Whilst Vietnam's civil society is emerging fast in both rural and urban areas, our own interests focus upon the particular sets of development issues associated with the actual and potential roles played in rural development by autonomous farmers' organisations.
Contact me at adam@aduki.com.au
We work closely in the general area of civic association development with Dr Joerg Wischermann of the Free University in Berlin. Dr Wischermann's main interests are in urban social development. Contact Dr Wischermann at wischdr@zedat.fu-berlin.de or joergwisch@yahoo.com
In the area of farmers' organisations I work closely with Dr Nguyen Dinh Huan of Dong Do University, Hanoi.
Dr Huan's contact details are huandinh48@yahoo.com and +84 (0) 913283899.
For an interesting and topical donor view on the need for more work in this area see the paper by DFID Hanoi-based staff at www.civicus.org/new/media/ CIVICUS-CSinVietnam-draftpaper.doc
Joe Hannah, at the University of Washington, is working in this area.
See also the report of the Conference held under the auspices of the Boell Foundation in Berlin in mid 2004, the proceedings from which are now available in hard copy from the Foundation.
My presentations looked at two issues - Farmers' Organisations and the general question of the emergence of signs of civil society in Vietnam. The latter argued that the frequent reference to change processes in Vietnam as being 'bottom-up' was often confused, as this frequently corresponded, not to an emergent civil society, but a 'proto-civil society' on the margin of Leninist institutions. The conference materials can be downloaded from http://www.boell.de/downloads/asien/Towards-6.pdf
See also the Center for the Study of Democracy at UC Irvine http://www.democ.uci.edu/
We have carried out two major jobs in this area - for Sida (the report is downloadable from this site), and for the OXFAM Group.
Throughout rural Vietnam farmers enter into a range of social organisations. These vary: for example, there are formal political arrangements, self-managed forms of cooperation and business and market relationships. A farming household, thus, may participate in elections to the communal People’s Council, join farmers’ groups to pool capital and secure information, and buy and sell on markets. If governance is understood as the mediation of state, social and economic orders, then all can be found in the various ways farmers organise and are organised. So far as can be told, with the rapid evolution of Vietnamese society under ‘doi moi’ the number of so-called ‘autonomous’ farmers’ groups continues to grow rapidly.
We believe that farmers’ groups, which have emerged increasingly into the rural socio-economy, are an important and valuable part of what could be called the “social capital” of the rural areas, though we are well aware of the problems with that term. Through these groups farmers mobilize resources, for example farmers’ time and attention, and in return they are used to offer farmers a possible range of opportunities, such as to improve livelihoods, reduce risk and generate social coherence. Compared to some other, perhaps best called ‘formal’ structures, where farmers can be found organised subject to the direction of various agencies, they are often relatively diverse, active, self-funding and typically viewed with enthusiasm. Whilst not necessarily enduring, since many form to exploit particular opportunities, they make use of ongoing social capacity, which could be called “social capital”.
As such, development performance, in terms of sustainable increases in local value-added, empowerment, poverty reduction and environmental management, may well be better in areas where this “social capital” is more extensive. In any case, farmers’ organisations offer alternatives to other possible modalities.
We believe that farmers’ organisation must be allowed to play an increasingly important role in rural development.
Adam Fforde