Entangled Foodways and Livelihood Pathways: Cinnamon, State Interventions, and Everyday Life in Hmong Communities of Northern Vietnam

What the paper says

The agroecological practices of ethnic minority farmers in Vietnam's northern uplands are being reshaped by intersecting pressures of land‐use reform, market integration, and state‐backed crop promotion. Among Hmong communities in the south of Lào Cai Province (former Yên Bái Province) cinnamon was once valued primarily for its medicinal, culinary, and ritual uses. Today, it has become a celebrated commodity crop promoted by the state through reforestation and development programmes. Working with a conceptual framework that combines a foodways perspective with livelihood pathways scholarship, and drawing on over 11 months of ethnographic fieldwork across three Hmong villages, we examine how cinnamon cultivation intersects with the continuity and erosion of customary foodways. While all three communities have adopted the cash cropping of cinnamon to varying degrees, only one, which we call Riverside Village, has seen a notable decline in food crop diversity and intergenerational transmission of food knowledge. In contrast, households in Mountain Mist Village and Resettled Village have selectively integrated cinnamon into broader semisubsistence systems. They have maintained diverse cropping practices and culturally rooted foodways alongside market engagement, albeit in different ways and to different degrees. By analysing and comparing these entangled foodways we highlight that crop commodification does not necessarily lead to the disappearance of customary agricultural practices and food choices. We argue that village‐level ethnographies are essential for revealing the uneven transformations of upland agrarian life and the continued salience of customary foodways in the context of commodity expansion, and we conclude with policy suggestions informed by these findings.