Rural Households: Socio-Economic Characteristics, Community Organzing and Adaptation Abilities

Based on a comprehensive survey and subsequent fieldwork, this chapter introduces the socio-economic characteristics and common livelihood strategies of rural households in Quang Nam, Central Vietnam. It demonstrates the basic premise of self-reliance in rural society and the decreasing economic dependency on state institutions under the Vietnamese transition to a market society. It discusses present poverty definitions and measures by comparing survey data with the formal economic categorization of rural households. Both the overall characteristics of rural society and qualitative data indicate that the reforms have set in motion a process by which a mix of new opportunities and increasing pressures creates new winners and losers. Second, the chapter draws attention to the nature of interactions between households, local communities and the Vietnamese state. This shows both potentials and limitations of informal organization and community adaptive capacities, and finally, it discusses the issues of vulnerability and adaptation to climatic and environmental change from a household perspective.