Everyday life in Chieng Khoi, Vietnam

Secluded in geographical isolation, Northern Vietnam's Black Tai minority is ridden by poverty, unemployment and insecure food supplies. The present study is part of internationally coordinated research that aims at shedding light at the lagging adoption of agricultural innovation in the mountainous Son La province, thus backing efforts to introduce sustainable agriculture in the area. Narrative autobiographical interviews from Chieng Khoi and other northern Vietnamese communes are analysed to illuminate the socio-cultural background of the resident Black Tai minority and to reveal their attitude towards modernisation. The study also puts villagers' life narrations in perspective, comparing them with information obtained through direct observation, a body of existing literature on the Black Tai ethnicity as well as its historical record. Hitherto unheeded dimensions of the Black Tais' own conception of life emerge. The study reveals new insights into ways of adopting innovation, construing the inconsistencies between the villagers' own predications and more objective sources of information.