Abstract
The village in Vietnam has long been subject of scholarly inquiry and site of state power. Too often held apart, these two observations together inform this investigation of statemaking in the Northwest highlands and micropolitical relations between agencies and villages. Essentialized village and state ideas are idioms of power in and around socially diverse communities of Điện Biên Phủ. Embedding these communities in ruling relations locates ideological dimensions of statemaking, such as abstract notions of village and state, in their generative contexts. Tracing idioms back to conflicted power relations engages modern forms of governmentality to reconceptualize political tactics, strategies, and technologies as ideologically generative practices. Demarcation, for example, is a state tactic that produces multiple ethnic, sovereign, and spatial boundaries—ideological forms that pose hazards for researchers and subaltern subjects alike. Drawing on ethnographic data, I explore my access to and denial from village field sites to position the researcher amidst the same power relations under study.
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