What question did this study set out to answer?

This research aims to explore how indebtedness affects the Coho-Chil community's production, relations, and culture.

May 20, 2026

Financialization and Indebtedness of Coho-Chil Ethnic Minority Communities in the Central Highlands, Vietnam

PTPhạm Thanh ThôiVietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City

Key Points

This research aims to explore how indebtedness affects the Coho-Chil community's production, relations, and culture.
Conducted long-term ethnographic research in Coho-Chil communities.
Analyzed household production and social relations influenced by market integration.
Examined the role of informal loans and cultural appropriations in perpetuating debt.
Chil households face chronic debt due to reliance on high-interest informal loans.
Indebtedness leads to land dispossession and alters social dynamics and cultural practices.
Financialization perpetuates existing inequalities among ethnic minority communities.

Abstract

Since Đổi Mới (1986), the Coho-Chil community in Vietnam’s Central Highlands has become increasingly integrated into regional and global markets. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, this article demonstrates that indebtedness profoundly shapes household production, social relations, and everyday cultural life. With unstable crop incomes and expanding consumption demands, Chil households depend on informal loans with high interest rates, leading to land dispossession and chronic debt. Processes of cultural appropriation and the internalization of market values render debt both pervasive and morally sanctioned. Financialization, as a socially embedded process, perpetuates inequality in ethnic minority communities in Vietnam’s Central Highlands.

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