Devaluation without Dispossession
State-Initiated Land Acquisition and its Discontents in Vietnam
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19216638 |
|---|---|
| Authors | L M Chau (0000-0002-4108-3514, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-22 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-12 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Contemporary Asia (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0047-2336 • E-ISSN: 1752-7554 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00472336.2026.2664009 |
| OpenAlex | W7160916186 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 33 |
Building on ethnographic materials from a state-led land acquisition scheme for the revetment of Cần Thơ River in southern Vietnam, this article examines a phenomenon termed “devaluation without dispossession,” an economic loss to landholders that remains inadequately addressed in not only national legal frameworks but also internationally accepted guidelines on how best to compensate for land acquisition. When the value of landholders' assets such as skills, equipment, and co-ordination of labour is enabled by their connection to land, land acquisition engenders substantial devaluation of those assets although they are intact and remain in landholders' possession. Compared with other major land acquisitions in Asia, notably India and China, the political landscape of late-socialist Vietnam may increase the likelihood of “devaluation without dispossession” becoming a source of discontent for landholders. Local authorities face less pressure to increase compensation to cover the loss of devaluation as a vote-winning strategy than local officials in parts of India. At the same time, they are incapable of trialling their own models of compensation to ease landholders' sense of injustice, in ways local officials in wealthy regions of China have
Devaluation · Land use · Southeast asia · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Land Rights and Reforms · Medical and Agricultural Research Studies
Luxury and Rubble: Civility and Dispossession in the New Saigon
Dispossession without Development
The Power of Everyday Politics
Rightful Resistance in Rural China
Tradition, Revolution, and Market Economy in a North Vietnamese Village, 1925-2006
Beyond Hanoi
Involuntary resettlement in development projects
Minorities at Large
Protests over Land in Vietnam
The Issue of ‘Land-lost’ Farmers in the People’s Republic of China
Containing Land Grabs
Land for welfare in China
Critical reflections on land appropriation and alternative urbanization trajectories in periurban Vietnam
Consequences of the two-price system for land in the land and housing market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Land Acquisition in Transitional Hanoi, Vietnam
Contending views and conflicts over land In Vietnam's Red River Delta
State Livelihood Planning and Legibility in Vietnam's Northern Borderlands
"Extremely Rightful" Resistance
"Land Grabbing" in an Autocracy and a Multi-Party Democracy
The Politics of Dispossession
Social Anthropology of Technology
The Concept of Cultural Attachment and Its Policy Applications
Beauty as control in the new Saigon
Global Land Grabbing and Trajectories of Agrarian Change
Special Economic Zones and Accumulation by Dispossession in India
Exit from agriculture
Neoliberalism on the Ground in Rural India
No Worse off? The governance impacts of compensating for land takings in China
Rural land dispossession in China and India
Resistance, acquiescence or incorporation? An introduction to land grabbing and political reactions 'from below
Land grabbing in Latin America and the Caribbean
The land question
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |