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Collective action and farmer’s rationality in Red River delta (Vietnam) |
Cahiers Agricultures. Volume 6, Number 5, 75-80, Septembre-Octobre 1997, Agricultures des deltas
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 Résumé
Article gratuit
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Author(s) : Dô Hai Dang, Fabrice Dreyfus |
Summary : The very old history of human settlement and rice cultivation in Red River Delta has progressively build a very specific way of life as well as an original farming system. This specificity has to be taken in account by whoever has to analyse farmer’s practices or to back innovation processes. Intricacy of rice plots and proximity of houses create numerous opportunities for social interactions up to the point that, in many cases, Collective Action is even unavoidable. The first piece of conversation between farmers which is presented in this article shows how water management constraints as well as cultural norms turn voluntary adhesion in compulsory cooperative membership. But Collective Action is not only to be seen within an institutional framework and at the cooperative and village level. The second piece of interview shows that it exists at a lower level, in an informal way, in that case the rice field group, and is as unavoidable as at the cooperative level. At this level, Collective Action is also described as necessary in various activities such as land preparation, rice varieties selection, cropping calendar management and others. Thus, it appears also that individual choices cannot be understood without analysing the collective level of decision. Each member of the group has his own point of view according to his own situation about what has to be done and strive to make it prevail over the others. So, in negotiating to establish a collective decision, the stakes are high and one has to summon up all kind of resources to convince. Among those resources, social relations can play an important role and explain the success or the leadership of one amongst the others. Based on this analysis, our paper argues that whoever has to deal with farmer’s rationality needs to identify the relevant social units within which the farmer’s choices are understandable and to analyse the functioning of those units. Researchers in agronomy, animal husbandry and farm technology, but also all kinds of development and extension agents, need to delineate those relevant units where Collective Action takes place. In agriculture as it is the case with rice cultivation, observation of farming practices may enable agronomists to take a first grasp at those units but whenever Collective Action is not easily seen, when it is revealed only through norms and member’s knowledge for action designed through dialogical flows, micro-sociology and anthropology provide a set of tools and methods, i.e. network analysis, discourse analysis, actor’s strategy analysis, which have already proved useful in the french rural setting. Delineating relevant social units and understanding their functioning is eventually meant to design new methods of research and intervention in agriculture in order to keep abreast of farmer’s innovation. |
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