CONFERENCIA

“El Estado y los campesinos  en las montañas del sudeste de Asia”

Miércoles 7 de mayo, 6PM.

Sala de Grados, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales

INGRESO LIBRE

Presentaciones de

• Sarah Turner, McGill University
• Rice at what price? Food Security, Livelihoods and State Interventions in Viertnam uplands.

Abstract: While national food self-sufficiency remains a preoccupation of Vietnam‘s government, the focus of these concerns tends to be output levels, price, and production for the market. I argue that this approach ignores the daily realities of an important group of rice producers and consumers in Vietnam, namely upland ethnic minorities, for whom food security is a preoccupation, and for whom fluctuations in global grain demand mean little for their daily coping mechanisms and near-subsistence livelihoods. As the Vietnamese government has moved to improve food security – and one could argue – increase market integration and the state’s ‘distance demolishing technologies’ in these uplands (Scott 2009), producers have been strongly encouraged to switch to hybrid rice seeds. Yet, little research has incorporated the everyday, subjective experiences of upland minority groups growing this crop. As such, this paper takes an actor-oriented, livelihoods approach to examine food security issues at the micro level in upland Vietnam. I research how ethnic minorities have reacted to the introduction of hybrid seeds, their negotiations with the State over their use, and their trials and tribulations along the way.

• Jean Michaud, Université Laval.
• Can James Scott’s notion of Zomia travel safely from Asia to South Ametrica?

Abstract: According to political scientist James C. Scott’s thesis in his 2009 book “The Art of not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia” (Yale), the adjacent highlands of mainland Southeast Asia, southwest China and northeastern India all form together a distinct historical and social space. One where various minority societies have over time taken refuge to flee forced inclusion into the state of surrounding lowland polities. But one also where local societies have refused to allow social differentiation to even flourish from the inside – not unlike Pierre Clastres’ thesis of ‘Society against the State’ (1974). First, is this a realistic assessment of the situation in Asia’s highlands? And second, can this thesis travel comfortably to the Andean world?

Comentarios a cargo de Jorge Recharte (Instituto de Montaña) y Guillermo Salas (PUCP)

Las presentaciones serán en inglés

Sarah Turner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, McGill University, Canada. She has conducted fieldwork in urban Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam, and since 1998 with upland ethnic minority groups in rural northern Vietnam and southwest China. Recent publications include the edited book ‘Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork Dilemmas in Upland Socialist Asia’ (UBC Press 2013);  ‘Making a living the Hmong way: an actor-oriented livelihoods approach to everyday politics and resistance in upland Vietnam’ (Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2012) and Agrarian Angst and Rural Resistance in Contemporary Southeast Asia (co-edited with D. Caouette, Routledge, 2009).

Jean Michaud is a Professor of Anthropology at Université Laval, Canada. Previously he held positions at the University of Hull, the United Kingdom, and the Université de Montréal, Canada. His research interests lie in understanding the rapport ethnic minorities have with modernity, the State, and market forces. This includes social change and the long-term processes of cultural and economic adaptation of indigenous populations in response to national and international pressures linked to globalization. His field-based investigations are rooted in the Mainland Southeast Asian Massif – which James C. Scott calls Zomia – and in particular, the highlands of northern Vietnam and southern Yunnan. In collaboration with Dr Sarah Turner (Geography, McGill) and graduate students, he examines how ethnic minority societies adapt to changing livelihood imperatives and ideological shifts typical of the Socialist agenda prevalent in these two countries.

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