Abstract
Dams are often components of socioeconomic modernisation projects. In Southwest China, ongoing hydropower expansion and the social project it partakes in have widely impacted ethnic minority societies for whom natural resources are core livelihood assets and cultural markers. Previous scholarship has demonstrated that these aspects receive little attention at the dam planning and implementation stages, when the interests and discourses of government and economic actors prevail over those of riparian ethnic minority farmers. Less is known about the emergence and evolution of the livelihood changes triggered by hydropower projects and about ethnic minority populations’ perceptions of these changes. Building on longitudinal ethnographic data, this chapter probes how a series of livelihood changes emerged and evolved through time after the Madushan Dam reservoir was created along the upper Red River. I find that hydropower expansion has fostered the penetration of the capitalist economy and triggered outward migration flows, which have in turn exposed ethnic minority farmers to external influences and have reshaped social networks in the Red River Valley. Riparian residents have concurrently adopted a sceptical attitude towards other components of the state modernisation agenda driving hydropower development in the first place.
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Notes
- 1.
All names in this chapter are pseudonyms.
- 2.
Although their authors do not emphasise this per se, the chapter by Brooke Wilmsen and her colleagues and that of Bettina Gransow in this volume also draw on longitudinal studies.
- 3.
The dams I discuss here are located in the Honghe Yi and Hani Autonomous Prefecture, which was granted this status given that significant portions of its population belong to the Yi and Hani ethnic minorities.
- 4.
Globally, state-led social hierarchisations have long instrumentalised the highland-lowland dichotomy, with determinist attitudes continuing regarding highlanders’ ‘wildness’ and lowlanders’ ‘civilisation’ (Michaud et al. 2016). These rigid statements do not account for the plethora of interactions and movements between societies customarily settled in both biotypes. I refer to this categorisation here only to highlight the geographical differences between the Red River Valley and the settings where the other chapters of this section are set, and how these circumstances shape ethnic minorities’ encounters with hydropower expansion.
- 5.
For a discussion of households who chose not to move out and to self-resettle, see Habich and Rousseau (2020).
- 6.
The Red River catfish is a migratory species akin to the more widely-known Mekong catfish, whose migration routes are also threatened by hydropower development.
- 7.
This is because flooding at first allows for nutrient release and rising fish populations.
- 8.
As it turned out, peacocks are one of the main symbols of ‘Dai-ness’ that the state opted for, although they are absent from local culture (see Rousseau and Turner 2018).
- 9.
This perception then contrasted with what prevailed in most of China, as reforms to the hukou household registration begun in the late 1980s had led, by the late 2000s, to 150 million rural citizens engaging in work migration to urban areas (Chan 2009).
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Rousseau, JF. (2021). As Time Goes by… Longitudinal Analysis of Dam Impacts Upon Livelihood Strategies in the Red River Valley. In: Rousseau, JF., Habich-Sobiegalla, S. (eds) The Political Economy of Hydropower in Southwest China and Beyond. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59361-2_9
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