The Ties that Bind: The Role of Hmong Social Networks in Developing Small-scale Rubber Cultivation in Laos

Abstract

Many ethnic Hmong in Laos have developed small-scale rubber plantations due to high international demand and prices. Drawing on social network theory we consider the role of different types of networks, and their links to transportation and communications improvements, in influencing rubber development. The four social networks identified as being particularly important to the Hmong are: lineage, blood ties, clan relations, and selfidentity of being Hmong. These relations are affecting the tenure and financial arrangements being adopted by small-scale Hmong rubber cultivators, but our findings demonstrate considerable variation in the importance of Hmong social networks. There are also broader implications.

How Land Concessions Affect Places Elsewhere: Telecoupling, Political Ecology, and Large-Scale Plantations in Southern Laos and Northeastern Cambodia

“…Some researchers have investigated small-holder rubber development in northern Laos, about which they have been generally positive [2][3][4][5][6][7]. The same has been true for research on small-scale rubber development in southwestern China [3,8], and between China and Laos [9].…”

On the System. Boundary Choices, Implications, and Solutions in Telecoupling Land Use Change Research

“…Indeed, without embedding these 'external' actors in our 'banana land system', we would not have captured the extent to which and how the presence of a network of agricultural investors with knowledge and social ties to Laos, as well as connections and social networks in China, shaped the banana expansion. A place-based and an institutional land system approach defining, for example, the village (or Northern Laos) as one system and China as another, would indeed have complicated the task of capturing the role of these investors, as well as ignored the fact that this area is a 'porous' border region where people have long had economic and social engagements with each other, despite being separated physically and institutionally residing in two different countries [94][95][96]122]. By analytically constructing the banana system as we did, it was possible to capture the 'functional' importance to this system of the social space created in the interactions between the investors, the local middlemen, and the Lao farmers.…”

“…A general expansion of cash-crop production in the province over the past decade is to a large extent driven by borderland Chinese people with ethnic relations in Luang Namtha Province. Rubber-the dominant cash-crop in the province-was, for example, introduced in the early-1990s by smallholders with cross-border family relations [94,96]. When the first commercial banana investments began to surface in Luang Namtha Province around 2007-2008, they were likewise primarily promoted by small Chinese companies and investors with social ties in the area, who leased land from Lao farmers (see also [97][98][99]).…”

Socioeconomic and Ecological Impact Analysis of Rubber Cultivation in Southeast Asia

“…This is due to the fact that, the extracted milky latex, is the primary source of natural rubber [20] [22]. Moreso, the tree grows well under cultivation and a properly managed tree responds to wounding by producing more latex for several years [20] [29].…”

“…ways [20] [29]. Laos for instance, has seen a dramatic increase in rubber cultivation and tapping beginning from the mid1990s and especially since the mid-2000s, as hundreds of thousands of hectares of mainly forest lands and former swidden fields have been converted into monoculture rubber plantations [17] [30] [31].…”