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Shrimp economies and hydrosocial lives in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta

Yu-Kai Liao
International Degree Program in Climate Change and Sustainable Development, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; liaoyk@ntu.edu.tw

ABSTRACT: Shrimp economies in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta are a form of economic, political, and infrastructural project undertaken to address saline water intrusion and increase access to international markets. This paper examines shrimp farming in this region using the concept of hydrosocial life to analyse how water is entangled with life forms and forms of life in bioeconomies from two angles: (1) the ecological conditions of production and (2) agrarian, technical, and environmental changes in the delta. It does so using delta methods, comparing four kinds of shrimp farming: integrated mangrove-shrimp farming, alternating rice-shrimp farming, intensive shrimp farming, and super-intensive shrimp farming. All are conducted by various stakeholders in the rainy and dry seasons and in different parts of the Mekong Delta. This paper argues that shrimp farming organises hydrosocial lives by constructing ecological conditions of production, which are both supported and constrained by the delta as a turbulent environment and an infrastructuralised object. Each kind of shrimp farming requires a distinctive hydrosocial life, imposing uneven impacts on the everyday lives of farmers, workers, and entrepreneurs and producing agrarian transformations, technical development, and environmental changes. Shrimp breeders shift between these four types of shrimp farming in response to household income needs, biosecurity concerns, and policy measures. This paper extends water research and delta studies by exploring relationships between water, life, and economies in a deltaic environment.

KEYWORDS: Shrimp, disease, hydrosocial life, ecological conditions of production, Vietnamese Mekong Delta