INDIGENOUS MINORITY LIVELIHOODS AND FOOD SECURITY IN THE CHINA-VIETNAM BORDERLANDS

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada

Partnership Development Grant

Awarded April 2011 (3 years).

Upland southwest China and northern Vietnam are home to over 80 million individuals from diverse indigenous minority groups, many of whom create semi-subsistence livelihoods based on staple crops such as rice, maize and cassava. Non-timber forest products and local livestock are important additional livelihood components. For these individuals, food security is an ongoing preoccupation, and fluctuations in global or national grain demand mean little for their daily coping mechanisms. In turn, the socialist states of China and Vietnam are encouraging the adoption of high yield varieties of staple crops, as well as reserving increasing land areas for lucrative export crops and bio-fuels. Such state-driven, modernisation approaches have ignored the everyday realities of indigenous minorities living in upland, geographically remote and economically marginalized regions. These fragile, difficult, and varied agro-ecological environments have soils rapidly depleted under chemical inputs and intensive cropping systems. Small-scale upland farmers with fixed landholdings are facing increasing land-use constraints and climatic extremes with less and less room for manoeuvre.

As such, the GOAL of this project is: To initiate a long term comparative research programme investigating the ability of indigenous minorities in the China-Vietnam borderlands to form sustainable, food secure livelihoods in the context of modernisation and increasing climate variability. 

This research partnership brings together expertise from 2 Chinese university research centres, a national research academy in Vietnam, the French National Scientific Centre for Research, and 2 Canadian universities: McGill and Laval. Participants come from the realms of development geography, social anthropology, indigenous minority studies, climate and land change science, and ecology.

Our goal will be addressed via four objectives:
1) To investigate the organisation of indigenous minority livelihoods (Miao/Hmong, Yao and Zhuang/Nung) at the local level, focusing upon the roles of traditional ecological knowledge, customary agricultural production and consumption practices, and food security strategies;
2) To examine the impacts of newly introduced commercial crops on indigenous minority livelihoods, including the adaptation methods, coping strategies and infrapolitics of those deciding whether or not to adopt these crops;
3) To analyse the interactions between climate variability and indigenous minority livelihood practices and coping mechanisms, regarding traditional and introduced crops; and
4) To build upon existing and emerging institutional partnerships in Canada, China and Vietnam to develop meaningful long-term collaborations to support the work of students, and new and experienced scholars. 

Graduate Opportunities

Students already involved in this project are listed in Research Lab Members

Prof Jean Michaud (Laval): Linked to this project I am interested in supervising graduate students connecting to my broad research interests regarding understanding the rapport minorities have with the Nation and the State. This includes social change and the long-term processes of cultural and economic adaptation of minority/indigenous populations in response to national and international pressures linked to globalization. The theoretical perspectives I adhere to bridge a wide range of interest and contest both the neo-liberal growth agenda and the nihilism of post-modernism. See my own website for more information about graduate work at Département d'anthropologie, Université Laval.

Prof Navin Ramakutty (McGill): My involvement in this project is as a natural scientist, interested in understanding how climate and land-use change impacts food security.  As part of this project, I would be interested in supervising students with a background in the natural sciences, with an interest in working with empirical data and statistical methods to identify extreme weather events, and relating them to various aspects of food availability and food security.  For more about my research program, please visit my website.

Prof Sarah Turner (McGill): In relation to this project I am interested in supervising students with some prior experience and knowledge on food security, rural livelihoods, marketplace trade and exchange, extreme weather event research, indigenous knowledges of agriculture, ethnic minorities in Asia, or social and cultural vulnerabilities to change. Language skills in Chinese or Vietnamese are a benefit, but not essential at the MA level. Theoretically I currently work within frameworks that employ livelihood and actor-oriented approaches, commodity chain analyses, and post-development strands of thought. If these areas are of interest to you, please see my website for what to send with your initial email enquiry (CV, transcripts, information about funding). I also have other projects, as outlined on my website at McGill.