In this dissertation I investigate market formation and integration in the northern
uplands of Vietnam (Lào Cai province) through a focus on the everyday processes by
which markets are created and (re)shaped at the confluence of local innovation and
initiatives, state actions, and wider market forces. Against a historically-informed
backdrop of the ‘local’ research context with regard to ethnicity, cultural practice,
livelihoods, markets and trade, I situate and critique the broader Vietnam state
agenda. At present, the state supports regularising market development often in
accordance with a lowland majority model, and promoting particular aspects of
tourism that at times mesh, while at others clash, with upland subsistence needs,
customary practice, and with uplanders successfully realising new opportunities.
State-led initiatives to foster market integration are often instituted without informed
consideration of their effects on the specific nature and complexity of upland trade,
such as for the realisation of materially and culturally viable livelihoods.