“If We Don't Farm, We Don't Eat”: Subsistence, Monetisation, and the Limits of Development in Upland Vietnam

Sammanfattning

This thesis is a qualitative case study of how farming households in Nam Dich, a remoteupland commune in northern Vietnam, experience and navigate the tension betweensubsistence-based self-sufficiency and a growing need for monetary income. While Vietnam'stransition from one of the world's poorest countries to a middle-income economy has broughtsubstantial improvements in healthcare, education and infrastructure, the cash incomerequired to participate in the life these improvements presuppose has not followed at themargins. Based on interviews with households, the study asks how this tension is experiencedat the local level and which pathways to monetary income households themselves perceive asavailable, aspired to, or out of reach.The material is analysed thematically and read through a combined theoretical framework.Scoones ' sustainable livelihoods framework and Dorward et al. 's typology of hanging in,stepping up, and stepping out are used to read what households have access to and whichstrategies they pursue. Sen's capability approach and van der Ploeg's conception of peasantautonomy are used to question why a livelihood that sustains a household but does notgenerate cash is regarded as deficient.The findings show a livelihood in which non-monetary conditions and monetary capacityhave come apart. Subsistence farming continues to feed the household but no longer coverswhat cash is required for, while the pathways through which cash could be obtained areconstrained by a conversion problem operating along ethnic, geographic, and social lines.Wage labour, the preferred income source, functions as stepping out only for those alreadyholding a margin. The study argues that the dominant models of development either requirehouseholds to leave the way of life through which they sustain themselves, or to exhaust theresource base it depends on, and calls for a third path in which monetary participation and anintact capability set are compatible.