Description

Often referred to as a ‘wonder grass,’ bamboo has in recent years become an important input for sustainable products. A proliferation of new bamboo-based products, such as flooring, sideboards and textiles, have the common attribute of depending on new forms of industrial processing and sophisticated global supply chains. In this paper, I examine this boom in bamboo products from the vantage point of the north-central coast of Vietnam, a region that falls outside of the locus of large-scale industrial bamboo production in China, but that has been pulled into the circuits of industrial bamboo production through collaborations between a number of foreign investors and development institutions. Drawing on performativity theory, I examine the means through which various articulation of value were framed within the context of an attempt to ‘modernize’ Vietnam’s bamboo sector through interventions in industrial processing and supply chain management. I point to a paradox, whereby local trade networks have been unresponsive to interventions to raise prices and increase supply, even as buyers were willing to pay a substantial price premium to farmers. In doing so, I review how these performances of economic valuation intersected with local trade relationships and farmer livelihoods, which positioned many of the buyers of higher ‘value’ products at a distinct disadvantage. I argue that the points at which global purchasers and development planners articulated with local trade networks became new sites of value negotiation, and that it is within these various encounters that we can locate the possibilities of sustainable futures for bamboo and bamboo producers.

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Jim Delaney is a graduate student in the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto.