China, Laos, and Vietnam are three of a handful of late socialist countries where capitalist economics rubs up against party-state politics. In these countries, sweeping processes of change open up new vistas of opportunity and imaginaries of the future alongside much uncertainty and anxiety, especially for their large rural populations.
Contributors to this edited volume demonstrate the diverse ways in which rural people build futures in this unique policy landscape and how their aspirations and desires are articulated as projects involving both citizens and the state. This produces a politics of development that happens through and around the state as people navigate discourses of betterment to imagine and make new futures at individual and collective levels.
Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
Notes on Contributors
1 Rural Life in Late Socialism: Politics of Development and Imaginaries of
the Future
Phill Wilcox, Jonathan Rigg and Minh Nguyen
2 Risk Perception and Lowland Rice Farming Change in Savannakhet Province,
Southern Laos
Ian G. Baird, Santi Piyadeth and Chanthavisouk Ninchaluene
3 Hmong Christianisation, the Will to Improve and the Question of
Neoliberalism in Vietnams Highlands
Seb Rumsby
4 Staying or Moving
Government Compliance in Post-Zomian Laos
Guido Sprenger
5 Good Baby, Good Life
Exploring a New Akha Way of Life Free from Abnormal Birth
Ruijing Wang
6 Single Mothers Livelihoods in Rural North Central Vietnam: Struggles for a
Good Life
Tuan Anh Nguyen, Cam Ly Thi Vo and Binh Minh Thi Vu
7 Rural Schooling and a Good Life in Late Socialist Laos: Articulations,
Sketches and Moments of Good Time
Roy Huijsmans and Mr Piti
8 Translocal Households and Family Visions in Contemporary Vietnam: A
Neoliberal Shift?
Hy V. Luong
9 Making a Good Life by Building a Good House: A Case Study of Baikou New
Village in Southeastern China
Lan Wei
10 A Good Life Postponed: Working in the Countryside, Retiring in the City in
Contemporary China
Catrina Schwendener
11 Tradition, Habitat, and Well-Being: Polygamous Marriage in a Tibetan
Village
Li Zhi-nong and He Shu-qing
Index
Phill Wilcox is a Research Associate at Bielefeld University, Germany. She is interested in the politics of late socialism and works on the politics of development in Laos and across the global South.
Jonathan Rigg is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Bristol, UK. He is interested in the human dimensions of agrarian change in Asia and has worked in Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, as well as Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Minh T.N. Nguyen is Professor of Social Anthropology at Bielefeld University, Germany, and Visiting Professor at Vietnam National University in Hanoi. She works on care, welfare, migration, and labour in China, Vietnam and in the Global South more generally.
