền Thõng families with regular and sufficient income have diversified their activities. Traditionnally, they produce irrigated rice, but because rice is not enough for profit, they turn to more diversified agricultural activities such as intensive poultry or high-value wild-animal rearing (such as porcupines and wild boars). Many of them are involved in tourist activities only a few months per year, so the villagers wondered if local authorities provide for the diversification of activities to ensure a regular flow of income. - If the new tourism projects include activities such as golf and leisure (massage, karaoke, spa 82 ), would they harm the image of the site, which is mainly centred on Buddhism and spirituality? b) They also raised more technical issues: - When will authorities and private companies begin to build the infrastructure to welcome tourists? - Will Hotels and restaurants be built in our village and give employement to the village or commune? There is no clear information or answer to these questions. 82 Three entertainment activities that are strongly connected with the «sex trade» in Vietnam. 56

59 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE Many families have relatives in the villages in Tam Đảo National Park s buffer zone which have recently welcomed golf courses and resorts, and they know that companies have given contracts to people in Hà Nội and Hải Phòng because they are better trained than local staff. Local employees only have lowquality jobs. The doubts and anger of the villagers who are "turned away" from these projects through unfulfilled promises over the past 5 years seem to be legitimate. In other words, none of these key issues in the organization of local life has been answered, by official voices (not even partially). Almost all the villagers interviewed in 2008 and 2009 expressed their deep feeling of uneasiness and uncertainty about their future in tourism projects. These questions show repeatedly that people do not yet know the detailed project plans that affect them closely. But by reversing the question one might ask whether projects and the people in charge are aware of the local population included within their scope of development? Many factors lead to thinking that this is not the case. For instance, no serious economic or sociological study has been conducted since 2005 on the needs of different projects 83. This is surprising when you consider that 800 people will be relocated for the project s needs. From a methodological point of view, one wonders why, during none of the 4 phases of projects imposed on the village, no time has been taken to ask people how to better integrate the project into their lives and the local equilibrium. Going further in the analysis, one wonders which groups are considered "project actors" or "stakeholders" with the project leaders. 2 - Who are considered project stakeholders and by whom? This is the first question that arises when a project manager comes in contact with fieldwork. Developing new activities and transforming landscapes, jobs and the habits of villagers, all of the above require knowing at least some information on the situation before the project. More importantly, one needs to identify the groups of social actors that will be involved in the project at varying degrees. We will not give an analysis of the different groups of Đền Thõng s actors. We will only show that the short survey conducted by the 83 In 2006, GTZ experts conducted surveys over a few days on the technical implementation of Tourist projects in Tam Đảo National Park, without any special attention paid to social issues. 57

60 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM Tourism and Regional Development Consultant 84 is the only thing that lists the stakeholders of Tây Thiên project. Our analysis based on their 2006 mission report will attempt to show how the choice of stakeholders can have strong consequences on project management. The Consultant s report (2006) said tasks of the fieldwork mission are to develop, discuss and agree with all main stakeholders on a vision and starting ideas for sustainable tourism development at Tây Thiên Pagoda 85. Finally a common discussion with Tây Thiên Tourism board and stakeholders was agreed in order to come to an agreement on what should be understood to be essential for ecotourism development, but also to discuss ideas and the following steps for implementation 86. a) Who are the stakeholders and the Tây Thiên Tourism Management Board? Stakeholders: The Following stakeholders appeared at the workshop at 3rd November 2006 and should be considered for further activities: - Tam Đảo district People s Committee, - Department for Tourism [from Vĩnh Phúc province People s Committee] - Department for Culture and Information [from Vĩnh Phúc province People s Committee] - Tam Đảo National Park - Tam Đảo Management Project - Private sector/tourism firms (Otto 2006: 42) This German consultant team describes stakeholders as official institutions and departments, management board, formal groups and private firms. Here, we are faced with a classic symptom of almost all development projects: official, formal and institutional groups are considered as usual regular stakeholders, while the local population which include farmers, traders and shopkeepers are not included on the list of projects stakeholders. There is no place on the stakeholders list for the few hundred families of farmers who have already lost a large part of the best rice fields and residential and commercial land. How is it possible for villagers to be included among the stakeholders? 84 Development and Partial Finalisation of Sustainable Tourism Development Concepts for Key Areas in Tam Đảo National Park, Vietnam, November 2006, Tam Đảo, p. 94, on behalf of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) 85 Otto, 2006, p Otto, 2006, p

61 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE In official Vietnamese documents of the development project, we can find the same kind of classification where all stakeholders are leaders or responsible for official organizations, committees and associations. The main reason is because all of these official and formal groups are supposed to be representative of the whole population. This is a serious limitation to the concept of people participation projects and of local forms of governance. In brief, this approach to the social realities and affiliation dramatically reduces the possibility and opportunity for social groups without official affiliation to participate in the local governance process. However, the Consultant s report also mentioned that the Tây Thiên Tourism Management Board may include non-affiliated and non-official members of the population. b) Who are Tây Thiên Tourism Management Board members? Because the Consultants' report did not give details, we looked at the composition of the Tây Thiên Tourism Management Board through official documents. A decision (03/11/2005) N 701/2005/QD-UB) from Tam Đảo District People s Committee gave helped to provide an answer: Article 5: Organizational structure: The Tây Thiên Management Board is composed of one head, two deputy heads (one is a full-time deputy head and another is part-time deputy head), and other staff under overall leadership of the head. Whenever necessary, the Board may sign additional contracts to recruit extra local labourers to fill in necessary positions. In addition to assigned key tasks, each part-time staff is asked to do additional tasks assigned by the head and is also responsible to local Communist Party, District People s Committee and cultural agencies in terms of fulfillment of his tasks 87. This article clearly states: each part-time staff is asked to do additional tasks assigned by the head and is also responsible for the local Communist Party, District People s Committee and cultural agencies in terms of the fulfillment of his tasks. On the one hand, this means that political leaders (Communist Party), responsible administrators (District People s Committee) and officials from the cultural department are ex officio members of the Tây Thiên Tourism Management Board. On the other hand, this shows that the Management Board does not include anyone who is not already an official 87 Decision on Regulation on Management and Exploitation of Tây Thiên Tourist Site Tam Đảo, 3 rd November, 2005, Tam Đảo District People s Committee, No 701/2005/QD-UB. 59

62 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM person validated by higher authorities, such as peasants, merchants or monks from local monasteries. The local population is not directly present in this Management Board and no member of civil society will be represented. Here, we encounter a specific point in the local organization of Vietnam s management committees and project organization. These are established on a top-down frame, often with financial and technical assistance from international bodies (World Bank, European Union, UN, etc.). But from a practical point of view, as their members are all major players in political and administrative structures, these management committees have very little autonomy and little power in decision-making, therefore any risk of conflict between these committees and various authorities are immediately silenced by the fact that they belong to both institutions. From a theoretical and official viewpoint, it is easy to show that "local governance" and "civil society" are developing rapidly, if we refer to the tables that show how many independent groups and associations have been created. In this case, the notion of independence is more a demonstration of propaganda than a description of observable social realities. From a practical point of view, the double loyalties of members renders obsolete any dissents and of course any real possibility to create a real dialogue. It is interesting to note that the major and recurring patterns of people representation in the civil structure of organization in Vietnam have not been highlighted by GTZ s experts in But they clearly show that the Tây Thiên Tourism Management Board had no real power of decision in these projects. They also stressed that the proper functioning of the project required that the Management Board be substantially increased (this will not happen). However, they did not think that, due to its composition and the status of its members, this board was the main limitation to this option. 3 - Assumptions on the basis of the relationship between authorities and the people In the specific context of Đền Thõng s projects and using the available data, I would suggest three main reasons to try to understand the basis of this relationship, and the issues that arise between authorities and citizens. 60

63 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE a) «The peasants do not understand how the system works. They must follow the directives of the authorities» This sentence is often heard coming from the mouths of administrators, especially in situations of difficulty and misunderstanding with the local people. It is tinged with paternalism and especially emphasizes the disparities between two worlds: those who know and others who don t. We have seen that the complexity and contradictions between administrative decisions and their applications can lead to understanding why it is possible to say "peasants do not understand the administrative system." To get a more balanced view, we should find out whether administrators, the drafters of decisions and those responsible for their practical applications have a real and better understanding of the system. Without going too far in that direction, it is possible to say that producers of official norms, laws and regulations are generally better equipped to navigate the "grey areas of law" than the average Vietnamese citizen, whether urban or peasant. But this journey into "troubled waters" is possible because they know that ordinary people are very hesitant to use the law against responsible authorities. For example, since 2005, despite the tensions and obvious conflict, Đền Thõng villagers have taken only one legal action (a collective letter of complaint) against the authorities regarding suspicious activity. However, this action has been rejected. In 2008, some Vietnamese sociologists do not hesitate to assert that Vietnamese peasants are afraid of paper work and administrative matters. Again, it would be interesting to find the origins and foundations of this "supposed fear", which is perhaps not solely linked to farmers. Unfortunately, this would lead us astray from the main lines of our subject. To nuance that statement, I will only recall that, in the case of Đền Thõng after the first meeting in May 2005, villagers have not called in to check on promises made on paper by local authorities in relation to compensation. This was not out of "fear of paper" but rather because their confidence in their leaders was over. Let us remember this exasperated woman who said we want guarantees written and verbal promises. Fear of paper disappears when they realize that the official discourse is more trust-worthy, as was the case on several occasions since 2005 in Đền Thõng projects. In 2009, a farmer woman from Đền Thõng who regularly works in tourism explains her her perception of relations with officials as such: For the authorities, we are regarded as naïve: we listen to political cadres, officials of the People's Committee, and ultimately accept their policies. But since 2005, they have gone too far, and now we are trying to learn and we do not trust them Interview made in

64 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM b) The character "priority" of major development projects and law enforcement Đền Thõng - Tây Thiên projects, such as the huge "Tam Đảo 2" project a few years ago 89, are parts of a major national campaign in tourism development supported by ministerial 90 and provincial 91 decisions. Administrative authorities at all levels know that they are acting within the framework of a large project and officialy supported by the government, giving them more freedom and sometimes more audacity. In 2006, in the heart of the controversy around project "Tam Đảo 2", the GTZ reports the province s announcement by giving it an extremely positive tone even though it is completely unrealistic. The 5-year Socio-Economic Development Plan (SEDP) ( ) of Vĩnh Phúc province 92 considers Vĩnh Phúc as a province with huge potentials for tourism that is a good basis for development of internationally, and nationally-important tourism and recreation service sites. As for orientations for sub-regional development, the Tam Đảo mountain range is considered as a centre for modern and eco-touristic development. According to the Resolution of the District Party s Congress for the period of : in a section mentioning the tasks and solutions for socio-economic development until 2020, the Resolution considers tourism development as a key economic pillar. [ ] Accelerated construction of Tam Đảo trading and commercial centre and Tây Thiên tourism site so that it becomes a tourist centre in the province and within the whole country 93. In March 2010, extolling the merits of Tây Thiên Project 3 (cable car and tourist constructions over 170 hectares) at the provincial, national and regional (Southeast Asia) levels, the report of the province also makes highly optimistic forecasts: This [Tây Thiên] will be one of the the most important festivals in Vĩnh Phúc. It aims to meet the annual celebration of the province. [ ] According to estimates, after the completion of the project, spiritual and cultural tourism in 89 This huge project (600 ha and 300 millions USD) stopped totally in September 2007 under pressure from environmental associations (Vietnam National Parks and Protected Areas Association: Hội Bảo vệ Thiên nhiên và Môi trường Việt Nam), scientists and the media (Anonymous, 2007). 90 Prime Minister of Vietnam, 17 May 2002, List of national projects calling for foreign direct investment in the period, Decision No. 62/2002/QD-TTg. 91 UBND Vĩnh Phúc, 2006, Essential Report on the ecotourism Project Tam Đảo and Tây Thiên. [in Vietnamese]. 92 Report Vĩnh Phúc Provincial People s Committee, March Otto, 2006, p.20 annexe. 62

65 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE Tây Thiên will welcome millions of visitors each year, allowing local people to transform their economic structure, develop their society 94. These development projects which are spreading throughout Tam Đảo National Park and its buffer zone have been launched without any form of rigorous prior survey, in terms of market study, social and environmental impacts, in order to establish such estimates. Despite this low level of knowledge concerning local situations, these projects are presented as a necessity for economic development, for the country and the province. Could this national necessity be an argument to enable the authorities that are implicated in these projects to avoid certain laws in order to reach their development objectives? Thus, some major tourism development projects (as Tam Đảo 2 in , 600 ha, 300 million USD, and Đền Thõng-Tây Thiên in , 173 ha, 22 million euro, 800 people relocated) have been launched without prior serious studies of feasibility and impact (social, economical, environment, etc.). Such projects developed on theoretical bases are often failures, or "relatively successful", especially in the integration of local populations. Are these "national interest" and the official support of the "Prime Minister" sufficient to offset or replace the study of impact? In the case of Đền Thõng, projects supported by national and provincial administrations could explain the absence of sanctions by the province for not complying with the legislation of expropriation by the district and commune. In this context, however, we have noted that the regulation of large tourism projects began to develop. For example, the end to tourist complex project "Tam Đảo 2" at the heart of Tam Đảo National Park was supported by the Prime Minister in 2008, and in June 2009, prohibited the construction of 50 golf courses (on the 166 forecast...) because they were threatening agriculture in Vietnam 95, but not for environmental reasons or reasons of ratio between areas of land use and jobs provided as we would have thought «Danh thắng Tây Thiên - tầm vóc khu du lịch trọng điểm của tỉnh và quốc gia» [Tây Thiên Scenic magnitude of key tourist areas of the province and country] VinhPhuconline 25/03/ nel_id=321&parent_channel_id=321&article_id= See Official Website of Ministry Of Natural Resources and Environment, Eliminate More Than 50 Golf Course Projects, NA Advised, 254&ItemID=66977, consulted 25/03/2010, and Thanh Nien News, 06/13/ For the prohibition of 7 golf projects around Ho Chi Minh City city, see Tuoi Tre, 04/05/09. 63

66 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM c) Top-down and leading practices It is necessary to discuss here some of the features of historical relationships between population and government and more broadly in governance. Since the 1980s and 1990s decollectivization period, the implementation of Đổi Mới reforms (which legally start in 1986) and the involvement of international bodies in the «economic and social development» of Vietnam increased since the 2000s, the Vietnamese political and administrative authorities are increasingly forced to be accountable for their decisions and their management of public property. Some recent laws, such as those on "grassroots democracy" (1998 and 2003), were produced specifically for this purpose, but their applications at the local level is still rare or partial. This legal framework and national advertising practices around the "democratic" and "participatory" are new elements in Vietnam, but many case studies show that it remains largely theoretical. As we have seen, administrative practices on the «fringe» of the law and officials decisions are still relevant. For Đền Thõng this has been the case for over 5 years, sometimes with the use of public force to cover these excesses 97. In 2005, when land was expropriated for parking, authorities "played" on their status and respectable position that: According to households who have recovered land in 2005, they just thought it was a decision on the State s part, therefore it must be observed 98. Those who hold authoritythis attitude that the holder of the authority will use, and sometimes abuse, its image and real and symbolic power has been reported by several villagers who attended the briefing of August 2009 at Đại Đình. They explained to us that during this meeting, they tried to understand why they should accept things contrary to official decisions, and they have asked officials to explain in detail the status of projects. After four years of waiting, still no answers have been provided, and with the collective feeling of being abused on several levels, villagers have insisted on getting concrete answers. Probably short of arguments and threatened by his authority being questioned, and certainly caught between decision and implementation, one representative of the People's commune Đại Đình stood up and said «This is a decision of the province, you must obey.» The villagers' demand for dialogue is put to an end by the recourse to higher authority. But this injunction loses its force when it is known that the commune itself has not respected the decisions of the province about the parking lot since Pháp Lý, 09/ Gia đình & Xã hội, 20/01/

67 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE These leading practices have prompted villagers to change their relations with authorities and with the law: On behalf of the affected households, Mrs. H. states: «We do not ask why no decision has been made to expropriate the land since they have taken it anyway, [We ask first and foremost] whether this action is consistent with State laws or not? After losing our land, we watched TV and we learned about laws and policies, we can know [what our rights are] 99.» (my emphasis). Villagers are progressively aware of their rights, they gather information, compare situations and ask for written documentation to authorities. But once informed, can they enforce their rights? The crucial issue is the application of laws and practical situations, to which is added the complexity of legislative arsenal. With regard to development projects, authorities in conjunction with private companies usually act "routinely" without enough accurate data on the socio-economic situation, and without taking into account the views of people affected by the project. We have noted that decisions are often made without a direct relationship with the local equilibrium and the wishes of the people. The "top-down" process is the rule of thumb, and will likely continue because authorities know that, if difficulties arise, they are almost assured that higher authorities will not use means of coercion (the case of the province of Vĩnh Phúc against Tam Đảo district and Đại Đình commune). They also know that people will not go to court to secure these rights. Through a combination of lack of control by hierarchies and the people's inability to enforce the law, authorities have carte-blanche to implement interventionist practices that do not concur with the law. The proof is in Đền Thõng, even after 5 years of tension and conflict, no legal proceedings against the commune and district have been officially filed. The villagers say that such an appeal is long and expensive and the final decision is almost always favourable to the administration 100. This action is not thought of as an effective instrument to recognize these rights among among most of the population. All of the above gives free rein to manage top-down and sometimes leading practices in development by local authorities Gia đình & Xã hội, 20/01/ On means of appointing judges and lawyers in Vietnam, and the levels of judicial independence in Vietnam, see Salomon (2004), Thayer (2008), Hoang Ngoc Giao (2009). 101 The case of the Tây Thiên project is not isolated, in many projects of local economic interests (under the control of local administration) come before any considerations for local populations. The film "Who owns the land?" (Vietnamese original title " Đất đai thuộc về ai?" director: Đoàn Hồng 65

68 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM VI - What are the possibilities of governance within a complex legal framework? As mentioned in the opening paragraphs, I will propose to show that Đền Thõng projects help to highlight some general problems of coordination between the law and its application in Vietnam. I have chosen to bring these issues in two axis. First, it is to question the hierarchy of norms in direct relation with the lack of coordination between certain administrative decisions and their applications. Finally, to open our paper on wider perspectives, we discuss issues of governance and civil society through the tensions and conflicts between people and government, and through the legal frameworks in which they can express themselves. 1 - A hierarchy of norms at the foundation of law As we have seen above, in many cases, official texts are not always respected by the authorities themselves. We will try to understand how and perhaps why. From a legal standpoint, the four tourism projects implemented in the village of Đền Thõng since 2005 have necessitated the issuance of over 30 official administrative documents of legal value 102, (directives, decrees, decisions, resolutions, minutes, inter-service guides, notes, plans of land tenure, etc.). These documents came from several departments (the Prime Minister, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of Forestry, the Forest Protection Department's management), from the province of Vĩnh Phúc People's Committee and its various departments (Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Department of Natural Resources and Environment, Department of Planning and Investment, Department of Finance, Department of Construction, etc.), People's Committee of Tam Đảo district, People's Committee of commune Đài Dinh, the Provincial and District Party's Congress and the instances of the Tam Đảo National Park. Note that none of these agencies or institutions ad hoc has been aware of all the legal documents issued about Đền Thõng Tây Thiên projects. Their Lê, produced by Ateliers Varan Vietnam et le Studio National du film documentaire et scientifique, 2010, duration: 54'48 ") illustrates the strong social problems in the case of construction of a golf course near Da Nang. 102 Part of the administrative documents are certainly unknown. 66

69 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE theoretical coordination is virtually impossible, so we understand that the problem is more acute for their practical applications. Since the 1980s and the Đổi Mới reforms, the production of many laws, decrees, codes, regulations and decisions in all areas is exponential 103. On the other hand, the monitoring tools for their application and enforcement for noncompliance are negligible in comparison, hence the enormous weakness in the implementation of the legal system 104. In an attempt to understand the foundations of the legal system and especially the public law that particularly governs the relationship between individuals and governments, due to my lack of legal experience, we sought advice from Vietnamese and French lawyers 105. Their research on the hierarchy of norms has shown that it is not defined clearly and definitively in texts. They showed that Vietnamese law has more than twenty levels of hierarchy from different political and administrative bodies stricto sensu: constitution, ordinances and resolutions of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly, codes, decrees and decisions of the State President, Government resolutions and decrees, decisions and directives of the Prime Minister, the decisions, directives and circulars of ministers and heads of agencies ministerial rank, etc. Such kind of norms can also be published by representatives of local power: the People's Council and the People's Committees of provinces and districts, and political bodies like the Regional Congress of the Communist Party. The difficulties in understanding this system are also related to the small number of studies and publications in the field of public law in Vietnam 106. Several other reasons may explain these difficulties. Firstly, access to data on Vietnamese law is difficult: the complexity of the norms set, no hierarchy between them, no publication and no systematic publication of court decisions. One consequence is the abundant production of law by the government, which created a real "underground law", which is known only to certain people, through their network of contacts. Then, for historical and political reasons, 103 See Abuza (2000) and Salomon (2004). 104 Hoang Ngoc Giao, In , with the Franco-Vietnamese Graduate School of Law, and with the support of its coordinator Carole Cayssials and Vietnamese Ph.D candidates, most of which are already legal professionals in Vietnamese institutions. 106 In comparison, private law, in particular the branch of business law, is highly developed in Vietnam since the Đổi Mới renovation. It is also the branch that offers the best career opportunities and remuneration. For available studies, see Nicholson (2003) and Nicholson and Nguyen Q.H. (2007). 67

70 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM there is no real Vietnam doctrine of public law that would help the overall understanding of the system 107. All these elements combined will produce "grey areas" characterized by inaccuracies or contradictions in texts and the level of law enforcement. This "legal limbo" or "law fuzziness" has been highlighted by several researchers on land law 108. Among several complete texts, none can establish the hierarchy of norms between them. In the case of Đền Thõng, we saw that the three administrative levels (province, district and commune) have regularly been rejecting their responsibility one after the other for decisions to expropriate or not expropriate land since «The [official] agencies tried to avoid the advisory responsibility, passing responsibility to each other. Or, advisory agencies have different views on the same case 109. The administration itself seemed lost in its own operations. But does it really get lost in the system? In practice, some "grey areas of the law" will be used to the advantage of those who have detailed knowledge of the legal system and the networks that are necessary for its implementation. These conditions favour people close to the administration and officials at the expense of ordinary citizens. For their part, citizens such as Đền Thõng farmers told us they do not know at what level or to what service they may address their requests and complaints to get results. In some specific cases, as in Đền Thõng, this system, however, based on legal texts that give rights to citizens, creates in practice a form of recurrent injustice because citizens cannot enforce the texts, and cannot enforce their basic rights. For its part, the administration has produced these texts and voted without any real dialogue between departments, so they are often contradictory. Some laws were issued by the organ without power over the matter; and there is a lack of compatibility and consistency between sub-laws, administrative documents, laws, and the Constitution 110. Such a situation gives the administration the freedom to have large areas of uncontrolled action for top-down attitudes and non-transparency. These grey areas are causing the vast 107 According to Carole Cayssials (2008) Application of research Project in National Research Agency - ANR,"To govern and to be governed". See also Fforde (1986), Sidel (1994) and Gillespie (2005). 108 Nguyen Van Suu in this Occasional Paper and Janet C. Sturgeon and Thomas Sikor (2004) Post Socialist Property in Asia and Europe: Variation on Fuzziness in Conservation & Society, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 1 17; Katherine Verdery (2004) The Property Regime of Socialism in Conservation & Society, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp Hoang Ngoc Giao, 2009, p. 12). 110 Hoang Ngoc Giao, 2009, p. 3). 68

71 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE majority of tensions and conflicts between people and the Vietnamese administration. The next difficulty is that, in Vietnam, in practice, there are no standardized methods of dispute resolution mechanisms with the government. No independent body would resolve these difficulties 111, such as "administrative courts" in the French system. In these circumstances, citizens have thus resorted to arrangements in a "list of possible actions" that the system allows or tolerates. Some collective actions have been detailed above, among other effective and observable possibilities: the one-off event of dissatisfaction with the ministry in Hà Nội, or the application of the "envelope theory 112 " that can pay for extra services" for an officer to resolve a problem. Given the many constraints and the Kafkaesque nature of legal texts, people often put up indirect forms of resistance, usually discrete and difficult to discern. This is what Benedict Kerkvliet calls "Evereyday Politics" (1995 and 2005). For Michel de Certeau 113, these non-frontal forms of resistance in social interactions are described as compromised tactics 114. Such discrete and diverted actions also include what Nguyen Van Suu describes as the power of the people over the state in the process of policy-making and policy implementation 115. Ultimately, it helps build little freedom for everyday use on the margins of the system, but these spaces often remain in the area of the tacit and unspoken. For this reason, they generally pass through the mesh of researchers. We have seen that in the real jungle of official texts, conflict resolution with the administration is long and generally benefits the authorities more than the people. The "grey areas" created by the administration itself, through the production of laws and legal texts, can be analyzed as an instrument to defend the interests of the administration and officials at the expense of those of the population. Finally, having many "grey areas" in different fields of the law is therefore contrary to the formal processes and well-publicized policies of "grassroots democracy" and "good governance" in Vietnam. 111 Not only is it not an effective tool in assisting state administrative organs to settle citizens complaints, but the mechanism itself has become a factor in stimulating the increase of complaints and making those complaints even more complicated and long lasting. (Hoang Ngoc Giao, 2009, p. 3). 112 See Nguyen Thi Thanh Bình s chapter in this Occasional Paper for specific examples. 113 In L Invention du quotidien (Invention of Everyday), «Tactiques d accommodement» in French. 115 See his article in this book. 69

72 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM 2 - Forms of local governance and expressions of civil society Since 2005, despite the many causes of tensions and even their rise to physical action in 2009, no Đền Thõng villagers, individually or in groups 116, have decided to file a complaint for breach of certain laws on the purchase of land and legal compensation from the courts. As we have shown above, they explain that the process is long, complex and expensive, and believe that the chances of "fairness" are too low. Having excluded forms of litigation and methods of action that have already been developed, the only thing that is left is the status quo or a search for a form of mediation between the government and the people. We will consider this second option. What are the possibilities of dialogue and mediation in this type of litigation 117? Some observers argue, with UNDP support, that, in contemporary Vietnamese society, the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF 118 ) and the mass organizations that depend on the VFF such as the Women s Union, Farmers Union, Association of Young Communists, etc. 119 are "the main organizations of civil society in Vietnam" (Norlund 2006). We will not discuss here the specific positions of the Vietnam Fatherland Front and mass organizations 120 in the relations between government and people. I will merely give a concrete example concerning Đền Thõng, having noted the legal definition of the Fatherland Front: Vietnam Fatherland Front constitutes a part of the political system of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, led by the Communist Party of Vietnam; and 116 As provided by the Law on Complaints and Denunciations, citizens can only exercise his/her right to complain directly. In cases where more than one person share the same grounds for their complaints (for example, they all were moved from their home to make way for an industrial park, or suffered from environmental pollution from the same source, etc.), each complainant must write a separate complaint letter. As such, the law does not recognize collective complaints while ensuring the individual right to complain. (Hoang Ngoc Giao, 2009, p. 12). 117 We will not discuss here the role of lawyers in the administration. For further information, see Salomon (2004) and Hoang Ngoc Giao (2009). 118 Mặt Trận Tổ Quốc Việt Nam. 119 In 2009, the Vietnam Fatherland Front had produced and controlled 31 social, political, technical, educational or cultural associations. This allows the State/Party to have a grip on the entire spectrum of associational activities in the country. 120 This topic will be analysed in a book on the emergence of civil society in Vietnam (forthcoming 2010). 70

73 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE constitutes a political base of the people s administration, a place where the people express their will and aspirations If one respects the spirit of this legislation, it is difficult to include the Vietnam Fatherland Front in civil society as being part of the political system and different state levels. This particular institution does not have the slightest degree of independence and autonomy to establish a dialogue with offical institutions. In other words, [the] Fatherland Front [...] is actually the secular arm of Party for the population, known as «the political tool of People's Power with the objective to strengthen unanimously politics 122.» Consider the specific example of Đền Thõng. During interviews in September 2009, a Đền Thõng woman explains the specific position of the Vietnam Fatherland Front and mass organizations in the conflict with the administration. She is one of the leaders of the Women's Union in the commune of Đài Dinh, and she is also directly involved in the conflict with the commune and district on expropriated land at unfair prices and without legal compensation. Because of her status in the Union of Women, she says her role is to mobilize the villagers to sign the documents for tourism projects, as the Women's Union is one of the relays of government and Party to the people. Note that the relay operates mainly in a "top down sense, and communications in the "bottom-up" sense are rare and difficult 123. Due to her position as owner of expriopriated land in 2005, she said that it was not officially and properly conducted and that it does not guarantee the economic future of the village. In addition, she participated in requests for compliance with legal compensation related to state expropriation. In this example, we can clearly see the almost schizophrenic situation of some local officials caught between their legal position and their direct interests. What can also be noted is that the group of Đền Thõng women who attempted to file the letter of complaint to the province in 2009 did not support the Women's Union of the commune. The Vietnam Fatherland Front and mass organizations cannot both perform their official function to mobilize the population to best implement the 121 Article 1, Law on the Vietnam Fatherland Front, June 12, the entire people s great solidarity bloc is built up, the people s mastery is brought into full play, where its members hold consultative meetings, and coordinate and unify their actions, thus contributing to the firm maintenance of national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and successfully carrying out the cause of national industrialization and modernization, so as to achieve the objective of a prosperous people, a strong country and an equitable and civilized society. 122 Nguyen Thê Anh, Data from Surveys in Lao Cai (2003 à 2009), Surveys in Nam Dinh (2006 à 2009), Surveys in Bac Ninh (2007), Surveys in Đền Thõng Vĩnh Phúc ( ). 71

74 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM directives of the Party and State and become the instrument to express the demands and claims of the population, which are often contrary to official guidelines. Let me give another example of a major contradiction between laws and practices. It is the law on "grassroots democracy" (1998). Article 2 states: Bringing into full play the people's mastery must be closely linked with the mechanism of "the Party leadership, State management and the people's mastery"; the representative democracy regime must be well promoted, the working quality and efficiency of the People's Councils and the People's Committees must be raised. The direct democracy regime must be well implemented in localities so that the people can directly discuss and decide important and practical issues which are closely associated with their interests. 124.» And Article 4: The local administration shall have to promptly and openly inform the people of the following major things: 1. The State's policies and laws. 2. The State's and local administration's regulations on the administrative procedures for settling matters that concern people. 3. The communes' long-term and annual socio-economic development plans. 4. Land use planning and plans. (my emphasis) In this specific context, local authorities are supposed to apply the law on "grassroots democracy" (1998 and 2003) and, in particular, they must inform the population on "socio-economic development plans and land use planning and plans", but this is not always the case. On the other hand, the instruments of control and coercion are not in place or are not functional, even though these laws are generally not respected. Official bodies, such as the Vietnam Fatherland Front and mass organizations, which according to their legal status, should be the mediators of the people's demands to the government, are really a means to transmit official directives to the population. The public knows that these Official Bodies will not help them and that litigation will not have serious results. The right to independent associations, in other words not controlled and managed by the State and the Party, does not exist. This law has been under discussion for over 12 years in the National Assembly 125. All these factors bring into question both the local structures of governance, modes of dialogue, negotiation between the people and government, but also the conditions for the emergence of groups which may be termed civil society. It is precisely the 124 Laws «Grassroot Democracy», 1998, Article 2 (Official translation). 125 Nguyen Ngoc Lam,

75 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE role of civil society to bridge the gap between citizens and administrations, as shown in Savelsberg s work on former communist countries of Eastern Europe: «Civil society is not just an appreciated feature of those who applaud the participation of societal groups in government decision making in principle. Civil society also serves as a conduit or communication tool between those who formulate laws and policies and the populace. Without this tool, government policies and laws will be passed without consideration of problems and grievances as perceived by the population. Such lawmaking creates a legal reality that is profoundly disconnected from the social reality of everyday life 126.» Indeed, the fundamentals of local governance such as civil society are based on the possibility for citizens to file official requests for information, and claims against the government. In short, they should provide the opportunity to engage in genuine dialogue. As we have seen in this case study, this is not yet feasible in practice, even if the legal arsenal can sometimes be misleading. This is a classic situation of Communist political systems in which all official bodies of the Party and government, including the Vietnam Fatherland Front and other mass organizations, «those who claim to represent the general [population], [ ] are able to suppress the views of groups who might disagree with them 127.» This has been observed in Đền Thõng for the last several years. On the one hand, the administrative system tolerates, or turns a blind eye to, some repeated abuse from officials, while other leaders are beginning to take risky measures of social upheaval because of the pressures and constraints experienced by the population without the opportunity to have their voice heard. Christophe Gironde summarizes these concerns from an official report of the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences (2007) and a study from the Harvard Vietnam Program (2008): «A concern expressed within the Vietnamese authorities about the reactions of people who accepted the end of egalitarianism and greater social differentiation in that growth has benefited the vast majority (VASS 2007: 27). In the countryside, it is the land issue, with the concentration of land and corruption, which is the more disturbing protest contained but known populations are evidence of an inability of authorities to ensure social cohesion (HVP 2008: 15) 128.» 126 Savelsberg, 2000, p Giddens, 1995, pp. xiii-xiv, cited by Savelsberg, 2000, p Gironde, 2009, pp

76 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM Conclusion We are in a situation which seems at first paradoxical, since generally the projects proposed by local authorities are largely at the request of villagers in terms of development. But in the end, there is a more or less direct opposition and more or less physical interaction between large groups of villagers and district and commune authorities. So, ideally, we would think that the Đền Thõng situation brings together all the elements for a «success story» of tourism development in rural areas. However we have learned through this investigation and through the media that the situation is increasingly tense and that no negotiations have been opened, despite numerous attempts made by villagers. This situation may seem paradoxical only if one forgets to take into account the ways in which these projects have been literally forced, sometimes with the complicity of the police, upon the villagers who owned the land needed for the projects, not to mention the lack of ability or willingness to communicate on the part of authorities who act as if the population had no opinion on the use of their land and their immediate future. But this paradox is a classic case of many development projects in Vietnam and elsewhere: the terms of reference that are the basis for these projects are often written after overly brief studies of local situations or no study at all, therefore carry very weak or null knowledge of the local situations and socio-economic balances in the existing project. In the end, most projects have little regard for local people and their opinions, and the people s thoughts are literally being treated as "troublesome elements" for the development of the project which they sought to integrate. But I am perhaps going astray in thinking that development projects are intended to help poor people of the grassroots? Returning to the Tam Đảo foothills, during the first project in 2005, the majority of Đền Thõng villagers were mostly positive towards the implentation of tourism projects in their villages. Moreover, many of them participated in full-time or regular tourist services and they sought their own ways to diversify their professional activities (new agricultural production: livestock, vegetables, making charcoal, tea, alpine medicinal plants and important income from migration). More generally, conventional agricultural products (rice, vegetables and fruits) are inefficient in Vietnam 129. Most farmers hoping to diversify their 129 Merely compare the price of rice and vegetables over the last 10 years with that of other commodities to convince the unprofitable character of traditional agriculture. Some specific products, such as clean vegetables (rau sạch), vegetables from "sustainable agriculture", organic 74

77 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE activities even completely abandon agriculture to other higher sources of income, but the issue of security and stability of income that arises is always so acute. Similarly, the abandoning of farming often means selling the bulk of cultivated land for industrial buildings for residential or tourism projects such as in Đền Thõng. On the one hand, this sale provides a significant financial capital in the short-term, but on the other hand, creates a very stressful environment because of the loss of guaranteed capital represented by land, especially for inheritance and the establishment of new couples in the family. Thus, it is not as a form of resistance to development, a fear of change of professional activity or their commitment to "traditional land" that villagers have resisted the implementation of projects on their land. As we have shown, this is a result of poor and bad communication or no communication at all, and sometimes abusive behaviour from authorities who are responsible for the betrayal and abuse of trust among the villagers. This context, which is not unique to Đền Thõng, drives many Vietnamese villagers to cast considerable doubts on their future in the hands of unscrupulous leaders who pay no attention to them. In other words, the issue is not that they merely refuse to leave their farms and land, but that they refuse to leave their farms under certain conditions. The first problem is that the price of expropriated land is still under-estimated for expropriations by the state. The second is that the legal compensation and promises to push the owners to sign on quickly (108 kg of paddy per sao for five years, training to conversion to the tourism trade, exemption of tuition fees and financial aid for students of families whose lands have been expropriated) are not met. If some have, this was only fulfilled after repeated requests from villagers. The refusal to leave farming altogether is getting stronger, even obsessive, especially when local authorities, who are responsible for the future in terms of the creation of new professions in the local area, have not kept their word since the first contracts for expropriation were made in These contracts were signed without being properly discharged by the authorities and finally are no longer "expropriations for the state" but merely "sales between individuals, which negates all the compensation that had been promised 130. Land generates a valuable source of guaranteed income, even if this remains low. Đền Thõng vegetables (rau hữu cơ) and medicinal plants, can have higher incomes. See Moustier, Vagneron et Bui Thi Thai (2004), Gironde (2001), Gironde (2009) 130 Because the photocopy of the provincial decision is without any legal value. 75

78 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM Villagers were ready to take the risk of partially or totally abandoning agriculture because they thought their chances for development in this field were very limited. But this career transition and the change in society at the village level could not be achieved with the help of local authorities (provincial, district and commune), who have not fulfilled their duties: they were not able to convince the villagers of the interests of tourism projects (information and lack of clear communication), they have not fulfilled their commitments in respect to expropriation (breach of trust), they have not responded, even mildly, to requests for clarification from villagers who felt excluded from projects in their village, a form of top-down projects. Alongside this cumulative set of difficulties, authorities continue to implement even larger projects without prior consultation: 1.05 ha in 2005, 51 ha in 2007 and 173 ha in From the data we have, we have noted that the various forms of resistance from villagers in tourism projects were based on two key factors: 1. Economic reasons: farmers feel or know that the authorities have not taken the necessary precautions to ensure the profitability of tourism projects. In fact, the lack of market research and weak level of studies on their socio-economic risks have weighed hard on the future of many thousands of villagers. The breach of trust with local power drives villagers to seek assurances and to learn about their rights. 2. Political and administrative reasons: we have seen that authorities were directly involved in development projects, for example through the decision to expropriate land for national development needs and through the control of these projects implementation and operation. But because of several cases of non-compliance with official decisions, there is a real break from the "social contract" between the people and their political representatives and administration. This failure is particularly serious because the population has no effective means to recognize their rights, or to start a dialogue or negotiations. In this context what are the possible scenarios for the future? - They know from experience that their fight, even though legitimate and well within reason, is doomed to failure due to the lack of effective means to enforce their rights 131. They give up and try to do the best with projects that are unsustainable and imposed on them by the force of conflicting laws. But the 131 This analysis overlaps with the Policy, Law and Development Institute on a range of several hundred cases in Vietnam (Hoang Ngoc Giao 2009). 76

79 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE consequence of this is that relations of trust with authorities will suffer for a long time to come. - Some people may have in their personal networks of family and well placed friends in Vĩnh Phúc Province s People s Committee or a relevant ministry in Hà Nội. These people will then try to use this support to assert some of their rights, but this does not apply to most villagers. The inequality of rights is a reality in Vietnam. - Villagers who are tired of seeing their claims rejected at the provincial level may eventually manifest their anger at a government building in Hà Nội. In a typical scenario, the police would arrive a few minutes later and take away any signs that express too explicitely their local difficulties, and villagers would remain on the sidewalk for a few hours without getting an appointment with the competent persons and eventually return home disappointed. - Finally, they will continue acting out their resistance against these concrete local projects (continued closure of the parking lot, and most certainly other actions). Again, the government will intervene to ensure that public order is restored. In this paper, we have modestly related a recent history of the development of tensions between local governmental bodies and villages in reaction to a specific site. From the viewpoint of legal norms, the problem is almost impossible to resolve satisfactorily due to a major contradiction and lack of forms of independent jurisdiction. In other words, it is the various social groups (authorities at different levels) that have created legal norms and the decisions that are not respected. Meanwhile, independent jurisdictions, which should work in theory, in practice act only rarely in tensions and conflict between the population and authorities 132. Only radical changes in the principles that underlie relationships between people and administration and major changes in law enforcement (Actual coordination of the different laws and standards, real hierarchy of norms, and effective monitoring and enforcement) can help prevent such blockages that are damaging social harmony and unity, one of the common goals of all official institutions Vietnamese society. In conclusion I would like to repeat here the words of a person who is officially at "the head of the control laws by the commune authorities and states that despite his official status "he has no way to enforce these laws". This is an "inspector of the people" (Thanh tra nhân dân) of the province of Nam Dinh who described the position of commune authorities and the Vietnam 132 Hoang Ngoc Giao,

80 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM Fatherland Front on various local conflicts in these terms: "How is the game possible if one person is being both the player and the referee? 133 Spontaneously, because this kind of situation occurs often in Vietnam, this Inspector stated that the people fits the definition of game players arbitrarily made by the anthropologist Bailey on political games: "In games, the referee is not one of the players. This is obvious: he cannot win the trophy Interviews made between May and September Bailey, 1971, p

81 Chapter 2 Agricultural Land Claims in the Red River Delta during Decollectivization Nguyen Van Suu Introduction In the 1960s, in the field of political anthropology, after the structuralfunctional analysis, in addition to the process approach that focuses on the processual dimension of politics, the game theory was introduced into political anthropology, and it soon became a classic approach for analyzing politics from an anthropological perspective. 135 The game theory has been well developed in Stratagems and Spoils by Bailey. 136 It seeks to discover the normative and pragmatic rules of political manipulation. It views politics as a game composed of teams competing for prizes. As the author of the book stated, understanding what people do, what they think and why they think and act that way helps us to better understand what goes on in societies. Like Claude Levi-Strauss, Bailey goes under the particulars to find out the common rules across societies. He assumes that (1) the world has a discoverable order in it and (2) knowledge of that order is made up of propositions which have been tested by experience. In Stratagems and Spoils, he emphasizes the distinction between normative and pragmatic rules (norms), with the latter being capable of causing structural (normative rules) change. This theoretical approach influenced Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan in a study about the practical norms of real governance in Africa, in which he 135 For example, a reader on the anthropology of politics edited by Joan Vincent considers his work as one of the classic studies in the field (See Joan Vincent (ed.) The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and Critique. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, F. G. Bailey, Stratagems and Spoils: A Social Anthropology of Politics. Boulder, Colo : Westview Press,

82 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM strongly calls for in-depth empirical studies to better understand the diversity and complexity underneath our vague understanding of the differences between official norms and practical norms in everyday social interaction. 137 In regard to Vietnam, research literature has highlighted the divergence between norms and the everyday practices in various sectors of Vietnamese society and culture. For example, researchers have observed that, similar to China: [the ] division between rules, on the one hand, and practices, on the other, is perhaps more cemented in Vietnam, where there is a legacy of unpopular policies combined with Confucian heritage that deters question of authority. Until recently, research by Vietnamese scholars generally sought to affirm policy decisions or document success stories, such as the mechanization of agriculture in a model commune in the Red River Delta. People were reluctant to talk about everyday practices that may run encounter to given policies or social norms. Of course, everyone knew that disputed practices existed, but to openly acknowledge these strategies of resistance and their incongruity with officials discourses or norms was generally not viewed as appropriate in general, and certainly not as an appropriate topic for research. 138 In this chapter, I adapt the game approach to examine the differences and conformities between formal legal laws and under-law regulations of the partystate institutions and the real practices of the Red river delta villagers 139 on the holding and use of agricultural land. More specifically, this chapter emphasizes official norms, in this case the study of agricultural land claims regarded as formal legal laws and under-law regulations of the party-state institutions. Furthermore, it examines how and why the practices of agricultural land claims of villagers from the Red River Delta contradict with such official norms over 137 Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, Researching the Practical Norms of Real Governance in Africa. The African Power and Politics Program: Discussion Paper No. 5, Steffanie Scott, Fiona Miller and Kaste Lloyd, Doing Fieldwork in Development Geography: Research Culture and Research Spaces in Vietnam. Geographical Research, Vol. 44, No. 1 (2006), 28-40, p I use the term villagers in addition to farmers because in many claims the participants are not farmers alone, but also non-agricultural producers who reside in the village. The concept of villagers sometimes is also used in contrast to another categories of local population ( local cadres for example, who reside in the village but work for the party-state and receive salary or phụ cấp from the state budget). 80

83 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE the holding of use rights on certain areas or plots of agricultural land during the 1980s-1990s agricultural decollectivization period. Endorsing the arguments made in the available literature on this topic, the chapter postulates that there is a major gap between official norms and villagers practices in Vietnam s rural areas. It also highlights the space for the villagers to move around what the party-state wants to do (through its policy) and the people s struggle to pursue their everyday needs and desires. In this chapter, I also discuss the importance of land property rights and indicate how the everyday practices of land holdings and land use have influenced the official norms of the party-state over the question of ownership, management and use of agricultural land in contemporary Vietnam. Data used in this chapter has been accumulated over the past 10 years of my research. In addition to the research literature and mass media materials relevant to the theme of the chapter, the majority of local archive data was collected in 2002 in a number of party-state offices at district and provincial levels of Bắc Ninh and Bắc Giang provinces. The fieldwork made in villages, which is not limited to the two case studies described in the sections below, was also conducted in 2002, with the use of participation observation and semistructural interviews. In the following pages, given the sensitivity of the issue, for some documents I only mention their main contents instead of presenting their full names and sources. I - State Laws and Regulations about Claims to Land in Contemporary Vietnam In the 20 th century, land tenure structure and relations in Vietnam have experienced fundamental changes. In the 1950s, 140 at the onset of the final Điện Biên Phủ battle for the country s independence, party-state authorities carried out a radical land reform so as to, alongside other aims, redistribute the land of rich peasants and landlords to poor ones, and to deconstruct the feudal and 140 For an analysis and discussion about land tenure and land tenure changes in Vietnam prior to the 1950s, see Vũ Huy Phúc Tìm hiểu chế độ ruộng đất Việt Nam nửa đầu thế kỷ XIX. Hà Nội: NXB. Khoa học Xã hội; Trương Hữu Quýnh 1982, Chế độ ruộng đất ở Việt Nam thế kỷ XI- XVIII. Hà Nội: NXB. Khoa học Xã hội (2 vols); Trương Hữu Quýnh và Đỗ Bang (chủ biên) Tình hình ruộng đất và đời sống nông dân dưới triều Nguyễn. Huế: NXB. Thuận Hóa. 81

84 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM colonial foundations for building a new society. 141 Shortly after, however, the party-state began collectivization programmes in the North, which had gradually gathered most of the agricultural land and other means of production of small peasant households into cooperatives for collective production. 142 In the South, from 1954 to 1975, meanwhile, the Republic of Vietnam Administration and National Liberation Front also carried out land reforms, with different aims, in their occupied rural areas. After the war, Vietnam reunified and this also marked the introduction of agricultural collectivization programmes in the South. Since the early 1980s, after 30 years of agricultural collectivization, Vietnam started to reform the agricultural sector, then other economic sectors. This process of decollectivization proceeded for a decade, 143 which has not only shaped a new land tenure regime but also involved the evolution of a legal system governing land ownership, management and land use in Vietnam. 144 In this section, I focus on some key points about this new land tenure regime. Firstly, the state s has proclaimed the division of three key rights to land, which are held by different entities: ownership rights (quyền sở hữu) which belong to the entire people, controlling rights (quyền quản lý) belonging to the state, and use rights (quyền sử dụng) allocated to individuals, family households and organizations for a certain period of time. Among these three 141 Trần Phương (chủ biên) Cách mạng ruộng đất ở Việt Nam. Hà Nội: NXB. Khoa học Xã hội; Edwin Moise, Land reform in China and North Vietnam: Consolidating the revolution at the village level. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1976; Edwin Moise, Land Reform and Land Reform Errors in North Vietnam. Pacific Affairs, Vol. 49, No. 1 (1976), pp ; Luong Van Hy, Revolution in the Village: Tradition and Transformation in North Vietnam, Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, 1992, pp ; S. K. Malarney, Ritual and Revolution in Vietnam. PhD. diss., The University of Michigan, 1993; John Kleinen, Facing the Future, Reviving the Past: A Study of Social Change in a Northern Vietnamese Village. Singapore : Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1999; Lâm Quang Huyên, Vấn đề ruộng đất ở Việt Nam. Hà Nội: NXB. Khoa học Xã hội, Chử Văn Lâm, Nguyễn Thái Nguyên, Phùng Hữu Phú, Hợp tác hóa nông nghiệp Việt Nam: Lịch sử vấn đề triển vọng. Hà Nội: Nxb. Sự Thật, 1992; Ben Kerkvliet, Village-State Relations in Vietnam: The Effects of Everyday Politics on Decollectivization. Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 54, Issue 2 (1995), pp ; and The Power of Everyday Politics: How Vietnamese Peasants Transformed National Policy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, Chử Văn Lâm, Nguyễn Thái Nguyên, Phùng Hữu Phú, Hợp tác hóa nông nghiệp Việt Nam: Lịch sử vấn đề triển vọng. Hà Nội: NXB, Sự Thật; Ben Kerkvliet, Village-State Relations in Vietnam: The Effects of Everyday Politics on Decollectivization. Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 54, Issue 2 (1995), pp ; and Trương Thị Tiến, Đổi mới cơ chế quản lý kinh tế nông nghiệp ở Việt Nam. Hà Nội: NXB, Chính trị Quốc gia. 144 The legal system includes, but is not limited to, the constitution, land laws, regulations, etc., the governing of land issues. 82

85 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE vital kinds of rights to agricultural land, what the villagers can hold is the right to use the land for a certain period of time. Secondly, the state legal system has ensured the ownership of the entire people, represented by the socialist state. This means the party-state does not accept private land ownership in Vietnam. This results in a further essential issue: the party-state prevents all individuals and organizations from claiming their old land in any way. In other words, in contrast to agricultural decollectivization in Eastern European socialist countries, 145 Vietnam s partystate does not accept any claims to redeem old land. This means that the process of agricultural decollectivization in Vietnam is a process of distributing collective land among local villagers, not a process of land restitution. But did the villagers agree with and conform to such norms and the broad agenda of the party-state about decollectivization? If not, what did they do? II - The Practices of Villagers Claims to Land since the Decollectivization Period: The Case of Red River Delta Villages Several publications of mine have illuminated the two layers of land ownership in Vietnam s contemporary land tenure system: the ultimate ownership of the entire people and the practical level of ownership of various holders, which I argue, is equivalent to the land use rights stated in state land laws. 146 In my view, the various claims to agricultural land since the decollectivization period are the villagers claims to use rights on certain areas or plots of agricultural land. In the Vietnamese context, the question of land claim has been analysed in various studies on different cases in various locations at different times. For 145 In contrast to Vietnam and China, which carried out land distribution or allocation to decollectivize agriculture, Verdery has shown the common practice of land restitution in the process of decollectivization in several Eastern European countries after the collapse of socialism (see Katherine Verdery, The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 2003). 146 For a detailed analysis and exlaination of of this, see Nguyễn Văn Sửu Về sở hữu, sử dụng và sai phạm trong quản lý đất đai ở Việt Nam từ khi đổi mới. Tạp chí Nghiên cứu Lịch sử, số 5 (2007), trang 18 27; and Đổi mới chính sách đất đai ở Việt Nam: Từ lý thuyết đến thực tiễn. Hà Nội : NXB, Chính trị Quốc gia (forthcoming). 83

86 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM example, Tạ Thị Thúy documented Vietnamese farmers claim to land during the colonial period, 147 Kerkvliet analysed land claims in Vietnam and compared them to other countries through the perspective of everyday politics and everyday forms of peasant resistance. 148 Others have examined land claims between the Kinh (Việt ethnic group) and other ethnic groups in northern villages, which as the authors argue, resulted in the loss of land of the Kinh during the decollectivization period. 149 Meanwhile, other researchers have dealt with land claims and conflicts in the Highlands, the consequence of which is the loss of rights to land use among native ethnic groups, in contrast to the situation in Northern villages. 150 In this section, I have limited my analysis to land claims in the Red River Delta during the process of agricultural decollectivization, which in many cases has its roots in the collectivization period. My synthesis of research literature and my ethnographic data show five broad forms of villagers claims to land use rights since the 1980s throughout the country. The process of agricultural decollectivization often encountered (1) claims to land use rights on old land territory; (2) claims to old agricultural land; (3) claims to old worshipping land. 151 Since the early 1990s, under the 1993-revised version of Land Law, the use rights of communal land (đất công ích) have been moved from being managed by the village to be being managed by the commune. Villagers claims in many cases also relate to (4) this land and its output. As the pace of 147 Tạ Thị Thuý, Đồn điền của người Pháp ở Bắc Kỳ Hà Nội : NXB, Thế giới; and Việc nhượng đất, khẩn hoang ở Bắc Kỳ từ 1919 đến 1945, Hà Nội : NXB, Thế giới. 148 Ben Kerkvliet, Claiming the Land: Take-overs by Villagers in the Philippines with Comparisons to Indonesia, Peru, Portugal, and Russia. The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1993), pp ; Land Struggles and Land Regimnes in the Philippines and Vietnam during the Twentieth Century, Amsterdam : CASA-Centre for Asian Studies, Steffanie Scott, Changing Rules of the Game: Local Responses to Decollecivization in Thai Nguyen, Vietnam. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 41, No. 1 (2000), pp , p. 81; Jean-Christophe Castella, Trần Quốc Hoà, Vũ Hải Nam, Đặng Đình Quang Thành phần dân tộc trong sự phân hoá nông hộ: Trường hợp xã Ngọc Phái, huyện Chợ Đồn, tỉnh Bắc Cạn, Việt Nam. Trong: Đổi mới ở vùng miền núi: Chuyển đổi sử dụng đất và chiến lược sản xuất của nông dân tỉnh Bắc Cạn, Việt Nam, do Jean Christophe Castella và Đặng Đình Quang chủ biên. Hà Nội : NXB. Nông nghiệp, 2002, trang Vũ Đình Lợi, Bùi Minh Đạo, Vũ Thị Hồng, Sở hữu và sử dụng đất đai ở các tỉnh Tây Nguyên. Hà Nội : NXB, Khoa học Xã hội; Đặng Nghiêm Vạn, Vấn đề đất đai ở các tỉnh Tây Nguyên. Trong: Một số vấn đề phát triển kinh tế xã hội buôn làng các dân tộc Tây Nguyên. Hà Nội : NXB, Khoa học Xã hội, trang Bộ Chính trị Chỉ thị số 47 CT/TW về việc giải quyết một số vấn đề cấp bách về ruộng đất. Đồng Tháp: Nxb. Đồng Tháp; Tổng cục Quản lý Ruộng đất "Báo cáo về tranh chấp đất đai." Ha Noi, pp. 2-3 and 13-15; Trần Đức Cuộc cách mạng nâu đang tiếp bước. Hà Nội : NXB. Văn hóa Thông tin, trang

87 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE industrialization and urbanization increase, state authorities annually seize a large area of land, especially agricultural land, for non-agricultural purposes. Claims from rural (and urban) inhabitants have become widespread throughout the country over (5) the level of reasonable compensation for their land use rights. 152 In the following pages, due to the limited number of words, I shall focus my analysis and discussion on one of these five types of land claims: claims to agricultural land during agricultural decollectivization in Red River Delta villages, especially those in that are now in Bắc Ninh province and Tiên Du district (see the map) 153 and formerly belonged to Hà Bắc province 154 and Tiên Sơn district. 155 In the process of agricultural decollectivization, the most widespread claim to land occurred in the form of villagers collectively requesting the return of old agricultural land use rights in their village, which had been taken away for another village to use. To understand why this had occurred, we need to look back on the agricultural collectivization period in Northern Vietnam, just a few years after low-scale cooperatives (hợp tác xã bậc thấp) within the village were set up. Since the early 1960s, many of these low-scale cooperatives had been merged to form larger ones to build high-scale cooperatives, which often included several villages, called inter-village-based cooperatives (hợp tác xã liên thôn), and even some involving the whole commune, named communebased cooperatives (hợp tác xã toàn xã). As a result, after the unification, per capita agricultural land in a number of cases greatly differed from one group of cooperative members to another. To eliminate this large disparity, or in other words, to balance agricultural land per capita among cooperative members of the large-scale cooperatives, cooperative cadres in many cases reallocated fields 152 For a short overview of land appropriation for non-agricultural purposes in Vietnam since the renovation period and its effects on farmers, see Nguyen Van Suu, Agricultural Land Conversion and Its Effects on Vietnamese Farmers, Focaal European Journal of Anthropology, Number 54 (2009), pp The two case studies presented in the following pages administratively belong to the current district of Tiên Du in Bắc Ninh province (see the map). 154 Hà Bắc was one of the former Red river Delta and Northern provinces, established in 1962 by merging two former provinces: Bắc Ninh and Bắc Giang. In 1996, it was divided to form the two former provinces of what are currently Bắc Giang and Bắc Ninh. 155 One of Hà Bắc s district was Tiên Sơn, which in 1963 was set up by emerging two former districts of the former Bắc Ninh province: Từ Sơn and Tiên Du. After Hà Bắc was divided, Tiên Sơn was also divided into two former districts, that are Từ Sơn and Tiên Du. 85

88 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM within the new production structure. 156 Consequently, by joining in the largescale cooperative, a number of villagers, or the village as a whole, lost part of their agricultural land, while others gained some. Thus, during the agricultural decollectivization process, claims to retrieve appropriated land were made in many locales. On a national level, such claims occurred both individually and collectively, and varied from region to region. In the southern half of the country, individual villagers frequently demanded the return of their old agricultural land use rights that had been removed from them for other villagers to use in the years following the 1975 reunification of Northern and Southern Vietnam. In contrast, in the northern half, groups of villagers who often belonged to one village collectively asked for the return of their old village agricultural land that had been allocated to another group in a large-scale cooperative that belonged to another village. In 1992, a report prepared by the Bureau of Land Management (Tổng cục Quản lý Ruộng đất) revealed nearly 1,000 cases of this later pattern of agricultural land use rights claim, which often occurred in a collective, organized, and critical manner with a large number of participants. 157 In Hà Bắc province, villagers claims to land use rights were diverse, and related to different kinds of land, but the most dominant was associated with claims to the use rights on old agricultural land. Over the course of a single year, in 1992, there were 40 cases of such claims, among which 36 had been solved by Later, 30 more cases occurred throughout the province. 159 In Tiên Sơn district, by 1988, the district contained 40 cooperatives in total, including 18 commune-based cooperatives, and 22 other inter-village ones. Collective claims to old agricultural land use rights in their village, which finally led to agricultural land use rights disputes between the claimants and defenders, occurred in 11 cooperatives, comprising ten commune-based cooperatives and one inter-village-based one I have not seen any document offering figures about this. This action on the part of local cooperative cadres may have never been reported to higher authrorities. 157 See Tổng cục Quản lý Ruộng đất, "Báo cáo về tranh chấp đất đai." Ha Noi, BCĐ cấp CGN và LSBT "Thông báo kết quả thực hiện kế hoạch giao ruộng ổn định lâu dài, cấp GCN quyền SDĐ và LSBT đến hộ gia đình nông dân." Hà Bắc, trang Sở Địa chính Hà Bắc "Tình hình thực tế, các giải pháp và kiến nghị nhằm thực hiện tốt công tác quản lý nhà nước về đất đai tỉnh Hà Bắc." Hà Bắc, trang Tổ công tác "Báo cáo tình hình tranh chấp ruộng đất của một số HTX nông nghiệp thuộc huyện Tiên Sơn." Tiên Sơn, trang 1; and according to a report composed in 1993 by Hà Bắc People s Committee on the situation of hot-spots in Hà Bắc province from 1990 to

89 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE In response to villagers claims regarding their old agricultural land use rights, together with other types of land use rights claims, national state agencies, 161 provincial offices, 162 and district authorities, 163 issued directives for resolving the problem. A basic view that ran through these directives emphasized what I have highlighted above, that all land belongs to the entire people, is managed by the state, and is used by the people. In one sense, this means that it is illegal for the villagers to reclaim land use rights which the state authorities think the villagers do not hold at the time when they reclaimed them. In the case of Tiên Sơn, the District Party Organization clarified the situation by directing: [Any] unit or individual that uses the name of a production brigade, hamlet, or village to reclaim old [agricultural] land [use rights] which belong to the cooperative s holdings is illegal. [ ] Anyone who purposefully disputes [agricultural] land [use rights], violates the Land Law, will be seriously punished by the Commune s People s Committee and other offices of the district in accordance to current state laws. 164 From the point of view of the party-state, most of the agricultural land use rights of the cooperatives had to retain the same status and area (giữ nguyên hiện trạng) as the land area each village farmed at the time of use rights distribution and redistribution. Agricultural land use rights could only be considered for subdivision among villages, or between villages, in the case of reorganization of large-scale cooperatives (tổ chức lại hợp tác xã) into smaller ones. Such a reorganization of cooperatives, however, could only be done in cases where a large-scale cooperative had over 800 hectares of agricultural land, long-term weak management, had many times tried to maintain the large-scale cooperative without positive change, and the majority of its cadres, party members, as well as cooperative members, thought it necessary to reorganize. Villagers claims regarding old agricultural land use rights could also be considered in 161 BCHTW "Chỉ thị về việc giải quyết một số vấn đề cấp bách về ruộng đất." 162 UBND tỉnh Hà Bắc "Chỉ thị v/v tăng cường công tác quản lý và giải quyết các vụ tranh chấp về đất đai"; and 1992 "Báo cáo (bổ sung) tình hình chống tham nhũng cuối năm 1992." Bắc Giang. 163 UBND huyện Tiên Sơn "Chỉ thị về việc giải quyết tranh chấp ruộng đất giữa các đội sản xuất trong HTX." Tiên Sơn. 164 UBND huyện Tiên Sơn "Chỉ thị về việc giải quyết tranh chấp ruộng đất giữa các đội sản xuất trong HTX." Tiên Sơn, trang

90 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM cases in which the per capita agricultural land among villages of the large-scale cooperative is seriously imbalanced. In both circumstances, the District People s Committee has to democratically discuss with the commune authorities and cooperative members whether to divide land use rights, or to return the agricultural land use rights to their former holders. 165 From the perspective of many villagers, however, a village s agricultural land use rights should be used for and by its villagers. To many of them, the rationale of per capita agricultural land should be based only on the land use rights that their village holds, not compared to others! In other words, how much agricultural land use rights one could attain for farming depends on the area of agricultural land of the village to which one belongs. The taking of one village s land use rights for another to use is, therefore, not reasonable and unacceptable. As a result, a number of villagers started demanding the return of their former agricultural land use rights. Describing the situation in Tiên Sơn, the District Party Organization pointed out that villagers claims for their old agricultural land use rights happened sometimes quietly (ngấm ngầm), sometimes publicly, fiercely and heatedly (công khai, quyết liệt và nóng bỏng), mainly in the years from 1989 to In some villages, the villagers even reclaimed their old agricultural land use rights shortly after they had been taken, i.e. years before the distribution of agricultural land use rights in However, in the context of high collectivization at the time, their claims attracted no positive feedback. With such perceptions, people in a number of villages made their own way through the state land tenure policy and its views on the resolution of agricultural land use rights claims to propose the reorganization of large-scale cooperatives into the former ones, which often coincided with the village territory, as a strategy to successfully reclaim old agricultural land use rights. In so doing, they could satisfy two desires at the same time: to reorganize the cooperative on the basis of village territory, and to retrieve their village s old agricultural land use rights. In any case where a large-scale cooperative is subdivided into smaller ones, the agricultural land use rights and other forms of collective property must also be divided. The most reasonable division of agricultural land use rights, in the view of most claimants, was to return 165 TU Hà Bắc "Báo cáo sơ kết thực hiện Nghị quyết 10 của Bộ Chính trị về đổi mới quản lý kinh tế nông nghiệp." Bắc Giang, trang HU Tiên Sơn "Dự thảo báo cáo tình hình nông nghiệp Tiên Sơn sau những năm đổi mới, chủ trương và biện pháp thực hiện NQ 5 BCHTW Đảng." Tiên Sơn, trang 9 88

91 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE agricultural land use rights to its former village, as they were prior to the development of high-scale cooperatives. Such collectives determined, and even prolonged, villagers struggles for the return of old agricultural land use rights, either directly or through cooperative separation, which has succeeded in many cases. As a result, a number of high-scale cooperatives were separated into smaller ones, often based on the village territory. As a result, the number of cooperatives increased during the few years of agricultural land use rights distribution and redistribution. At the provincial level, in 1987, Hà Bắc s agricultural cooperatives numbered 856, however, this increased to 902 in 1988, 940 in 1989, and over 1,000 in Within two years, from 1987 to 1988, 75 new cooperatives had been newly established due to cases of subdivision. 167 In the following years, in , when agricultural land use rights continued to be redistributed among villagers for longer terms of use, villagers claims to old agricultural land use rights and demands to split high-scale cooperatives into smaller ones continued in some places. 168 At the level of Tiên Sơn district, villagers in a number of villages also succeeded in reclaiming their former areas of agricultural land for their villages. The clearest examples include the cases of Phật Tích and Tri Phương communesized cooperatives (currently belonging to Tiên Du district). In Phật Tích, the commune-based cooperative was created in 1976 by merging two village-sized ones: Phật Tích and Cổ Phú. 169 Prior to their integration, the Phật Tích villagesized cooperative had 220 mẫu and eight sào of farmland (đất canh tác), equal to 79,392 square metres. 170 After the 1976 merger, however, commune-based cooperative cadres took 31,296 square metres of farmland from Phật Tích village, which amounted to 39.4 per cent of its total farmland area, for villagers of former Cổ Phú village-based cooperative to use in order to balance the agricultural land per capita. This soon created reactions from villagers of the former Phật Tích village-based cooperative. From 1982 they publicly started demanding the commune-based cooperative be re-divided into the former 167 TU Hà Bắc "Báo cáo sơ kết thực hiện Nghị quyết 10 của Bộ Chính trị về đổi mới quản lý kinh tế nông nghiệp." Bắc Giang, trang TU Hà Bắc "Thông báo kết quả thực hiện kết luận của tỉnh ủy về đổi mới hoàn thiện cơ chế quản lý HTX nông nghiệp theo Nghị quyết 10 của BCT (Khóa VI) và Nghị quyết Đại hội VII của Đảng." Bắc Giang, trang The commune and village have the same name. 170 Mẫu, sào and thước are traditional units of land measure in Vietnam with different meanings in different regions. In the Red River Delta, one mẫu is 10 sào = 3,600 square metres; one sào is 15 thước = 360 square metres; and one thước = 24 square metres. 89

92 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM village-based ones, and reclaiming the 31,296 square metres of farmland that had been taken. The claim to divide the cooperative and to redeem lost farmland continued from 1982 to 1988, under the leadership of the Phật Tích village party cell. During the years from 1984 to 1988, the village party cell met nine times (họp chín kỳ) to discuss their claims, making six resolutions (nghị quyết) to propose (đề nghị) to commune authorities and commune-based cooperative cadres that the cooperative be separated and that Phật Tích s farmland use rights be returned. The cooperative cadres, as well as commune and higher authorities, however, did not agree with the request from the Phật Tích party cell. Thus, in May 1988, Phật Tích villagers moved so that they may occupy their old area of farmland, and allocated farmland use rights among them for rice cultivation. By July 1988, the Commune Party Organization and People s Committee, with the assistance of the district, tried to help Cổ Phú villagers to reoccupy that area of farmland, but were unsuccessful, because Phật Tích villagers reacted strongly (phản ứng quyết liệt). 171 A similar case took place regarding the Tri Phương commune-based cooperative that had been formed from two village-based cooperatives: Nghĩa Dũng and Dũng Vi, in After the unification, 89 mẫu, one sào, and five thước of farmland (320,880 square metres) of the former Dũng Vi village-based cooperative were taken for the cooperative members from the former Nghĩa Dũng village-based cooperative. The main aim of this was also to reduce the disparity in per capita agricultural land among members of the commune-based cooperative. From 1985, however, members of former Dũng Vi village-based cooperative started requesting a division of the commune-based cooperative into the former village-based ones so as to retrieve their old area of 320,880 square metres of farmland to which they had use rights. In March 1988, shortly before the distribution of agricultural land use rights, Dũng Vi villagers again demanded the return of their taken farmland use rights. When this was not approved by the authorities, they asked to exchange 25 mẫu and seven sào of river-bank land use rights (đất bãi), which could neither be used for a full year nor for rice cultivation, for 27 mẫu and five sào of inside-the-dyke farmland use rights (đất đồng) that could be used for rice farming. This would mean that the Dũng Vi villagers would farm 27 mẫu and 171 Tổ công tác "Báo cáo tình hình tranh chấp ruộng đất của một số HTX nông nghiệp thuộc huyện Tiên Sơn." Tiên Sơn, trang 2. 90

93 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE five sào đất đồng that Nghĩa Dũng villagers were farming, and vice versa. While the cooperative cadres and commune authorities were still considering their request, Dũng Vi villagers moved to occupy this area of farmland and allocated its use rights among themselves for rice farming. To resolve this action, the Commune Party Organization and People s Committee issued a decision to confiscate the disputed farmland and allocate its use rights equally to 12 production brigades of the commune-based cooperative for farming. However, the outcome was not positive because Dũng Vi villagers reacted strongly when the plan was being implemented. 172 III - Consequences: Local Conflicts As Klatt broadly observed, land has often been the cause of conflict. 173 Villagers claims to agricultural land in the Red River Delta is one of the key factors that created local conflicts during the process of agricultural decollectivization. 174 A key feature of such conflicts over land is public resistance between parties, which may be one group of villagers and another (i.e. among villagers) or, more frequently, a group of villagers and a certain local cadre, group of local cadres, officials, or state programmes in relation to land resources (i.e. between villagers and the state). This form of public resistance differs from the well-known form of everyday struggle of the poor, weak, and marginalized people against the rich, powerful elites and the state in a specific social context. 175 Furthermore, it cannot be assimilated to the popular and rightful resistance of contemporary Chinese villagers that O Brien and Li have highlighted in several studies. 176 Public resistance, in these cases, ranges from peaceful reactions like gossip, debate and questioning to blunt and confrontational reactions. It has occurred within and outside local communities where protesting villagers reside 172 Tổ công tác "Báo cáo tình hình tranh chấp ruộng đất của một số HTX nông nghiệp thuộc huyện Tiên Sơn. Tiên Sơn, trang W. Klatt, Agrarian Issues in Asia: I. Land as a Source of Conflict. International Affairs, Vol. 48, No. 2 (1972), pp Also see my other study: Nguyen Van Suu, The Polictics of Land: Inequality in Land Access and Local Conflicts in the Red River Delta sinc Decollectivization in Social Inequality in Vietnam and the Challenges to Reform, edited by Philip Taylor, Singapore : ISEAS, 2004, pp James C. Scott and Ben Kerkvliet, Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance in Southeast Asia. London : Frank Cass, Kevin J. O'Brien, "Rightful Resistance." World Politics 41, No. 1 (1996), pp ; Liangjian Li Li and Kevin J. O'Brien, "Villagers and Popular Resistance in Contemporary China." Modern China 22, No. 1 (1996), pp

94 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM and have conformed to official norms but have also moved beyond the boundaries of official norms. Generally speaking, public resistance first occurs at the local level in the form of gossip, debate, questioning, and negotiation through official norms in order to meet demands and desires. When these are not met or treated in a way which satisfies the protesting villagers, they then proceed towards higher levels of the party-state to seek resolution, investigation, and explanation. In this arena, if problems or queries are again not met or satisfied, the protesting villagers in some cases will then return to their village communities and continue to resist in blunt and confrontational ways and, of course, do not limit their resistance to official norms. Blunt and confrontational reactions might also occur during the period in which protesting villagers are seeking a settlement from the higher state, depending on the specific resolution of issues. In many cases, public resistance occurs in a collective form. It can therefore be organized and planned in terms of leadership and tactics of resistance such as who, what, how, where and when to resist. Like rightful resistance, state laws and policies, alongside traditional values, are also cited to endorse and strengthen public resistance. Like everyday popular and rightful forms of resistance, public resistance ultimately creates dynamics for change. In regards to the party-state, public resistance can affect the behaviour and conduct of state policy and policymaking at different levels, such as leading to a better regime of land management and use, as well as a more rational policy for land use rights compensation at a national level, eliminating bad local cadres and reducing their corruption or misbehaviour towards villagers in local communities. In his research, Kirkville demonstrates the great impact of ordinary people s everyday political behaviour on the state s process of agricultural collectivization in Vietnam. 177 My research has also illustrated that villagers pressures in claiming their old land and the resulting conflicts have continued to force the state to revise Land laws over the past ten years. For example, the first Land Law 177 Ben Kerkvliet, "Village-State Relations in Vietnam: The Effects of Evereyday Politics on Decollectivization." Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 54, Issue 2 (1995), pp ; 2005; The Power of Everyday Politics: How Vietnamese Peasants Transformed National Policy. Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press,

95 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE passed in 1988 by the National Assembly has then been revised in 1993, 1998, 2001, 2003, and is currently in the process of being revised again. 178 In the broadest terms, conflicts have been identified by two key signals: villagers petitions and acts of denunciation in state offices, and their confrontational actions in their local communities. Regarding the first aspect of conflict, state authorities at different levels have noted a large number of villagers petitions and acts of denouncement related to land and local cadres since decollectivization. The villagers petitions and denunciations did not stop at the level of district authorities: in many cases they often moved further up to provincial authorities and even to the central organs of the party-state in Hanoi, because the villagers considered their complaints were not being handled properly by district authorities, or because authorities had failed to settle the underlying issues in a way that satisfied the petitioners and denouncers. A more critical aspect of conflict appears to be the villagers' confrontational actions that occur their local villages. Villagers reactions have in many cases led to tensions in communities, and the state has called them complicated cases and hot spots. 179 In former Hà Bắc for example, from 1987 to 1997, 148 cases of conflict occurred. Among these, 83 were complex, and 27 cases became hot spots, including 7 cases in which the authorities had to use force to resolve the problem. 180 In regards to the 83 complicated cases, 48 cases arose because of land use rights disputes (57.8%), 27 cases were due to local cadre corruption (32.53%), and the rest (9.67%) resulted from other problems. 181 In short, conflicts over land stemmed from different reasons, and claim to land is one of them. 178 Also see Nguyen Van Suu, Contending views and Conflicts over Land in the Red River Delta since Decollectivization. PhD. Dissertation, Department o Anthropology, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 2004, pp According to a report made in 1993 by Hà Bắc People s Committee on the situation of hot-spots in Hà Bắc province from 1990 to According to a report made in 1998 by Bắc Ninh Party Organisation on the situation and resolutions for settling internal conflicts in the province s rural areas from 1987 to 1997, p According to a report made in 1998 by Bắc Ninh Party Organization on the situation and resolutions for settling internal conflicts in the province s rural areas from 1987 to 1997, p

96 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM IV - Implications: The Importance of Property Rights To understand the rationale for villagers grievances over land use rights, the data that I have collected indicates a number of different perspectives. In a context where the party-state emphasized the entire people s ownership over land and where villagers were prevented from reclaiming their old plots of agricultural land during the decollectivization process, a report prepared by the Bureau of Land Management shifted the blame to the state as a whole. It argued that, firstly, the state land tenure policy lacked agreement and clearness; secondly, the state authorities had been weak in the management of land; thirdly, local cadres had committed wrongdoings and abused their official positions for private gain in the process of governing agricultural land; and lastly, it alleged the ineffective resolution of land use rights claims by authorities resulting in conflicts with villagers. 182 Data from Hà Bắc and Tiên Sơn authorities gives a more detailed explanation. Provincial authorities argued that villagers claims to their old land use rights, which led the subsequent disputes, originated firstly within the local government, particularly the local cadres who had loosened their management (buông lỏng quản lý), and committed wrongdoings and were corrupt for private gain. This reduced the agricultural land area at a local level, and consequently created suspicion and adverse reactions among villagers. Secondly, they blamed the villagers, who, during the period of collectivization, were merely focused on the working points, and cared little about agricultural land use rights and working productivity. After decollectivization, however, villagers began to care very much about land use rights. In addition to these two points were the influences of extreme localism (tư tưởng cục bộ địa phương) an notion that is deeply embedded in the minds of individual groups of villagers the villagers poor understanding of the state legal system (kém hiểu biết pháp luật), and the problem of opportunists and bad elements, like some ex-cadres who had been punished, or those whose moral decay and changed nature (thoái hóa biến chất) had incited (xúi giục) other villagers to claim old land use rights. 183 The Tiên Sơn District Party Organization presented a further crucial factor: the villagers urgent need (bức xúc) of agricultural land use rights for farming. This increasing 182 Tổng cục Quản lý ruộng đất "Báo cáo về tranh chấp đất đai." Hà Nội, trang UBND tỉnh Hà Bắc "Báo cáo kiểm điểm kết quả ba năm thi hành Luật Đất đai." Bắc Giang, trang

97 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE necessity stemmed from the fact that during the years of đổi mới, a number of state staff members and soldiers retired, and consequently the population in the countryside increased. 184 These perspectives are reasonable but only partially explain the problem, and have not yet touched upon the root of the issue. My analysis critically shows the importance of property rights in agricultural land individually and in Vietnamese society at large, because in both traditional and modern times, many farmers still value agricultural lands as it is a means of production that provides them with their livelihood 185 and a valuable form of property. 186 Therefore, since time immemorial, many Vietnamese have considered tấc đất tấc vàng (a piece of land, a piece of gold). Moreover, the political and socio-economic values of land tend to increase when there are few alternative livelihood sources for farmers, like in the case of Filipino farmers that Lewis analysed. 187 This allows me to assume that the number one reason why the villagers claim their old agricultural land use rights is related to their perception about their rights to land or, more specifically, that they or their villages are entitled to land use rights that have been taken away from them. Many claimants often saw these rights as belonging to them or their village institutions. The use rights, thus, must be held, used by and for the inhabitants of the village to whom agricultural land use rights (as well as worshipping rights) originally belonged. In such a view, the taking of agricultural land use rights from a group of villagers, or from the village as a whole, to give to other parties and institutions to use without any prior form of compensation or agreement would provoke reactions from those who have lost their land rights. There are numerous reasons that add to villagers claims to their old agricultural land use rights, including those that different levels of party-state 184 HU Tiên Sơn "Dự thảo báo cáo tình hình nông nghiệp Tiên Sơn sau những năm đổi mới, chủ trương và biện pháp thực hiện NQ 5 BCHTW Đảng." Tiên Sơn, trang Pierre Gourou, The Peasants of the Tonkin Delta: A Study of Human Geography, New Haven, Human Relations Area Files, 1955, 2 Vols; Scott, James, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia, New Haven : Yale University Press, 1976; Đỗ Hoài Nam, Lê Cao Đàm (chủ biên), Xây dựng cơ sở hạ tầng nông thôn trong qúa trình công nghiệp hóa, hiện đại hóa ở Việt Nam. Hà Nội: NXB, Khoa học Xã hội. 186 Katherine Verdery has argued that, for Romanian farmers, land is valued as a route towards political capital. (Katherine Verdery, The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania, Ithaca & London : Cornell University Press, 2003, p. 120). 187 Lewis, Henry, Ilocano Rice Farmers: A Comparative Study of Two Philipine Barrios, Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, 1971, pp

98 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM authorities have suggested. Particularly, since decollectivization, under the impact of the market economy, modernization, industrialization and urbanization, land use rights have become a valuable form of property because they can be exchanged just like other goods. Also, in the context of increasing demand for land use rights and decreased supply, values of land use rights have been increasing. All these perceptions and perspectives have participated in provoking villagers claims and consolidated the struggle to retrieve their old agricultural land use rights. Villagers claims to their old agricultural land use rights critically happened during the years of distribution and redistribution because this was a key point in time. In fact, the distribution and redistribution of agricultural land use rights to villagers for long-term use is a form of privatization of agricultural land use rights. After this privatization, nearly all agricultural land use rights in communities would no longer be held by the cooperative or the village as a whole, but by individual villagers or family households which are legally verified by a land use rights certificate from the state. Once the privatization of agricultural land use rights was completed and consolidated by legal land use rights certificates (giấy chứng nhận quyền sử dụng đất, or sổ đỏ), villagers claims to their old agricultural land use rights would have much less weight in terms of legal and moral grounds, thus making it difficult to justify. Conclusion After 30 years of agricultural collectivization efforts, Vietnam s party-state started to dismantle agricultural cooperatives by, among other methods, privatizing collective land and other forms of collective property for the villagers use. In the process of land use rights privatization, or distribution/allocation as the Vietnamese authorities call it, the party-state critically emphasizes the ownership of the entire people s land and the state s rights to land management. Since, it has developed a legal system to ensure this in order to prevent various categories of people and institutions from making claims to retrieve old land or other land rights, both on an individual and collective basis over a certain area or plot of land. Despite determined actions as such as these, the practices of claims to agricultural land use rights during the process of decollectivization occurred in 96

99 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE various parts of Vietnam, to the extent that it became a concern to the partystate. In these respective villages in the Red River Delta, agricultural land claims during this period involved lots of tension, negotiations and resistance among different parties. One of the consequences was the development of local conflicts, which in contrast to everyday forms of resistance, or rightful resistance, took the shape of public resistance. Such practices of land claims, and their resulting local conflicts, show what land property rights mean to villagers in the Red River Delta s rural areas, both in their perception and everyday actions, collectively and individually. This chapter also endorses what Verdery and others have argued about fuzziness in property relations in Vietnam and post-socialist countries. 188 More importantly, though this has not been thoroughly discussed in previous sections, it endorses the arguments made in available literature on the power of the people over the state in the process of policy-making and policy implementation. 189 Whether or not such practices of land claims contribute to reduce the gap between norms and practices is not yet clear. However, we clearly see how practices that contradict official norms of the party-state over the holding and use of land during the agricultural decollectivization process in respective Red River Delta villages and land claims in Vietnamese society at large do contribute to recreating or reproducing state laws and regulations in regard to land. Over the past 20 years, the party-state has taken such practices from the people into consideration in the process of revising land laws and many other regulations over the issues of land management, land use, and especially the holding of land use rights. 188 Janet C. Sturgeon and Thomas Sikor, Post Socialist Property in Asia and Europe: Variation on Fuzziness in Conservation & Society, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2004), pp. 1 17; Katherine Verdery, The Property Regime of Socialism in Conservation & Society, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2004), pp For example, to understand how Vietnamese farmers transformed the party-state policies over the programmes of agricultural collectivization and decollectivization, see Ben Kerkvliet, "Village-State Relations in Vietnam: The Effects of Evereyday Politics on Decollectivization." Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 54, Issue 2 (1995), pp ; The Power of Everyday Politics: How Vietnamese Peasants Transformed National Policy, Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, 2005; to see how local conflicts over land have influenced the Vietnamese party-state over the formation and reformation of comtemporary land regime, see Nguyen Van Suu, Contending views and Conflicts over Land in the Red River Delta since Decollectivization. PhD. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 2004; and Contending Views and Conflicts over Land in Vietnam s Red River Delta in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2007), pp ; for China, see Kate Xiao Zhou, How the Farmers Changed China: Power of the People, Boulder, Colo : Westview Press,

100 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM As this chapter shows only one of the five broad forms of land claims in Vietnam since the period of agricultural decollectivization, I would say that the examination of other forms of land claims will help us to have a more in-depth understanding of the variety empirical examples that show how, in what ways and to what extent the divergence between the party-state s official norms and the practices of the people in different locations occur over how land in Vietnam should be owned, managed and used for and by whom, and for whose benefit, and how and in what ways these practices would cause official norms to change In other pieces of research, I have examined other forms of land claims in the Red river delta, for example the villagers claims over the output of communal land, the reasonal level of compensation for land use rights (See Nguyen Van Suu, The Politics of Land: Inequality in Land Access and Local Conflicts in the Red River Delta since Decollectivization. in Social Inequality in Vietnam and the Challenges to Reform, edited by Philip Taylor, Singapore : ISEAS, 2004, pp ; Contending Views and Conflicts over Land in the Red River Delta since Decollectivization. Ph.D dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, 2004; and Industrialization and Urbanization in Vietnam: How Appropriation of Agricultural Land Use Rights Transformed Framers Livelihoods in a Peri-Urban Hanoi Village? East Asian Development Network Working Paper No. 38),

101 Chapter 3 Practical Norms and Gaining Legitimacy in Ha Nam Province Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh Recent studies made on local government and authority in Vietnam have pointed out that local cadres play an important role in everyday life politics in rural areas 191. They are implementing most of the central government s laws, programmes and policies, while being representatives of local residents. Those cadres, especially village heads, are the state officials that are closest to the people and with whom they have the most interaction 192. As a result, they confront a major challenge of how to be accountable to both local people and the state. As the authors conclude, local people would like their village cadres to combine fair-mindedness and impartiality with being goofy with the people and somewhat flexible in order to accommodate particular circumstances. People favour officials who can get results while also being morally upright 193. However, some cadres often lack the training, skill and experience to do their job well. Their inadequate compensation and allowance are also the main reasons for dishonesty and corruption. Ineffective and immoral local leaders easily lead to discontent and protest among rural residents 194. These suggest that the Vietnamese have developed a set of norms for their local authorities professional and personal behaviour, and it is not easy for local cadres to measure up to the people s expectations, therefore the dynamics of everyday life interactions between local leaders and the people are interesting to explore. 191 BENEDICT, Kerkvliet J. Tria and DAVID, Marr G. (eds.), Beyond Hanoi: Local Government in Vietnam, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore : NIAS Press, PHAM QUANG MINH, Caught in the Middle: Local Cadres in Hai Duong Province, Beyond Hanoi: local government in Vietnam B.J. Kerkvliet and D.G. Marr, (eds.), Pp , Vietnam update series. Singapore : Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, BENEDICT and DAVID (eds.), Beyond Hanoi:, 2004, page PHAM QUANG MINH, Caught in the Middle:.., 2004, page

102 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM Shaun Marlarney 195, through an examination of two politicians careers in a suburb commune of Hanoi, has clarified different moral notions by which Vietnamese people evaluate their leaders and illustrated how the application of these standards affect local political life. He aims to show that there is a sociocultural construction of ideas of good leadership in rural Vietnam and these local standards are different, sometimes contradictory, from the ideas and expectations of the party. The application of these local ideas and values, according to Malarney, has contributed to the development of civil society and enabled the Vietnamese to construct their own post-socialist political culture. Although the author could examine the construction of notions of prestige leaders that local people choose through their village election, he has not researched the interplay between the people and their leaders in everyday life interactions to see how the ideas or norms of good leadership constructed by local socio-cultural values work in practice, nor does he deal with what happens when most local leaders violate the norm or none of them entirely fit their standards? In that situation, how do local authorities gain legitimacy and mobilize the people to follow their leadership? I suggest that there are more dynamics in the relationship between the norms of a good leader and how they are practiced, which can only be understood through every day life politics in the village. In this chapter, I will examine the interplay between local authorities and rural residents to see how the cadres gain prestige and to what extent the people give them legitimacy. Through this interaction, I am aiming to illustrate how the norms of good leadership exist in Vietnamese contemporary society, their extent and what roles they have had in everyday village politics. Can these norms alone, as a socio-cultural construction, play a decisive role in gaining prestige among rural leaders, or are there any other factors that influence this process? My analysis draws upon long-term ethnographic research in a village in Ha Nam province. Located in the centre of the Red River delta, Bắc Đồng village 196 is one among thousands of rural communities in Vietnam, which is the lowest administrative unit of government and has long been a central focus for 195 MALARNEY (Shaun Kingsley), Culture, Virtue, and Political Transformation in Contemporary Northern Vietnam, The Journal of Asian Studies, Nov 1997, Vol. 56, No Bắc Đồng is not the official name of the village where I carried out one year fieldwork from June 2007 to June May In fact, is one version of the revolutionary name of the village during the collectivization period. I prefer to use it as it is a beautiful name and it protects my informants. 100

103 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE discussion on the social structure of Vietnamese society 197, 198. The village is about 60 km from Hanoi and 10 km from its provincial centre, Phu Ly town, Ha Nam province. Historically, it was formed by different lineages coming from surrounding provinces in the delta in the late 1700s. Over time, the population of Bắc Đồng has now reached over 4,000 inhabitants. Like other residents in the delta, rice cultivation has been the main livelihood of the villagers, combined with handicrafts and small forms of trade. Only a few people live and work within the village for their whole lives given the limited resources of the local area. Bắc Đồng people say that it was only after 1995 did they really have enough food to eat and only recently, after 2000, were their lives truly improved. Wars, conflicts, natural disasters and low rice productivity both before and during colonial times were the main reasons for poverty. After the 1954 Dien Bien Phu victory, the new revolutionary government led people in the delta into a campaign of socialism building. Difficulties during the war and even after the war, together with the subsidized economic policy, made people suffer a life of deprivation. In 1986, the economic renovation policy (known as Doi Moi) was launched, but it took about ten more years for people to catch up with the market economy and get out of the crisis. Towards the end of this crisis, a protest took place in Bắc Đồng that began with the idea of claiming back some land which had been given to a neighbouring village during the period of collectivism from the 1960s to the 1980s. The villagers believe this land to be their ancestral home and sent complaints, holding demonstrations at the government office and ultimately used force to get the land back. In the midst of the protest, the villagers started a fight against corruption among local authorities. The dynamics of the conflict between local people and their leaders during this period go beyond the scope of this paper. After the protest ended, Bắc Đồng people were swept by various movements started at the same time by the local government in their area and elsewhere in Vietnam. New policies on agricultural land, the promotion of rice cultivation, and a poverty-alleviation programme had made changes to the face of this rural area. At the same time as these economic improvements were taking place, social and ritual life in rural areas was enhanced by the movement to revive spiritual life. It is possible to say that after the protest, villagers merely followed the lead of local authorities and the government s programmes. It is interesting to explore the dynamics of these 197 LUONG Hy V, Revolution in the Village: Tradition and Transformation in North Vietnam , Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, KLEINEN John, Facing the future, reviving the past: a study of social change in a Northern Vietnamese village, Singapore : Institute of Southeast Asian Studies,

104 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM programmes to see how leaders gained and regained the trust of the people, and how they entered into the heart of the villagers. In this paper, I will describe the different methods of mobilizing villagers into a campaign aimed at building village infrastructure and a new life after the protest. One method was compulsory in style, which created a cold war in the relationship between cadres and the people, while the most recent, more successful, method has used culture and ritual as a way for the villagers to communicate with their leaders. This accommodation of the local government with religion and culture has paved the way for people to imagine and practice their beliefs. The village god suddenly emerged as a popular authority who could create a strong passion for the villagers to recreate their village identity, a sense of communal spirit, and more importantly helped them communicate with local cadres. By quenching the people s thirst for culture, local authorities gained power through the enthusiasm of the people. Its relationship with people, as I will conclude, was rebuilt through performances and ritual, together with the norms of good leadership. I - Profane Power Just three days after I commenced my fieldwork at Bắc Đồng, an event occurred which produced a stir in the village. It was the sudden death of the only son of a former chairman Mr Lê Thời. At that time, I did not know anything about him or the situation in the village but I was curious when people had a strange attitude towards this death. They gossiped to each other in a state of awe and shock. I heard words like oh how fearful, it is true that God knows everything (sợ thật, ông trời đúng là có mắt, or sow the wind, reap the whirlwind ác giả ác báo ). Normally, villagers feel sorry for a person who passes away and his or her family. In this case too, they felt compassion for that young and handsome man who had died suddenly at his house at the age of twenty. But his death reminded villagers about his father and his past. It made them think about the law of causality. The dead man was affected by the bad attitudes of villagers toward his father. What was the reason for this gossip and did everyone in the village share the same opinion and attitude? Before the protest began in Bắc Đồng, Lê Thời was an ordinary accountant in the Commune s People s Committee. He had no influence in the village. By supporting his cousin, Lê Quý - who was chairman at that time, Thời 102

105 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE emerged as an influential local cadre as a result of how he had coped with the protesters. After the protest, he took advantage of his new relationships and prestige to gain a promotion. He even turned against his cousin to get a higher position. Two years after the resistance ended, Thời became vice chairman and then chairman of the commune, a position he held for almost 10 years. The villagers, however, cannot understand how he could rise to such a place of authority (nảy nòi). They believed that his rise was due to pure luck (dựa thời). Thời s power in village affairs is related to the fact that the apparatus of local government in Bắc Đồng is a bit different from the surrounding communes in particular and the rest of the delta in general. Since 1993, the position of village head has re-emerged in northern rural Vietnam 199. This is the person who has direct contact with villagers. His/her task can be seen as an assistant to the commune chairman in the implementation of work and the instructions of local government, as well as the collection of fees and contributions. Normally, village heads are party members and are men. But recently there has been a more open-minded atmosphere in many localities and villagers elect heads who are not party members. In a few cases, children of former landlord families have gained this position. 200 In Bắc Đồng, there is no such title as village head (trưởng thôn), but instead there is an area head (trưởng miền), a key leader in the Commune s People s Committee, who must live in the village. He has two titles and is responsible for both the commune and the village. Instead of being an assistant to the administration, the area head is a representative of local government in the village. Thus, his status is more important and empowering than ordinary village heads in other locations. The main reason for the existence of this title in Bắc Đồng s commune is the local government s aim to strengthen its guidance at the village level and create a consensus among all the village leaders so it can implement its policies and instructions. During his ten years in power, Thời assumed the role of village leader along with his high position on the People s Committee. He was a handsome forty-year-old man when he first assumed these roles. Although he only finished secondary school, according to villagers he had good oratory skills (giỏi ăn nói). People believe that he was a clever person (khôn khéo) and skilled in the art of living (giỏi về nghệ thuật sống). He knew how to develop and maintain 199 See PHAM QUANG MINH, Caught in the Middle, My fieldwork in another commune in Hoài Đức district, Hà Tây province (now in Hanoi) shows that in this area, young people and non-party members are elected as village heads. Many people hesitate to do this work as it is considered as eating at home, but shouldering the work of assisting the Canton (ăn cơm nhà vác tù và hàng tổng). 103

106 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM relationships with higher echelons to protect his position and get things done (giải quyết mọi việc) while making subordinates follow his instructions. During his time of leadership, Bắc Đồng village implemented various infrastructure projects in which Thời played an important role. When the district launched the programme to build a village road, he told his assistants (hamlet heads trưởng xóm, and security team members tổ an ninh ) to mobilize villagers to respond to the movement. Each household (khẩu) contributed 100 thousand đồng for this project. The contribution was made in two instalments. At harvest time, households paid these instalments together with other fees and taxes. As a result, the main village road and lanes were concreted by the mid 1990s. Some years after that, he continued to mobilize people to build a water supply system. A water station was built at the edge of the village and pipes were installed along the main road and lanes. However, pipes did not reach each household. Therefore, only about 20 percent of households close to the main road and lanes could afford to connect to the water supply, although every family had contributed a large amount of money, 100 thousand đồng per household. Every year, households were also required to contribute towards small construction and repair jobs such as roads, fields, market or electricity station maintenance. When Thời was in power, no one in the village complained about his projects. Instead, many admitted that he had done a lot of work for the village (làm được nhiều việc). Only when he lost his power did villagers begin to look back on his behaviour, gossip about him and his corrupt ways. Many of them said that he corruptly appropriated materials for road building and issued fake receipts to report a larger quantity of cement than was really used. People felt discontent about some of his decision making, which lacked the people s involvement. The water supply system was an example. In fact, this would have been a good project if it had been well constructed as the people had actively responded to it. At that time and even now, most of the villagers in Bắc Đồng are not interested in a public water system. They do not want to invest a large amount of money into it, preferring to use private wells equipped with pumps to keep their freedom and their independence. They are hesitant to depend on the public supply, reluctant to pay monthly fees and are not satisfied with the water quality. This is a problem of habit and calculation. People said that the village cadres organized a meeting about water to which they only invited some old people who would undoubtedly support their ideas and decisions. Then, since it was considered to be a community decision, individuals and households had to comply. Some claimed they had to contribute even when in disagreement (nhiều khi mình không đồng ý cũng phải đóng). 104

107 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE According to village gossip, Thời s benefits from building and construction were small compared to his gains from land transactions. By the end of the 1990s, Bắc Đồng was allowed to sell communal ponds and lakes near the main roads and market to expand the residential land of the village. A part of the sales income was kept for the commune and most of it was submitted to the higher administration. People say that they are not sure whether or not Thời stole some of this money, but they definitely know that he earned a lot from bribes. As Bắc Đồng is a crowded village, villagers are very interested in expanding their living space and accumulating land for their children. Therefore people flocked to buy land. Most of them came to entreat Thời to help them buy a portion of land. Later on, it turned out that Thời took about 2 million đồng from each person to whom he promised to sell land. People estimated that, since there were about a hundred portions of land, he could have earned 200 million đồng in In addition, he and his siblings acquired many pieces of land surrounding the village without any transparent auction or buying procedure. After one year, he was able to build a big two-storey house on new residential land near the inter-district road. Another kind of abuse of power that many people accused Thời of was his involvement in administrative formalities. It is difficult to find real evidence for this type of behaviour in the delta, however, one old man in Bắc Đồng told me: Before the 1954 land reform, my eldest brother was the secretary of the village. Anyone who wanted to ask for papers like tax, birth or death certificates, had to submit a form with money clamped inside. During collectivization, such negative things rarely happened but people had to crawl before the cadres. Nowadays, people no longer have to do that. They have gone back to using money. Some years ago, it was complicated to apply for papers. Recently, thanks to Doi Moi the renovation procedures, it is simple and easier. (Mr. Lâm, 70 years old). Many villagers said that Thời took amounts ranging from five thousand to ten thousand or twenty thousand đồng each time he signed a paper for someone. Two men in the village told me that they had heard about that, so when they asked for his signature, they gave him ten thousand but he refused. Maybe Thời regarded them as old friends from his youth so he signed it without question. Or Bắc Đồng people might have been exaggerating when describing Thời as eating dirt (ăn bẩn) and worshipping the omnivorous fish deity (thần me lai ăn tạp). Nevertheless they told me that he often tried to find a reason or 105

108 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM opportunity to take money from people. If a village man dug some soil from the canal in the field to add to his garden, he would be summoned to meet Thời at the communal office (bị gọi lên xã). When he went there at the appointed time, Thời found an excuse not to meet saying that he was busy. After several repetitions of this, other villagers would recommend that the man visit Thời at his house in the evening. By seeing him privately and giving him some money, everything would be solved. People liked to conclude that he ate without consideration for others and without exception, even towards relatives (không nể, không chừa một ai). As he was in a high position and had relationships with high echelons in the district and province, some villagers went to him to ask for help in difficult situations that they were facing with the law. People say that on one occasion he succeeded in helping one villager to avoid a trial through back door means (chạy). He boasted about it (huênh hoang). After this, many villagers came to ask for his help. They gave him money, but their problems were not solved. For instance, a village man who provided a money exchange service at the border with China in Lạng Sơn province was involved in a criminal case. He came back to the village, asked for Thời s help, and gave him money. However, Thời did nothing to make his situation better except signing a paper to certify that this man had never been involved in any criminal case before. In daily life, villagers often needed to circumvent the regulations of the government and went to ask Thời for permission, or simply to turn a blind eye to what they were doing. He often agreed after receiving a bribe but at the end did not really let people do what they had sought permission for. This was the main reason why many villagers resented Thời and gossiped about him. Many people talked about Thời s various weaknesses and evil habits. He was considered a superficial person (nông nổi) when he decided to build a big house which cost several hundred million đồng after only one year in power. He was approachable (dễ gần) but imperious (hách dịch) and was considered a vengeful person (hay thù vặt). If he had a grudge against someone he would use his power or relationship to take revenge on them or repress them, whether they were colleagues or ordinary villagers. He might induce someone to sue his enemy or simply order his lackeys to disturb them. After the protest ended, Lê Quý, his cousin, became his rival when they both competed for the position of vice chairman. He took revenge on Quý s whole family, despite them being close relatives. Quý s mother said Thời used his authority to ask the association of elderly women at the pagoda to abolish her role as the chief ritual officer (chủ tế) there. The village security team was given the task of watching for her 106

109 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE family s mistakes. Whenever they saw her family s ducks or chickens wandering from her garden to the rice field, they would take them to the communal head office and ask her to come for retribution. The majority of Bắc Đồng villagers seem to have created a legend about Thời as an example of strength, power and corruption. Nevertheless, people do recognize his ability and some of his contributions to the village. One said about thirty percent of what he did was good/moral work có đức khoảng ba mươi phần trăm. He ate but could work as well (ăn được, làm được). A few villagers think he was quite good (ông ấy cũng tốt) and did not do anything bad to them. Some people said he ate to the marrow of popularity ăn đến tận xương tuỷ của dân while others told me that he stole from the state, not from the people. In general, most people did not like how he used his power. When he was the authority, people followed him because they were afraid of his power, not because they had high esteem for his talent or moral values. His relationship with high-level authorities and the power of his siblings in the village became obstacles for anyone who was ambitious or wanted to challenge him. After the protest, when the emotion of people was compared to detached grains of sand (những hạt cát rã rời), villagers were hesitant to resist Thời or any formal power. This created a situation of willing face but unwilling heart (bằng mặt không bằng lòng) in the relations between him and the people. Surprisingly, when he was in power, people appeared to respect him, especially a number of people who benefitted from exchanging gifts and favours and holding banquets with him. Whenever his family held a big activity like emptying the pond for fishing or having a wedding party, many people came to help him enthusiastically. He always stood out from the crowd by speaking loudly and directing people about what to do and how. Only when his power declined did people criticize him (giậu đổ bìm leo). Thời went too far when he embezzled donations the commune had collected for victims of the storm in the South and the purchase of some hospital beds for the commune s health clinic. His brother was urged to stop threatening people after he beat up the son of a commune cadre who lived in a neighbouring village. It took the combined pressure of most cadres and communist party members in the whole commune to discipline Thời, who then lost his position in the early 2000s. Some villagers say that he was lucky to avoid imprisonment given his corrupt ways. Since then, no one cared about or maintained a relationship with him. When he appears at communal activities like a wedding or ritual in the village, no one takes an interest in him. He keeps silent instead of 107

110 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM speaking in his sonorous voice. People have moved from honouring to disdaining him. After losing formal power, Thời continued to use his relationships to develop a business in the provincial town. He opened a coffee shop and ran it as a brothel. After some years, his illegal activity was discovered and he was arrested. With his connections, he was able to avoid a trial, and the death of his son was seen as a consequence of this immoral trade. According to villagers, the son died from a drug overdose, rather than from an electric shock as his family claimed. After all these stories, Thời does not often stay in the village now. He avoids travelling on the main village road to avoid curses. His story stimulated a discourse among villagers about the concept of virtue (phúc đức) and karma (quả báo). People remind themselves about how to live a virtuous life. They believe that the example of Lê Thời will help the new generation of village cadres be aware of and try to avoid following these tire tracks of falling vehicles (tránh vết xe đổ). Although young cadres dislike Thời, they are dissatisfied with the people s attitude towards him. Villagers still harbour the prejudice that being a cadre means being corrupt. The case of Thời and similar officials has shown what villagers bribes and favours can achieve. One retired cadre told me ungratefulness is typical of the people, wickedness of the soldier bạc như dân, ác như quân lính. He complained that villagers often insisted cadres help them and then turned around and scolded them. All these discussions raise the question of whether a number of villagers encouraged Thời to become corrupt and misuse his authority by exchanging gifts and giving him bribes or whether the system let him do it. It was similar during the period of collectivization. There have always been a number of villagers, about one third of the population some villagers estimate, who have tried to exploit the system by giving gifts and favours and holding banquets for cadres for their own benefit. These give more room for local officials to utilize their position to earn benefits. The dynamics of Thời s leadership show that in the transitional stage to a new economy in the 1990s, there was a certainty of increasing resources and economic opportunities for prosperity. Thus, local people had little choice but to accept the profit-seeking behaviour in the economy that Thời had practiced in order to better their lives, even though it went against both moral values and the law. Relationships between people and village cadres and between people themselves were based on pragmatism alone. As people were not entirely happy 108

111 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE with that model, Thời could not create a feeling of confidence within the village community. II - Tolerance and Sentiment in the Building of Legitimacy Thời s fall ended the obsession with the protest within the village itself. By the early 2000s when he lost power, people s painful memories of the past were fading and the social atmosphere outside was much more open to them. The new generation of village cadres replacing Thời was quite well received by community members. Under Thời s leadership, most hamlet heads were not approved of by villagers as Thời was not concerned about whether the candidate he nominated suited the will of the people or not. Recently, Bắc Đồng people think that most of candidates nominated by the authorities are in line with their opinions. At present, there are two important cadres in the village, Hiền and Khôi. They are both vice chairmen on the Commune s People s Committee and had an equal opportunity to play the role of Bắc Đồng village head. Right after Thời was dismissed, Hiền replaced him to lead the village. However, after six months he decided to resign. Hiền is the eldest son of one of the brigade leaders during the collectivization period, and is about 49 years old. When he was young, he joined the army for some years and then went to Eastern Europe to work. After returning to the village, he became a member of the People s Committee. He was then sent to study at the provincial political school for one year to become chief of the office; now, as noted above, he is vice chairman of the People s Committee. In the eyes of villagers and his colleagues, Hiền is a gentle and outspoken person. He is not a calculating worldly person and is quite strict in matters of principle. He is considered more suited to deskwork than governance. When he took on the role of village head, he found it difficult to run the system. Hamlet heads did not cooperate well with him in implementing tasks and affairs. The main reason for this was that Hiền did not establish good relationships with them. He did not clearly show how the activities would benefit them and their hamlets. No one knows whether he did not dare to do this or simply lacked the ability to do so. For villagers, Hiền is a timid person and not skilful in speech and behaviour. This shows the importance of leaders relational skills in this society. 109

112 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM Khôi is the same age and has the same background as Hiền, but has different qualities and abilities. After completing several years of military service, he was first selected to be a staff member at the communal military department. Over the last ten years, he has improved his education by completing his high school certificate, and then passing a political course, just like Hiền. More importantly, however, Khôi has experienced and learned a lot about how to develop relationships and gain influence. As a co-vice chairman in the commune, he easily took over the role of village head after Hiền resigned. So far, he is considered to be a cadre who knows how to contact, talk to and humour people. 110 Lê Thời could not enter into the hearts of people because he sold so much land, even the pagoda s land to fill his own pocket. Thus, villagers did not respond to his call for village affairs. Mr. Khôi is cleverer and has gained more within people s hearts. He does not sell land, only builds up the village (chỉ có kiến thiết). He is more sensible (khôn ngoan) and sentimental (tình cảm hơn). Thời, before, always threatened villagers with bringing their problems/troubles to the Commune s People s Committee to take their money. Nowadays, Khôi mainly solves village internal affairs by consensus (giải quyết bằng tình cảm là chính), not by sending people or their matters to the commune. By acting within good reason, he managed to endure his position (khôn như vậy mới được bền) (Mrs. Đức, 55 years old, a famer in the village). Khôi appeals to people s sentiments, treats people properly and kindly (sống có tình, hẳn hoi tử tế). He talks to people in both a logical and sentimental way (ăn nói có tình có lý). And he does not treat people with contempt (không khinh người) (Mrs. Hoa, 70 years old, who used to be a farmer and petty trader). Although most people in Bắc Đồng at present are quite happy about the attitude of the new generation of cadres, they still are not happy with the excessive contributions for agricultural services and duty they have to pay. In 2003, the government launched a decree which exempted or reduced tax on agricultural land usage 201. Since 2004, like other peasant households in the Red River delta, all Bắc Đồng families have benefitted from this new policy. But 201 Thông tư 112/2003 của Bộ Tài chính hướng dẫn miễn, giảm thuế sử dụng đất nông nghiệp (năm 2003 đến 2010 theo Nghị định 129/2003 của Chính phủ) [Circular 112/2003 of the Ministry of Finance on reducing and exempting agricultural land tax from 2003 till 2010 according to the decree number 129/2003 of the government]

113 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE they still have to pay contributions while some surrounding communes were exempt. Each household in Bắc Đồng pays 14 to 16 fees. For each sào of allocated rice land, they pay almost 10 kilograms of rice for the irrigation fee 202, 4 kilograms for field protection and smaller amounts for insect prevention, a veterinary fund or agricultural extension 203. They are also required to make payments for social funds like the conscripted labour fund, children s health care fund, fund for the poor, educational promotion fund, Peasant Association fees and the brigade/hamlet operation fee. In addition, depending on the annual plan of the village for building common works or activities like roads, schools or festivals, each household has to contribute money according to the amount of rice field they are allocated or the number of family members. Among these contributions, the irrigation fees, conscripted labour fund and contributions for common construction work and village affairs are the most onerous. On average, a household with 5 sào of rice land had to pay about five hundred thousand đồng (about 27.5 USD) for each crop before After the land use tax was abolished, the amount dropped to about three hundred thousand đồng. Villagers say that these duties are still too much compared to what they earn from cultivation. The average income from one sào of rice land is around two to three hundred thousand đồng per crop after all the production expenses are paid. People think that it is not proper and fair that children born after 1993, who are not allocated rice land, are still subject to contributions levies on household members. Many villagers question why they have to contribute fees and duties that are not required by the state and why rural inhabitants such as themselves have to contribute money to build roads while urban dwellers never have to. The answer lies in local government policies. In many rural locations, the local government invests part of the income gained from selling land for residential expansion in village infrastructure after giving a certain percentage to the state. People living in those villages do not have to contribute, or if they do only very little, to the construction of roads, schools or electricity station. In these cases, the local cadres are implementing a kind of converting land into infrastructure policy, which is in line with state policy. 202 On 15 th October 2007, the government issued the decree No 154/2007/NĐ-CP on exemption of irrigation fees for peasants. In the Red River delta, people in many locations were free from these burden fees right after this policy was launched. But in some provinces, the policy was still not applied. 203 A household in Đông La commune, Hoài Đức district, Hà Tây province (now in Hanoi) showed me a range of their receipts for contributions in recent years. They only have two main fees for irrigation and crop protection. With over 3 sào of rice land, they only have to contribute about one hundred thousand dong per crop. 111

114 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM Many Bắc Đồng villagers are hesitant to question the local government or openly complain about the fees and charges because of their memories and experience of the protest period. They just concentrate on working and earning enough money to enable them to meet the contribution requirements. In other villages where people are poorer than them, villagers might sue local authorities about excessive duty. However, this situation in Bắc Đồng might change in the near future. Recently an anonymous complaint appeared in a neighbouring village in the same commune denouncing the local cadres abuse of power over people s contributions. Some villagers said that everything has a threshold, as things go beyond it, they will not accept it. Villagers often claim that their village cadres earn income from contributions based on the area of rice land cultivated and from tractor contracts. After de-collectivization, each household had to take care of their own production. During the 1990s and early 2000s, people in the village prepared the land for cultivation with their own family s ox or hired someone to use a small tractor to do it. Recently, new seeds and cultivation techniques require a strict and comprehensive schedule. Hamlet leaders have taken over the role of hiring a tractor and preparing the land for people to speed up the process, and they collect money from each household to pay for a driver. Villagers understand that cadres can benefit from both sides of the contract, the households and the driver. If households hire a tractor themselves, they might only have to pay ten thousand đồng per sào. Through the hamlet leader, they have to pay twelve thousand đồng, but the quality of land tilled is not ensured as the mechanic often has to pay commission to the leader so he reduces his costs by tilling carelessly. Bắc Đồng people estimate that a hamlet leader in their village can earn about thirty million đồng a year, an income equal to a well-to-do person in the village, while their boss the village head might earn double that. However, they have quite a calm attitude toward this phenomenon. They think that there is a consensus among village cadres about the level of contributions and that it is difficult for a normal villager to make any changes. Moreover, people nowadays tend to concentrate on their own family and have become more self-centred. Nowadays people care more for their families than for common interest. Everyone is busy earning a living as agriculture is not their main livelihood. Every family takes charge of how to earn at least ten million đồng a year to cover expenses. Therefore, they are not bothered about what village cadres eat. In meetings, someone may raise questions and ideas for the higher echelons but we are not sure 112

115 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE if those are passed on to higher authority Thus, it is better to turn a blind eye to everything (Mr. Tý, 58 years old). As cadres, they have to take care of common affairs and at the same time think about how to have a life, at least like the well-todo in the hamlet. However, they should keep in mind and only eat in certain circumstances (biết ăn tuỳ chỗ) and leave something for the people (Mr. Tú, 65 years old). There is a widespread idea among villagers that during collectivization cadres only ate paddy and rice, while nowadays hamlet and village heads earn money from household contributions. People believe that this form of corruption is very skilful. It is difficult to find evidence as the contribution is strictly regulated, from the commune down to the hamlet. The income of village cadres mainly comes from their agreements with contractors. This applies equally to other construction contracts in the village like repairing the roads, canals and other infrastructure projects. The leader no longer has to write fake receipts to siphon money from the construction projects. Instead, he earns money indirectly through the contractors. Nowadays, people tend to accept and tolerate the fact that cadres benefit monetarily from their positions. A quite well-to-do man in the village at present can earn about three to four million đồng a month from production, trade or craft. In the opinion of villagers, a head of the hamlet must have the same capacity, quality of life and standard of living. He should therefore earn about that amount of income by devoting his time to the village. Nevertheless, people expect and require a good response and attitude from him. One elderly woman in Bắc Đồng gave an example of one former hamlet head who knew how to use the hamlet funds to sponsor parties and long dresses (áo dài) for women in the hamlet on the occasion of Women s Day. Villagers considered him a clever man who knew how to flatter the people. Bắc Đồng villagers accept that cadres need to improve their low wages and allowances by taking part of the households and individuals contributions for public funds or village affairs. At the same time, however, they want to set a notional threshold for this. Details about this limit vary according to context, event and story. However, two main general rules are: the amount should not to be too much and should not be applied in every case. Taking contributions people have donated for spiritual affairs, like donations to repair or build a pagoda or temple, is not acceptable. The percentage of the creamed off portion should not be too high compared to the total fund or contribution. To maintain those rules satisfactorily, a cadre 113

116 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM must respect the people (nể dân) and their wishes, and be cautious in his dealing with the people (gờm dân). At the moment, Bắc Đồng people are fairly satisfied with their current arrangements. However, their relationship with the cadres is an ongoing dialogue. Villagers still believe that to be a cadre one must be corrupt, therefore they always carefully monitor their actions. Their trust and responses towards cadres and their call for action fluctuate depending on the dynamics of everyday life. In their discourse on contemporary politics, villagers rarely mention concepts of virtue and talent, which were previously seen as essential qualities for a leader. People are very practical and assume that, nowadays, it is difficult to apply the revolution s moral standards such as industry, thrift, incorruptibility, public spirit and impartiality (Cần, kiệm, liêm, chính. Chí công vô tư) that Uncle Hồ embodied as a defining image of political morality 204. The most important qualities that Bắc Đồng residents expect in their leaders are sentimentality and kindness. If the leader does more good work for the village, he will earn more prestige, but the above qualities are critical to becoming an esteemed political leader. The dynamics of everyday life politics in Bắc Đồng show that under the intensification of the market economy, local people have given more tolerance to the threshold of corruption and the norms of moral leadership, but there is still no consensus among people on a good leader according to criteria of the norm. Although many Bắc Đồng villagers have high esteem for Khoi s good sentiment and ability, at the same time they still doubt his honesty and transparency. Thus, he and other village cadres are always worried that when they retire or quit their jobs, they might have to go through a similar situation or suffer the same criticism that Thoi experienced. In this situation, their commitment to the norm of good leadership was not enough to create a good relationship with people or to gain popular legitimacy. The following example will illustrate that in order to change their discourse with people and to gain of prestige, local government should meet the people s desire for a new ritual and religious life. 204 See MALARNEY (Shaun Kingsley), Culture, Virtue, And Political Transformation, 1997, page

117 III - Rebuilding Trust and Decision: Enter into the Hearts of People SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE In the early 2000s, Bắc Đồng people could make a sigh of relief and feel more relaxed when a more convincing form of local governance replaced the old order. However, when socio-economic life really improved, people had more room to think beyond subsistence level concerns. Villagers suddenly found that they were being left behind compared to the surrounding villages. The appearance of Bắc Đồng had improved with new concrete roads, more tileroofed and flat-roof houses and a public hygiene system, but it still lacked the new social and cultural institutions and titles that many other communities in the region had already received. During Khôi s leadership, a program was initiated that gave villagers a new sense of hope, a new image and model of the responsive leader. The movement of building Cultural Village (làng văn hoá) was introduced during the period of , and was officially adopted at the fifth Resolution of the 8 th Party Congress in In the early 1990s, a small number of cultural villages were built according to strict criteria. After 1998, locations in the Red River delta became more actively involved in this programme 205. Aware of these developments, the new generation of Bắc Đồng village cadres started to mobilize villagers to join the movement in the early 2000s. They began by building cultural houses in five hamlets in the village to cater to contemporary formal meetings and cultural performances. In 2003, Mr. Bách, the leader of hamlet number five took the initiative in this movement in Bắc Đồng. He himself borrowed money to build a house on the foundation of a vacant pond in the hamlet. By showing people that he devoted his time and whole heart to the project without stealing any building material, he convinced people to contribute one hundred thousand đồng per inhabitant for the project. The opening ceremony of this house became a festival for the villagers. People were not only happy with the bright and spacious building in their neighbourhood. What s more is that they were very proud of their own contribution and confidence. Since then, others have followed and responded to the movement. By 2005, all five hamlets of Bắc Đồng had cultural 205 After the Central Government launched a Resolution on this movement, provincial governments like Vĩnh Phúc province introduced their own Resolution to implement the target. See Resolution 7, Vĩnh Phúc People s Council on Building Cultural Family Cultural Village in the period

118 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM houses, which cost a total of about one billion đồng. Besides getting involved in the construction, village cadres also mobilized people to participate in various social activities launched and implemented by the Veteran s Association, Women s Union, or Youth League. The main content and aim of these activities was to promote agricultural production by training villagers about new seeds, skills and techniques; to introduce new secondary jobs, or to increase people s awareness of social problems like drug addiction, transport accidents and AIDS/HIV. Despite the fact that villagers regard contemporary movements as formal activities, under the leadership and mobilization of a new generation of cadres, they have tried to carry out the instructions and tasks as well as meet the targets set by higher levels government. Their efforts were acknowledged in 2005 when they received the title of Cultural Village for the first time. As a poor woman who receives only three hundred thousand đồng a month for cleaning the village road said: 116 to gain that certificate cost the villagers blood, sweat and tears. Everybody had to work hard for improvement and to build big houses from hollow foundations. Women in the village had to be active in movements to be recognized. For the many Bắc Đồng people, the title is not only the a manifestation of the government s recognition of their well-being and improved socio-economic life, but more importantly it abolishes their complex about the adverse political attitude towards their village. As some of the criteria to be a cultural village is that villagers implement state policy as well as the law, and that they ensure order and security, the title therefore certifies that Bắc Đồng people are good citizens who always obey the guidelines and policies of the government. Since receiving the title of Cultural Village, many Bắc Đồng people have been thinking of another plan for a long time. Most of the other villages in the region had revived the festivals connected to the village guardian deity cult at the communal house. Bắc Đồng village, however, could only revive and maintain the Confucian-inspired tế-ritual on special occasions each year. In principle, a village has to apply for approval from the Ministry of Culture and Information or the Provincial Department of Culture and Information to rank its communal house or temple as a historical building before the village can hold a festival. Under Lê Thời s leadership, some old villagers raised the idea of applying for approval of the đình, and started to prepare documents, which they

119 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE then sent to some officials, but no result came of this. People wondered if this was because Thời was not sufficiently enthusiastic in pursuing the matter or whether the government was prejudiced because of the villagers former political resistance. Only in 2004, under the leadership of Khôi, was this process resumed and promoted. For a long time, small repairs had been made to the đình, but then, a large amount of money was needed for it to be certified as a historical building. Village cadres and the village Committee of Rituals decided to organize a big movement to collect funds. Loudspeakers were used everyday to call for donations. Speeches praising the village s socio-economic development and poems about the đình s sacred nature (copied from somewhere else) were broadcast to stimulate the villagers community spirit. The organizing committee also drew up a letter to invite Bắc Đồng villagers who had moved away from the village to give money to help restore the đình. For many migrants in the northern mountainous provinces, the Central Highlands or Mekong delta, who have been far away from Bắc Đồng for several decades, this was the first time that cadres and the people at home had shown any interest in them. All these efforts brought amazing results. Seventy million đồng was contributed by people within the village and over forty million đồng was donated by migrants, particularly migrants in the South. Several successful companies owned by Bắc Đồng people donated items for the đình which were worth ten million đồng. The donations Bắc Đồng villagers made were not as large as some other villages in the delta where long ago villagers had contributed several hundred million or a billion đồng to repair or rebuild their ritual spaces However, it was the biggest amount of money that Bắc Đồng people had ever spent on a communal activity. Some villagers told me that they responded to the call as it was a Party decision that embraced their soul (ý Đảng lòng dân). The village association of elderly people was given the task of preparing the documents and records needed for the application. In this process, rituals, festivals and history of the village tutelary deity which had been interrupted for 70 years were revived through the memories of contemporary villagers with the assistance of the officials of Ha Nam museum. There are many new factors and methods of invention that come with the process when villagers remember, 206 MICHAEL DiGregorio, Things held in common: Memory, space and the reconstitution of community life, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 38, No. 3 (2007), pp TA LONG (ed), Sự phát triển của làng nghề La Phù [The development of La Phu Craft Village], Hanoi : NXB Khoa học Xã hội,

120 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM imagine and select their history and tradition. However, this goes beyond the scope of this chapter. What s important was the swiftness in which construction and requests went during that year, in This brought great happiness to the villagers who were not only glad to have a certificate like others, but more importantly they could be proud of their village god and their communal house. Villagers said that before this event, they only had a vague knowledge of their village god, King Đinh Tiên Hoàng 208 through legends and stories that had been passed down. They thought of him more as a spirit than a historical character. Through the efforts of the cultural staff and the elders, people learned more about King Đinh and the communal house. They became prouder of their village god s deeds of merit towards the country and confident that their communal house was related to a significant historical milestone for the nation. As one woman described in her poem the đình had entered into the orthodox history (đi vào Sử xanh). Our Bắc Đồng 209 community house Happily received the provincial certification Village people and cadres are proud of that Having the Đình enter into orthodox history 210 Villager s recognized Khôi, the village head, as a person who had the merit of gaining the certificate of historical building. Villagers thought that without the efforts of the local government, this title would never have been given to them. They understand that Khôi acted as he did partly for the to have a good memory of his time of leadership. After he received the approval in 2007, Khôi organized a ceremony to receive the certificate as well as a three-day village festival. 208 Đinh Tiên Hoàng (Đinh Bộ Lĩnh) is a famous character in history of Vietnam. He was born around 924 and died in 979. When he was young, the country was in a historical period called disorder of twelve warlords (loạn mười hai sứ quân). In that situation, Đinh Bộ Lĩnh gathered followers and built a base in his home land, Hoa Lư - Ninh Bình province. From this area, he expanded his influence, defeated all the warlords and reunified the country. In 968, Đinh Bộ Lĩnh became king and gave the country a new name: Đại Cồ Việt. Historians praise him as the person who established federal centralism in Vietnam. Since his time, Vietnam has been officially recognized as an independent country from China (see QUỲNH CƯ and ĐỖ ĐỨC HÙNG, Các Triều Đại Việt Nam [Dynasties of Vietnam], NXB Thanh Niên, 1993; TRẦN QUỐC VƯỢNG and HÀ VĂN TẤN (eds.), Lịch sử chế độ phong kiến Việt Nam [History of feudal regimes in Vietnam], Volume 1. Hanoi : NXB Giáo Dục, This is a pseudonym. 210 Quoted in Niềm tự hào (Pride), Hương Bắc Đồng, Ha Nam : NXB VHTT, p. 67. The real village name was replaced by Bắc Đồng. 118

121 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE On the first day, the villagers took part in the procession of King Đinh Tiên Hoàng s statue from his small temples to the communal house, where rituals were performed. During the procession, when the village cadres carried his statue from behind the palace of the temple to the palanquin outside, it was the first time that nearly all Bắc Đồng people were able to see the physiology of the King. That moment made a strong impression and sparked a lot of emotion amongst them. Many villagers suddenly felt that their king/god was extremely sacred (linh thiêng). Since then, this historical character who had been concealed in the temple for seventy years has received more care from local government and villagers, and has started participating actively in the everyday life dynamics of the community. Moving the village deity s statue from the spirit palace to the communal house On the morning of the second day, an official ceremony was held to receive the certificate of historical and architectural building for the Đình. With the help of one retired journalist in the village, Khôi turned this occasion 119

122 NORMS AND PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY RURAL VIETNAM into a display of Bắc Đồng people s achievements and spirit. Another procession was held to carry the certificate from the People s Committee head office to the đình. An official ceremony was held at the communal house. The village was proud to welcome high-ranking leaders of the province, district and commune to this event. In his speech at this ceremony, Khôi made a brief presentation on the history of the building. He emphasized its value by highlighting Đinh Bộ Lĩnh s struggle in unifying the country and acquiring independence, as well as the revolutionary cause when the đình became a meeting place for revolutionary fighters in the region and a ceremonial venue to send young people off to fight during the American war. Khôi also described the efforts and achievements of the people of Bắc Đồng in relation to social and economic development. He took this chance to call on the people for further unification and good implementation of the state policies. This ceremony and the festival became an opportunity for village cadres to encourage people to successfully implement production tasks and to build a more beautiful and rich homeland. Before the festival began, Khôi and the organizing committee were very worried about the villagers response. They thought about erecting a barrier at the village gate to stop people leaving the village, a strategy similar to the one used by the government during the collectivization period to keep their members at work. However, contrarily to their worries, villagers were highly enthusiastic about the festival. No one went to the rice field or city to work during the festival. All stayed home to participate in the processions and organized activities. Unexpectedly, people set up archways for their own hamlets, decorated them beautifully, which they turned into a gathering place for three days and nights. In all the hamlets, people gathered and contributed money for banquet feasts and drinks. For most Bắc Đồng villagers, the festival thus revived a communal spirit, which had long been lost. Many people say that they were very sad at the end of the festival when the village gods statue was put back in the temple and people dismantled the archways and tents, ending three warm and happy days. 120

123 SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN AUTHORITIES AND PEOPLE The incense table of one hamlet (behind it, people gathered to chat, drink, and even sing and dance, especially in the evening) The night before the festival began, most Bắc Đồng people did not sleep. They were busy preparing the offerings and rituals. Many families brought their own offerings to the deity at the communal house between midnight and 5am to make sure that their prayers to him were fulfilled before the procession. One woman in the village said that nowadays, only spiritual life can make people forgo their sleep. People did not hesitate to donate money for the ritual and each family spent several hundreds of thousands of đồng to contribute to feasts and celebrations in the hamlets. Almost one year after the festival, one man still remembered its atmosphere as follows: The festival really entered into the heart of the people (lễ hội thực sự đi vào lòng dân). Many people were so absorbed in this village affair that they forgot their family s work. Nothing happened in families where both husband and wife participated in preparing for 121