Introduction to the Special Issue: Contests over Land in Rural Vietnam

Abstract

This essay explores the contestatory nature of land disputes in rural Vietnam. It builds on the findings of the research essays in this special issue and on recent scholarship to identify what is politically significant about contemporary land conflicts. Rural land disputes implicate a multiplicity of state, quasi-state and non-state actors in public, sometimes violent, contestations over the values attached to land. Their overt, discursive and contentious characteristics, the complex dynamics of protest and dispute mediation, and the manner by which disputants engage and disengage from their state representatives are identified as important dimensions of rural land politics in modern Vietnam.