1 - “Intangible Spaces” between Vietnam and Cambodia: Focusing on Multi-Ethnic Hybrid Societies in the River Basins

This article shows how “intangible spaces” have emerged between Vietnam and Cambodia since the late 20th century. I conducted my anthropological fieldwork in a multi-ethnic hybrid society in the Mekong Delta of southern Vietnam, where local people have attempted to survive  by avoiding wars and socialism. They were ordained in Buddhist temples to avoid conscription during the Vietnam War. They created black markets in response to state food levies, and engaged in undocumented cross-border movement as refugees or migrant workers during the era of socialist reforms and market-oriented economy. My historical ethnography (2021, published in Japanese) discusses the process by which such social spaces were formed on the basis of vernacular orders, becoming “intangible spaces” in which the state was reluctant to intervene. 

In recent years, I have been exploring “intangible spaces” by expanding my scope to include the “Water Frontier” on the Mekong River basins between Vietnam and Cambodia. The riverside societies show the process of people and goods flowing between the two countries during the wars, especially in the 1970s. In Cambodia today, due to the scarcity of water in the rivers and the settlement policies of the state, the number of people living on the  riverbanks is increasing, but stateless people without identity cards continue to live on floating houses because they have not been able to buy land, and are often regarded as “Vietnamese.” I try to examine the modernity of the “intangible spaces” in the society created along the river basins.