Alternative routes to development? The everyday political economy of Christianisation among a marginalised ethnic minority in Vietnam’s highlands

Abstract: Over the past 30 years, upland Vietnam has witnessed the remarkable conversion of over 300,000 Hmong people to Protestant Christianity, despite state-sponsored religious persecution and the absence of foreign missionaries. The central research questions of this thesis are: how does Christianisation interact with processes of ‘development’, state territorialisation and market expansion among a marginalised minority group in Vietnam, and to what extent can these interactions be considered empowering and disempowering? To answer this question, I employ an everyday political economy analytical lens, informed by insights from a diverse body of interdisciplinary literature including critical development studies, sociology of religion, colonial history and postsecular feminism. Based on rich qualitative data gathered through extensive primary fieldwork in Vietnam’s highlands and cities, empirical chapters show how state religious policies have been brutal and largely unsuccessful, whilst everyday political tactics of resistance, avoidance and active compliance on behalf of Hmong Christians have had unforeseen political ramifications, with young male pastors emerging as a powerful new group of elites who act as political and development brokers. Although conversion has generated significant social conflict within communities, those who embraced and benefited from Christianity have often come from the most marginalised sectors of Hmong society, especially women and those without beneficial state connections. Christianity does not challenge the ‘will to improve’, a hegemonic desire in Vietnam’s highlands, but it arguably prepares Hmong communities for integration into the national capitalist market whilst allowing for the maintenance of ethnic distinctiveness. While the neoliberal logic is present in state policies, marketisation and religious transformation in upland Vietnam, it is not monolithic but intersects with other cultural rationalities of communalism as well as political projects of territorialisation. These findings can contribute to wider understandings about the nature of everyday agency within the intersections of religious, political and economic transformations