Patrick Slack
Title:
PhD Candidate
Link(s):
Biography:
I am a development geographer studying agrarian change in upland rural landscapes. Specifically, I study how ethnic minority Mien (Yao, Dao), Hmong, and Hani farmers in two borderland districts in northern Vietnam have navigated semi-subsistence livelihoods over 140 years of territorialization schemes, catalysed by French colonial rule in northern Vietnam (1883-1954) and continued by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (1954-1975) and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (1975-present). Through archival, qualitative, and ethnographic research, I examine how state and farmer agency have co-evolved (or not) in this frontier region, namely through medicinal commodity linkages, but also through agricultural intensification, natural resource conservation, and rural modernization interventions.
Current research:
Patrick聮s current research focuses on longitudinal ethnic minority livelihoods and borderland territorialisation schemes in northern upland Vietnam as early as the late 1800s, in addition to how centralised rural development policy is translated across provincial and district levels and state actors. Using colonial and state archives to illuminate livelihoods at the turn of the 20th century, long-term ethnographic fieldwork to gather information within living memory, this study will be the first cross-district comparative study to explore how borderland ethnic minority farmers in upland northern Vietnam have navigated modernity (catalysed by French Colonial authorities) and state interventionism in two periods: 1897-1929 and in living memory (1965-present). His Master聮s focused on intergenerational ethnic minority livelihood change in a northern Vietnamese borderland district with an emphasis on black cardamom cultivation, livelihood diversification, and extreme weather events.
Supervisor
Sarah Turner
Degree(s):
B.Sc. in Agriculture (Purdue University), M.A. in Geography (平特五不中)
Group:
Graduate Students