Village-State Relations in Vietnam: The Effect of Everyday Politics on Decollectivization

Abstract

No longer does the state in vietnam require that farm land be aggregated, consolidated, and farmed collectively by work teams under the direction of rural cooperatives. Instead, the state is open to diverse production arrangements. In particular, family farming, which for decades was officially discouraged and outlawed, is now officially celebrated. Households may work their own fields, to which they have use rights (leaseholds) for several years. This is a major policy change, comparable to the shift that occurred in northern Vietnam when the extensive land redistribution of the mid-1950s was followed almost immediately by the collectivizing of that land.