Summary
Through an in-depth ethnographic fieldwork with ethnic minority farmers, limited to the Sa Pa District in northern Vietnam, the authors suggest a new perspective to understand the changing interspecies relationship of farmers with water buffalo. The relationship between water buffalo and farmers has previously been defined as the buffalo being the most prized domesticated animal for the Hmong and Yao farmers. However, authors use the idea of ‘unraveling’ to illustrate the process in which entanglements (e.g. farmers’ reliance on water buffalos to maintain rice fields) between water buffalo and farmers have diminished. The unraveling of the relationship between farmers and water buffalo are attributed to four factors: increase in extreme weather events, governmental initiatives to increase farmers’ productivity and revenue through tools such as mechanical plows, declining land space, and attendance in schools causing less focus on possible future farmers. To accompany the concept of ‘unraveling’ entanglements, the authors also present ‘resistant entanglements’ that detail how farmers have halted or prevented the unraveling process.The authors suggest a future of ‘reconfigured’ entanglements based on market forces. To protect the relationship between water buffalo and farmers, the authors advocate for the recognition of ‘reconfigured entanglements’, suggesting this will benefit both humans and buffalo, such as the introduction of humane treatment protocols before slaughter.
In the rural rice fields of upland northern Vietnam, Hmong and Yao ethnic minority farmers have been relationally “entangled” with a number of domesticated animal species to secure semi-subsistence livelihoods. Among these different inter-species entanglements, the relationships between farmers and water buffalo are the most profound. However, in recent years, the broader, contextual factors that shape the entanglements between farmers and water buffalo have been changing rapidly, provoked primarily by increasing extreme weather events, government-supported market integration, and rising land constraints. As these environmental, political, and socioeconomic factors have intensified, the complexity and persistence of long-standing entanglements between farmers and water buffalo appear to be diminishing. We offer a new conceptual perspective to the entanglement literature in this regard, suggesting that “unraveling” might best represent these processes. Nonetheless, we present the idea of “resistant” entanglements to indicate how many farmers have halted unraveling processes, while we posit a future of “reconfigured” entanglements, increasingly based on market forces. Drawing from in-depth ethnographic fieldwork with ethnic minority farmers, we analyze the changing characteristics of these farmer–buffalo entanglements, as well as a range of related socioeconomic and cultural consequences.