Showing papers in "European Journal of East Asian Studies in 2021"

Hmong Christianisation, the will to improve and the question of neoliberalism in Vietnam’s highlands

Abstract: This article focuses on the convergence of mass Christianisation and economic transformations among the Hmong of Vietnam’s northern highlands over the past thirty years. A history of impoverishment and ethnic discrimination has led hundreds of thousands of Hmong to follow Christianity as a perceived alternative path to progress instead of the state-led development agenda, despite sharing the same ‘will to improve’. By exploring local understandings about the means to development as well as new religious teaching on prosperity, entrepreneurialism and calculativity in a rapidly developing Hmong village, this paper queries the ‘elective affinity’ between new Christian movements and neoliberalism posited by other scholars. The case study highlights the awkward combination of ‘cooperative competitiveness’ accompanying a community-benefit tourism development model. Hmong Christian activity can both overlap and sit at odds with government agendas and market expansion, resulting in complex transformations and subjectivities which cannot simply be reduced to neoliberal logic.

Staying or Moving: Government Compliance and Agency in Post-Zomian Laos

Abstract: James C. Scott claimed that upland Southeast Asians consider their good life as dependent on their autonomy from the state. Given that the state today is present in various forms in the uplands, current uplanders can be considered as post-Zomian. Staying and moving represent two contrastive values in this region whose realisation serves to make a good life possible. This article considers these values through the issue of resettlement in Laos, a situation in which local values intersect with or contradict government planning. Even in situations in which the state demonstrates its hegemony and force, ethnic Rmeet uplanders tend to stress their own agency. Therefore, resettlement and its avoidance may both appear as the realisation of local values, sometimes in the shape of ‘village agency’, as the good life is seen as life in a community.

Risk Perception and Lowland Rice Farming Change in Savannakhet Province, Southern Laos

Abstract: Lowland rice cultivation is changing in southern Laos. A formalised survey and informal interviews in the lowlands of Savannakhet Province indicate that while some farmers still raise water buffaloes, farmers now mainly use hand-held mechanised ploughs to till their fields. More chemical fertilisers are being used, and improved seed varieties have become dominant, with native varieties disappearing. Due to these changes, rice yields have increased substantially, with many more farmers selling surplus rice. The trade-offs are, however, not simple. Through applying the lens of risk perception, this article presents data about how lowland rice farming—the main occupation for rural people in Savannakhet Province—has changed over the last twenty years, critically assessing how farmers perceive and act upon risk during this time of rapid agrarian change.

Rural Life in Late Socialism: Politics of Development and Imaginaries of the Future

Abstract: Late socialist countries are transforming faster than ever. Across China, Laos and Vietnam, where market economies coexist with socialist political rhetoric and the Communist party state’s rule, sweeping processes of change open up new vistas of imaginaries of the future alongside uncertainty and anxiety. These countries are three of very few living examples that combine capitalist economics with party state politics. Consequently, societal transformations in these contexts are subject to pressures and agendas not found elsewhere, and yet they are no less subject to global forces than elsewhere. As all three countries maintain substantial rural populations, and because those rural areas are themselves places of change, how rural people across these changing contexts undertake future making is a timely and significant question. The contributions in the issue address this question by engaging with lived experiences and government agendas across Laos, China and Vietnam, showing a politics of development in which desire and hope are entangled with the contradictions and struggles of late socialism.

China’s State-Owned Enterprise Reform Since 2013

Abstract: Starting from the 3rd Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held in November 2013, China has begun another round of state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform. By examining policy documents, analysing the pilot SOE s and conducing an empirical study based on a unique dataset of control rights transfers between SOE s and privately owned enterprises in Chinese stock markets during 2014–2019, this study concludes that this round of SOE reform has made China’s SOE s stronger and possibly bigger. These findings are important to firms, scholars and policy-makers around the world and make further contributions to the debates on China’s SOE reform.

Linking Shrimp Farmers and Food Processors: An Empirical Analysis from Thua Thien Hue Province in Vietnam

Abstract: This study explores the barriers faced by white shrimp farmers in Vietnam in linking directly with food processing companies. The shrimp sector in Vietnam is still characterised by highly informal structures, weak implementation of food safety regulations and a lack of expertise among farmers to comply with international standards. The Vietnamese government anticipates modernising shrimp production and enabling farmers to achieve the quality standards of international retailers. While international food processing companies have established locations in Vietnam to serve international markets, farmers often lack the resources and expertise to comply with their requirements. The main challenges are related to infrastructure for transport and payment transfers, risk management and overcoming established production routines which are mostly based on tacit knowledge and experience. Hence, efforts are needed to improve infrastructures, establish risk management tools for farmers and promote successful cases which can act as guiding examples for adapting white shrimp production.

Interaction and Identity in a Cultural Space: ‘Uchi’ versus ‘Soto’ in a Japanese Genkan

Abstract: The Japanese genkan provides a space where one can take off and put on one’s shoes; yet this practical function is also accompanied by a social/symbolic one. As a transitional area, it embodies the Japanese concept of uchi/soto (inside/outside). In this article, the Japanese genkan was analysed to identify (1) what types of interaction take place in a genkan; and (2) what cultural concepts can be used to identify and classify those types of interaction. The current article suggests that (1) a visitor is identified as either an uchi (inside) or soto (outside) person, and (2) any tension or conflict in this person’s uchi/soto identity grants the visitor an ambiguous status, which unless it is resolved ensures that the interaction between visitor and householder is conducted within a genkan. The paper analyses sixteen possible situations in a genkan and takes examples of each from Shōwa-era films by the Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu.

Tradition, Habitat and Well-Being: Polygamous Marriage in a Tibetan Village

Abstract: The Tibetans who live among the valleys and mountains of the Jinsha River region, on the southeastern edge of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau, still retain a considerable number of polygamous marriages. Through fieldwork in a Tibetan village, the authors discovered that polygamous marriage is a rational choice compatible with Tibetans’ traditional culture and natural environment, which can improve family well-being and lead to a good life. Our findings provide new fieldwork materials to support theories of cultural relativism advocated by the Boas school, which emphasises that the environment greatly affects culture, and Malinowski’s functionalism, which stresses that culture has been created to satisfy people’s practical needs.

‘Invisible Worldings’: Image and Reality in the Thai Seafood Industry’s Humanitarian Engagements

Abstract: This article explores the interplay between image and reality in the Thai seafood industry’s humanitarian engagements with migrant labour. Revisiting Aihwa Ong’s notion of ‘worlding’ and Peter Jackson’s discussion of the ‘Thai regime of images’, it examines the situated, informal interactions between migrant rights NGO s, fishing companies and state officials in the Thai port city of Samut Sakhon, on the outskirts of Bangkok. Through ethnographic case studies, this analysis illuminates the ‘invisible worldings’ that regulate spaces of migrant workforce from behind the scenes. As I show, migrant labour NGO s operate in a context-sensitive play of appearances and disappearances, humanitarian aid and migrant forced labour, and need to navigate local hierarchies of power in the service of Thailand’s international ‘image’ (phap-lak). It is argued that ‘invisible worldings’ sustain Thailand’s ongoing leadership in the fish trade and, concomitantly, the Thai military government’s cosmetic attempts to rebuild global reputation amid growing international scrutiny.

Translocal Households and Family Visions in Contemporary Vietnam: A Neoliberal Shift?

Abstract: In relation to the international academic debate on global neoliberal ideology and its influence on individual subjectivities, this paper examines family visions among the older and younger members of translocal households in contemporary rural Vietnam. Data from a longitudinal study of seven rural Vietnamese communities from 2000 to 2016 suggest that people in rural Vietnam consider the care of the young and the old, including its financial aspects, primarily an individual and family responsibility. They define a good life in terms not only of material and modern comfort, but also of family relations and responsibilities. While neoliberalism constitutes one ideological strand in contemporary Vietnamese policy circles, this paper suggests that it is ahistorical and simplistic to attribute people’s emphasis on individual and family responsibilities in caring for the young and the old to neoliberalism.

Main Contents and Comment on the Law of the DPR Korea on Space Exploration

Abstract: On 1 April 2013, the Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on Space Exploration was enacted and promulgated by the Supreme People’s Assembly. The law is the first national legislation governing national space activities and it forms the basic law in the field of national space exploration. The enactment of this law provides a domestic legal guarantee for national space activities to the advantage of the country’s national economy and people’s livelihoods in conformity with the requirements of international space-related treaties. The paper provides a summary description and analysis of the national space legislation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea with an eye to the UN resolutions concerning national space legislation and other countries’ national space laws.

The Clash of Security and Sovereignty in Quasi-Alliance: More Security by the UNC or More Autonomy for South Korea?

Abstract: Which is needed more: sovereignty or security? The autonomy–security trade-off model sees this as a trade-off between a client and a patron. A client surrenders some measure of autonomy to a patron and, in turn, receives security. This paper explores whether the underlying logic is applicable to quasi-alliances between a state and a multinational regime, such as the United Nations Command (UNC). South Korea has maintained a quasi-alliance with the UNC since the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. The level of trade-off between South Korea and the UNC, however, has been changing over time, particularly while being affected by the power growth of South Korea, a client, and the preference changes of the US, the most important actor of the UNC, a patron. This paper attempts to explain why South Korea is much more enthusiastic in seeking full sovereignty and more autonomy in the 2018–2019 détente era.

Good Baby, Good Life: Exploring a New Akha Way of Life Free from Abnormal Birth

Abstract: This article explores the question of ‘a good life’ through a daily-life perspective. It focuses on a case regarding the abolition of infanticide, through which the relations and interactions between the socialist state and ethnic minorities of southwest China are examined. By elaborating how an Akha custom (infanticide) that guarantees communal goodness/purity was abolished, the research reveals three competing or collaborating notions of ‘good life’, where the Akha’s cosmological ‘good life’ is partly reformed to obey state law and to meet its members’ personal desires. This is an unusual case in that the ethnic cultural authorities from a small, politically marginalised, frontier-dwelling and egalitarian group in southwest China do not ‘resist’ or ‘collaborate with’ the state in the expected way. Instead, they draw on state power to oppose their own customs. With such a unique case, the research helps to diversify our understandings of state–society relations in southwest China.