Moral Economy and the Upper Peasant

The Dynamics of Land Privatization in the Mekong Delta

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2285463
AutoresTimothy Gorman (0000-0003-2684-9523, Department of Development Sociology Cornell University Ithaca NY 14853 USA, autor correspondente)
Ano2014
Volume14
Fascículo4
Páginas501-521
Data de publicação2014-10-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Agrarian Change (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1471-0358 • E-ISSN: 1471-0366
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/joac.12047
OpenAlexW2146463308
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas9
Referências citadas38

This paper examines how people mobilize around notions of distributive justice, or 'moral economies', to make claims to resources, using the process of post-socialist land privatization in the Mekong Delta region of southern Vietnam as a case study. First, I argue that the region's history of settlement, production and political struggle helped to entrench certain normative beliefs around landownership, most notably in its population of semi-commercial upper peasants. I then detail the ways in which these upper peasants mobilized around notions of distributive justice to successfully press demands for land restitution in the late 1980s, drawing on Vietnamese newspapers and other sources to construct case studies of local land conflicts. Finally, I argue that the successful mobilization of the upper peasants around such a moral economy has helped, over the past two decades, to facilitate the re-emergence of agrarian capitalism in the Mekong Delta, in contrast to other regions in Vietnam

Agrarian society · Agriculture · Capitalism · Economic Justice · Economic system · Economics · Economy · Geography · Moral economy · Peasant · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Settlement (finance · Sociology · Cambodian History and Society · Law · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies