UC Santa Cruz

The Vietnamese Mekong River Delta is an epicenter of cultural, environmental, and economic change. New irrigation infrastructure and Green Revolution rice production practice adoption in the 1990s propelled Vietnam into the regional rice market. Simultaneously, renovation policies prompted rural-to-urban migration patterns, with women surpassing men in this trend in 2006. Thus, men are increasingly managing the farm and the family, while women work wage labor jobs in the city to send remittances back home. These changes have influenced many aspects of Vietnamese life. This research explores how these economic, policy, and environmental shifts have influenced the familial relationships and farm practices of the delta.

This dissertation uses a mixed methods approach. Chapter 1 is summative rather than analytical. Chapter 2 uses remotely sensed radar data, combined with in-situ moisture readings, to determine water-saving practice adoption through change detection of a time series wetness index. Chapter 3 is a gender disaggregated plot-level study that uses a binary logistic regression to determine if livelihood approaches on male- and female-managed plots influence adoption of farming practices. Chapter 4 uses a spatial intersectionality approach, a grounded theory, exploring identities and spaces traversed by migrant families in the city and country.

The results of this research paint a nuanced picture of present-day Southern Vietnam. Chapter 2 illustrates a water-saving practice adoption likelihood scale across the delta, indicating promise for the change detection methodology. Chapter 3 finds that gendered plot management is directly associated with SI and CI practice adoption, and there is an indirect gendered impact due to unequal access between the sexes to natural and human capitals that are associated with increased SI adoption. Chapter 4 disrupts assumptions of gender roles by taking a spatial look at intersecting identities. These women and men negotiate a Portable Family identity, based on actions rather than interactions, and oscillating between the urban-productive home and the rural-reproductive home. Chapter 5 points to a trend opposite the “feminization of agriculture” seen across Southeast Asia and parts of Latin America by showing an increasingly male-managed farm.