Hmong Christian elites as political and development brokers: competition, cooperation and mimesis in Vietnam’s highlands

Abstract

This article focuses on the role of new Hmong religious leaders – predominantly young men – who have played an important role in spreading Protestant Christianity across Vietnam’s highlands over the past 30 years. These pastors and evangelists have directly challenged the authority of previously established Hmong local elites, whose legitimacy rested on traditional religious authority and/or state patronage, causing significant social conflict along the way. Some new Christian pioneers have gained local elite status as political and development brokers for their community, enjoying a potent combination of spiritual authority, strong external networks and financial success. As such, international religious networks can function as alternative patrons to the state for well‐placed Hmong Christian elites to tap into and redistribute to their communities – to varying degrees. Contextualising such leadership dynamics within wider anthropological scholarship of upland Southeast Asia affirms the ‘pioneering ethos’ of local elites in challenging, complying with or mimicking state forms of governance in their attempts to draw in and channel external potency. This highlights the degree of political manoeuvring space available to non‐state actors in a supposedly authoritarian state, as well as ongoing tensions and controversies facing pastors who negotiate ambiguous relationships with powerful external forces.

Hmong Christianisation, the Will to Improve and the Question of Neoliberalism in Vietnam’s Highlands

“…These connections included relationships with government officials, lowland Christians from the city, members of the transnational Hmong diaspora, cash crop middlemen and so on. For non-Christians, the right connections (as well as significant assets) were required to secure coveted civil service employment, while transnational religious networks offered the status and resources for Christian elites like pastor Vang of Bản Thác (see below) to become political brokers in their communities (Rumsby 2021). On the other hand, the wrong connections, such as entering informal manual labour in Vietnam's cities or in China, could lead to drudgery, exploitation and even being trafficked.…”

“…Subsequently, Vang utilised his external Christian networks to borrow a large interest-free loan from a Singaporean Christian organisation and has recently joined forces with 12 households to invest in the construction of new luxury 'Eco resorts' , an idea Vang picked up from fellow Hmong in Thailand. So for now, Bản Thác has managed to keep the state at arms' length, as Scott (2009) might say -but crucially, this is enabled by the support of wealthy non-state patrons (Rumsby 2021).…”

Introduction: What Competition Does

“…In a similar vein, contemporary analyses of moral economies conceptualize gifts and exchange as means of (re)producing and regulating socio-economic asymmetries of wealth and power through the entwined dynamics of cooperation and competition (Ledeneva 1998;Rumsby 2021;Valenzuela-García et al 2014). Again, anthropology's contribution to interdisciplinary research on cooperation stems mainly from a concern with the structural inequalities that competition (re)generates.…”