Abstract:

In the early part of the last century, Pierre Gourou identified 108 craft occupations in the Red River delta employing more than 250,000 people, roughly 7 percent of the rural adult population. Largely concentrated within specialized villages, artisanal households supplied most of the meager needs of the delta's population. In recognition of their continuing importance, post-independence policies sought to encourage both artisanal production in general and the formation and development of artisanal cooperatives in particular. Out of ideological and practical concerns, the Vietnamese Communist Party promoted these policies through a mixture of persuasion, sanction and material incentives aimed at voluntary cooperation and integration into the national economy. The voluntary basis of cooperation, however, left open the possibility of non-cooperation within the limits of the law. That peasant artisans and traders would choose this option became the constant bane of a leadership struggling to create a modern, socialist, industrial economy. As the system of centralized planning and subsidized prices upon which this effort was founded gradually collapsed, peasant artisans and traders surfaced to fill demand. There are now over 500 craft villages in the Red River delta. Nearly half of them are new. Though not all have been equally successful in redeveloping their crafts, a substantial number have. This dissertation describes the process of redevelopment in one such village, Da Hoi, which over the past 15 years has grown from a nondescript village of blacksmiths to a major supplier of steel billet, rolled steel, and wire based products to domestic and regional international markets. Da Hoi's industrial system is entirely composed of household and family enterprises linked to each other through a division of production and the overlapping relationships of gender, kinship and residence. This observation highlights the importance of conventions of local identity and economic participation and places Da Hoi firmly within the large body of historical, anthropological and geographical literature on regional and territorial development. My conclusions draw on this literature to reiterate that an industrial divide has been reached that rewards flexibility, specialization, networking, territorial agglomeration and learning in newly industrializing economies as well old.