Clearing, "Wasting," and Regreening
An Environmental History of Bare Hills in Central Vietnam
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3667695 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Biggs (0000-0002-1294-512X, University of California, Riverside, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 77 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1037-1058 |
| Publication date | 2018-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s002191181800089x |
| OpenAlex | W2889997604 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 20 |
A recent trend of regreening formerly bare hills in central Vietnam is often described in the media as a form of recovery from 1960s wartime destruction. However, this modern framework of wartime "wasting" and regreening obscures a longer history of bare hills. Colonial explorers noted eroded slopes in 1877, and imperial land surveyors described stretches of "idle, fallow land" decades earlier. This article describes a longer history of a "wasteland" not only to challenge a presentist framing of environmental decline but also to recognize the historic roles people played in producing these spaces, often in response or resistance to state policies. Colonial engagements with land clearing and customary uses of "open" lands gave shape to colonial visions of "wasteland" and later spurred colonial environmentalist critiques, even calls for a new form of green colonialism via exotic tree plantations. Writing the history of such a "wasteland" is one way to decenter imperial, colonial, and nationalist teleologies that tend to emphasize the environmental "footprints" of state actions but not the reverse. This history of "bare hills" draws from a mix of historical sources to show how people produced this "wasteland" and why, at times, they maintained it despite state efforts at reclamation
Archaeology · Clearing · Colonialism · Economic history · Environmental history · Ethnology · Geography · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science) · Vision · Anthropology · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
Fostering natural forest regeneration on former agricultural land through economic and policy interventions
The acacia plantation boom in Thừa Thiên Huế Province, Central Vietnam
Settling with forests in Thua Thien Hue (Vietnam)
The nature of a ‘forest transition’ in Thừa Thiên Huế Province, Central Vietnam – A study of land cover changes over five decades
Geographical imaginations of the global Vietnam War
This Fissured Land
Exhausting the Earth
Degraded forest, degraded land and the development of industrial tree plantations in L aos
Knowing into oblivion
The River, the Plain, and the State
The Tay Son Uprising
Forests Are Gold
Southern Vietnam under the Reign of Minh Mang (1820–1841)
Empires of Forestry
China's Encounters on the South and Southwest
Imperial agendas and India's forests
The El Dorado of Forestry
Rubber Erasures, Rubber Producing Rights
Protection des forêts et environnementalisme colonial
Surface Orientations in Vietnam
The Unquiet Woods
Living rubber, dead land, and persisting systems in Borneo; Indigenous representations of sustainability
Nguyen Cochinchina
The Production of Peoples
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,83 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |