論文の公開元へThe possibility for existence and the role of “civil social capital”/ “community” in rural development in contemporary Vietnam
概要
Purpose: This study is to clarify the existence and the role of Civil Social Capital or Community in rural development in Contemporary Vietnam, particularly in common resource management through the way of land allocation in egalitarianism at the village level in the Northern Vietnam.
Methodology and Characteristics: My study is a rural development study referring to the basics of “economics of institution”, which has been progressing since the 1980s and also has been applied to international cooperation since the beginning of the 21 st century. My study is also one of “area studies” or a Vietnamese study because it was carried out as an economic social study of the country depending on the above basics.
Structure: My study is composed of 5 chapters: Preface, Chapter I, Chapter II, Chapter III and Conclusion s:
Chapter 1 : The agricultural collectivization was a main task in rural development in the Northern Vietnam since the 1950s and was successively applied in the whole country since 1976, the year of the country’s unification. However, due to the inefficiency of agricultural cooperatives, the Vietnamese government was determined to shift to the market economy in 1979. The government then anticipated that through that process, the land market and the commercial agriculture in rural areas would develop rapidly. However, the above process in the Northern rural areas has led to restore the household economy and emerge the way of land allocation in egalitarianism with the small -scale dispersion of land instead. Some Vietnamese have been criticizing that way of land allocation as “inefficient” and “irrational” and advocating its quick abolishment. But, in the situation in the North where self-sufficient agriculture is still dominant with the low development level of market, that way of land allocation as a Community can play an important role in sharing agricultural risks at the peasant’s household and the village level and in creating incentives for those peasants to perform the rural reform successfully. What we would like to emphasize here is, the above way of land allocation is closely like the Cong dien system (the common land system) in the former traditional villages there. In fact, through the above process, the common land area at the village level has been expanding and a part of that area has been used for the periodical land reallocation, one part of the above way of land allocation.
Chapter 2: According to the theory of “institutionary evolution”, the inefficiency of the former agricultural collectives derived from the unsuccess in realizing the capital - intensive agriculture according to the former Soviet type to increase the labor productivity by mechanization toward the large scale agriculture in the North, which has a high population/land ratio and is originally suitable for the labor -intensive agriculture to increase the land productivity by the small-scale peasants’ household. Particularly, the Green Revolution since the end of the 1960s which was carried out in irrigation system shortage led to the restoration of the household economy and the above way of land allocation (the “modern version” of the Cong dien system), an institution to share risks with institutional complementarity of the household economy. In fact, not a few localities which actively carried out the above way of land allocation were those which had the high ratio of the Cong dien land area in the past.
Chapter 3: Since 2002, the government has been advocating to implement “the land consolidation” in rural areas in the Red River Delta region in the North, the Northern Central region and the Southern Central Coast region in the Central to overcome and abolish the above way of land allocation. This movement has a close connection with the promotion of the concentration and agglomeration of the cultivating land in order that Vietnam can export more high value-added agricultural products with comparative advantage in the global market. By the end of the 2010s, the movement had achieved some outstanding results, and in those localities where the movement was completed, the number of land plots of peasants’ households decreased to about three pieces. However, that movement itself did not solve the narrowness of the cultivating land in the North and did not improve the peasants’ living standard there. Except for some localities suitable for agricultural diversification, in n ot a few localities can produce only rice through the successive Green Revolution in irrigation system shortage, the movement has caused the peasants’ insecurity feeling in sharing agricultural risk. Conclusions: Therefore, in those localities, the land consolidation needs to be carried out firmly and steadily. Particularly, in those having hardly any conditions to complete irrigation system quickly, the potential of the above way of land allocation need to be positively utilized in a certain period and to a certain degree. The Community itself sometimes causes its failures, too. Therefore, it would need to be used efficiently and appropriately.
