Archives par mot-clé : gouvernance

Mathieu Guérin : Colonisation et transformation des territoires au Cambodge – 22/11/2019

[ndlr] Séminaire de recherche de l’IAO. A ne pas manquer.

« Colonisation et transformation des territoires au Cambodge »

Mathieu Guérin, historien, maître de conférence à l’INALCO (UMR8170 CASE)

Vendredi 22 novembre 2019 de 14h à 15h30, Salle de réunion de l’IAO (D4.070)

Résumé : La colonisation européenne s’est accompagnée d’une prise en charge de territoires, à différentes échelles, par les colonisateurs. Comme le montre l’exemple de la Terre de Kampong Svay au Cambodge, devenue résidence puis province de Kampong Thom, cette intervention extérieure a entraîné une redéfinition des territoires, de leur espace, de leur gouvernance, de leur rapport à l’État et de leur économie. Les paysages et l’environnement porte les traces de ces évolutions. Leur étude permet de saisir les conséquences tant sociales, politiques, économiques ou environnementales de la colonisation européenne pour les Cambodgiens aux XIXe et XXe siècles.

Source : IAO

The Nguyen Weather-world – ASAA thesis prize winner

[ndlr] Prix de thèse australien 2018 sur l’Asie décerné à la chercheuse Kathryn Dyt. Présentation de son travail dans l’entretien en ligne signalé ci-dessous (extraits).

Dr Kathryn Dyt was awarded the 2018 John Legge Prize for best thesis in Asian Studies, here she tells us about her work.

Can you tell us a bit about your thesis. What’s the problem it explores and what did you find?

My thesis, The Nguyen Weather-world: Environment, Emotion and Governance in Nineteenth-Century Vietnam, is an environmental study of the Nguyen dynasty in Vietnam from 1802 to 1883, prior to French colonial rule. It explores how the Nguyen court organised itself in relation to the powerful, agentive and emotional ‘weather-world’ within which it was immersed. What I found is that the systems of governance at the Nguyen court have been approached from social and cultural perspectives, but ecological issues have been overlooked. Through situating the court within its environment, I was able to offer new perspectives on the nature of royal authority and power. The thesis shows how the environment related to the political structures of the court – for example, the ability to measure, divine and respond to climactic events was linked to court hierarchies. Nguyen emperors, I argue, consolidated their positions through displays of their superior weather knowledge and emotional interaction with the natural world.

How did you first become interested in this topic?

It was really through working on the material from the period. When I began to sift through the weighty tomes of the Nguyen court chronicles, I was surprised by the court’s copious documentation of a wide range of meteorological phenomena – not only ‘unusual’ and dramatic events such as storms, floods and droughts, but also a continuum of weather cycles and subtle seasonal changes in the natural world. This begged the question: What drove the Nguyen court to implement such a rigorous system of environmental information gathering? Previous histories of the period have tended to dismiss the court’s environmental reporting as unimportant, but I argue it provides compelling evidence that the environment was central to how the Nguyen understood, experienced and governed the world they were part of.

What was the most challenging aspect of doing this research?

Working with source material in different parts of the world in three different languages – Vietnamese, Chinese and French – was a real challenge. I had to conduct research in a number of different archives in Vietnam and France. The language of the Veritable Records (a major primary source for this period) is archaic and, at times, opaque and difficult to interpret, so I had to spend a lot of time reading and re-reading passages.

Read more / Lire la suite : Asian Currents

Illustration “à la une” : Kathryn Dyt © DR

Esther Horat : Market Transformation and Trade Dynamics in a Peri-urban Village. Reflections from a Vietnamese Marketplace [PhD.]

[ndlr] Annonce de la thèse d’Esther Horat soutenue en mars 2016 à l’Université de Zurich. Nous reproduisons ci-dessous le message de l’anthropologue Kirsten Endres posté sur VSG avec son aimable autorisation.

In March this year, Esther Horat successfully defended her doctoral dissertation entitled “Market Transformation and Trade Dynamics in a Peri-urban Village. Reflections from a Vietnamese Marketplace.” Esther was a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology from 2011-2015. She defended her thesis at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and was awarded a “magna cum laude” (with great praise) by the committee consisting of Peter Finke, Annuska Derks (both University of Zurich), and myself.

Abstract:

Based on twelve months of ethnographic research in the Vietnamese village of Ninh Hiệp, this dissertation offers an account of the various factors that have enabled it to transform into a regional trading hub for clothing and to maintain this position until the present day. The work pays great attention to how traders experience, negotiate, and react to state policies concerning the redevelopment of markets, and, in doing so, how they actively shape the political economy of Vietnam. New modes of governance – consisting of the ambivalent use of socialist and neoliberal ideologies and practices – are a crucial aspect of the study.

This research was conducted against the backdrop of decades of economic reforms initiated in socialist Vietnam in the late 1980s. Ninh Hiệp, a village along the Red River Delta, serves as a site for understanding some of the major structural changes in the region’s formal and informal labor markets and their impact on the lives of traders. In exploring some of the strategies traders employ to cope with the uncertainties of the post-reform period, the dissertation places particular emphasis on the productive side of uncertainties. Not only do traders adapt resourcefully to global capitalist formations and thereby shape the local economy, but they also deepen their social relations when confronted with uncertainties. The dissertation demonstrates how social networks among traders, as well as trust-based relations that shape informal banking and credit systems, are crucial for the functioning of the market. In addition to allowing for transactions without – or at least scarce – capital, social networks ensure the circulation of valuable information and provide access to producers and markets.

Looking closely at the operation and complexities of family businesses, the thesis discusses the dynamics involved in shaping relations and expectations across the gender and generational divide. Rather than analyzing family businesses in terms of efficiency, exploitation, or as an economic strategy of last resort, this dissertation argues in favor of their conception as agents of social change. Finally, this dissertation argues that the notion of morality is central to the lives of traders on three levels: (a) as a strategy for negotiating the boundaries of a moral community, (b) as a government tactic to project a legitimate image of itself and its policies, and (c) serving as an existential function in the face of ambiguities triggered by the socialist and neoliberal economic orders.

Many congratulations to Esther Horat!

Kirsten Endres