The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
/>
Reflexivity, habitus and
vulnerability: Vietnamese farmers’
attribution of responsibility in a
post-disaster context
Kien Nguyen-Trung
BehaviourWorks Australia, Monash Sustainable Development Institute,
Clayton Campus, Clayton, Australia
Responsibility
attribution
Received 18 May 2022
Revised 11 November 2022
10 December 2022
Accepted 10 December 2022
Abstract
Purpose – This article examines how farmers’ assignment of responsibility for the disaster in late 2015 – early
2016 connects with reflexivity, habitus and local vulnerability.
Design/methodology/approach – This article uses semi-structured interviews with 28 disaster-affected
households in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta to answer the question.
Findings – This article finds out that Vietnamese farmers actively accepted their responsibility for the
disaster. In their explanation, they link their action with the root causes of vulnerability embedded in their
socio-cultural traditions and collective identity.
Research limitations/implications – This article makes a case for the importance of local culture and
epistemologies in understanding disaster vulnerability and responsibility attribution.
Originality/value – This article is original in researching Vietnamese farmers’ responsibility attribution,
their aesthetic reflexivity, collective habitus and the socio-cultural root causes of disaster.
Keywords Attribution of responsibility, Bourdieu, Disaster, Farmer, Habitus, Reflexivity, Responsibility,
Vietnam
Paper type Research paper
In early 2016, the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD), Vietnam’s rice bucket, whose production
is responsible for 95% of rice export (General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 2020) suffered from
a historic disaster that combined a 20-month drought and the worst-in-90-year saline
intrusion. It heavily damaged the Winter–Spring rice crop (hereafter referred to as crop 3).
Crop 3 is the third rice crop of a triple cropping system, which was cultivated from December
to April in the dry season. Local farmers suffered not just crop failures, economic losses, but
also food deficits, growing debt and livelihood disruption (FAO, 2016; United Nations, 2016).
The disaster provided a great opportunity to understand how local farmers attributed
responsibilities and the underlying social, cultural and political reasons for why they did so.
Attribution of responsibility has been a topic of interest, especially in the sociology of health
and illness (McClean, 2005), political science (Arceneaux and Stein, 2006; Malhotra and Kuo,
The author wants to thank Linda, Cherry and Jenny for their unconditional love, support, and
understanding. Heartfelt thanks to Associate Professor Helen Forbes-Mewett and Professor
Dharmalingam Arunachalam (Monash University) for their tremendous support. Thanks also go to
Monash University for assisting this work with the Monash Postgraduate Publication Award (2021).
Competing interests: The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
This work reproduces materials from Dr Kien Nguyen-Trung’s PhD thesis with permission.
Author contributions: The author did all the works leading to this manuscript.
Consent for publication: All participants provided consent for publication of the data anonymously.
Funding: The author declare that Dr Kien Nguyen-Trung was received the fund from Monash
University’s Postgraduate Publication Awards to do this work.
Disaster Prevention and
Management: An International
Journal
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0965-3562
DOI 10.1108/DPM-05-2022-0118
DPM
their roots in the historical evolution of the affected society, which could be traced back
hundreds of years (Oliver-Smith, 1999) or several decades (Nguyen-Trung, 2019).
As a result, if limiting our analysis of attribution of responsibility to immediate single
actions/events, it is likely to overlook the larger structural factors shaping why they do as
they did. As such, it is necessary to ask, “why do you think who is responsible for what?”.
This “why” question, as Lash (1993) would argue, helps research participants question their
reflection on “who is responsible for disaster” and thus link the current actions to the deepseated causes embedded in the social structures of their community (Bankoff, 2001, 2004;
Oliver-Smith et al., 2017). Figure 1 illustrates the link between these key concepts.
Data and methods
This article draws on a case study (Yin, 2014) conducted in 2018 in the Vietnamese Mekong
Delta (VMD). The study’s ethics application (Project number11022) was approved by Monash
University Human Research Ethics Committee (MUHREC) in late 2017. Before conducting
interviews, the author obtained permission from research participants to collect data and
record the interviews. Because not every farmer was familiar with the process of research
ethics, oral consent was more frequently used. To protect the participants, all the names of
persons and villages cited in this article are pseudonyms.
The 2015–2016 disaster caused a devastating impact in 52 out of 63 Vietnam’s provinces,
forcing 18 provinces to declare a State of Emergency (Nguyen-Trung, 2021). Tan Hung
commune in Long Phu district of Soc Trang province in the VMD was chosen for this study
because of the following characteristics. It is a typical agriculture-based commune, with 90.4% of
its area (2,918 ha) devoted to agricultural production as of 2020 (Nguyen-Trung, 2021). About
51.9% of the total 3,078 households were largely based on agriculture. The commune is typical
for a triple rice cropping system (cultivating three rice crops a year), with the Winter–Spring crop
(or crop 3) being cultivated entirely in the dry season. This crop is highly vulnerable to drought
and saline intrusion and was the one affected most by the 2015–2016 disaster. The commune has
three ethnic groups, including the Khmer group, which makes up the largest share of the
population (63.9%), followed by the Kinh population, the ethnic majority in Vietnam (35.2%) and
Vietnamese Chinese (the Hoa) and others (0.2%) (Soc Trang Division of Statistics Office, 2017).
As of 2018, the commune had 13.8% of households (424 households) classified as poor
households and 5.1% as near-poor households (158 households) (Tan Hung CPC, 2018). Under
the impact of the 2015–2016 disaster, 40.3% (645 households) of total agriculture-based
households in Tan Hung suffered heavy crop losses, making it the most severely affected
commune in Long Phu district (Tan Hung CPC, 2016b; Tan Hung CPC, 2016a).
This study uses semi-structured interviews with 28 farm households. Households were
selected based on three criteria: (1) They were more or less affected by the 2015–2016 drought
Figure 1.
Understanding
disasters’ root causes
through aesthetic
reflexivity
DPM
vulnerability” (Wisner, 2013). The importance of culture and localised knowledge production
as a barrier to farmers’ disaster-responding capability in this article contributes another
structural blockage to the “circle of capacities” that aims to understand structural forces
limiting or blocking people’s access to political, economic, social, human, physical and natural
resources (Wisner et al., 2012). Exploring local culture and their way of knowing
(epistemologies) is of substantial importance in the project of decolonising disaster
scholarship (Gaillard, 2021). As such, by listening to, valuing and trying to “understand
the plight and experience of ordinary people in everyday settings and the victims of disaster”
and “who they are and where their experiences take place” (Hewitt, 1983, p. 330), this article
contributes to the dismissal of Western discourses portraying the world as “dangerous
places” (Bankoff, 2001).
References
Adkins, L. (2003), “Reflexivity: freedom or habit of gender?”, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 20 No. 6,
pp. 21-42.
Arceneaux, K. and Stein, R.M. (2006), “Who is held responsible when disaster strikes? The attribution
of responsibility for a natural disaster in an urban election”, Journal of Urban Affairs, Vol. 28
No. 1, pp. 43-53.
Bankoff, G. (2001), “Rendering the world unsafe: ‘vulnerability’ as western discourse”, Disasters,
Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 19-35.
Bankoff, G. (2004), “Time is of the essence: disasters, vulnerability and history”, International Journal
of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 23-42.
Beck, U. (1992), Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, Sage Publication, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Beck, U. (2009), World at Risk, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Behague, D.P., Kanhonou, L.G., Filippi, V., Legonou, S. and Ronsmans, C. (2008), “Pierre Bourdieu and
transformative agency: a study of how patients in Benin negotiate blame and accountability in
the context of severe obstetric events”, Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 489-510,
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01070.x.
Berg, H. (2002), “Rice monoculture and integrated rice-fish farming in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam—
economic and ecological considerations”, Ecological Economics, Vol. 41 No. 1, pp. 95-107.
Blaikie, P., Cannon, T., Davis, I., et al. (1994), At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability and
Disasters, Routledge, London.
Bourdieu, P. (1977), Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Bourdieu, P. (1990), The Logic of Practice, Stanford University Press, Standford.
Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006), “Using thematic analysis in psychology”, Qualitative Research in
Psychology, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 77-101.
Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2019), “Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis”, Qualitative Research in
Sport, Exercise and Health, Vol. 11 No. 4, pp. 589-597.
Bui, Q.D. and Nguyen-Trung, K. (2017), “M^ay! v^an! d"ề d"^at!n^ong nghiệp qua cuộc khảo s#at tại 2 x~a T^an
Long, tỉnh Hậu Giang v!a x~a Th^an Cửu Ngh~ıa, tỉnh Tiền Giang”, Tạp Ch#ı X~
a Hội Học, Vol. 1
No. 137, pp. 11-23.
Clarke, H.E. and Mayer, B. (2017), “Community recovery following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill:
toward a theory of cultural resilience”, Society and Natural Resources, Vol. 30 No. 2, pp. 129-144.
Do, T.T. and Whittaker, A. (2020), “Contamination, suffering and womanhood: lay explanations of
breast cancer in Central Vietnam”, Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 266, 113360.
FAO (2016), “‘El Nino’ event in Vietnam: agriculture, food security and livelihood: needs assessment in
response to drought and salt water intrusion”, Report, Food and Agriculture Organization of
the United Nations, Hanoi.
Felson, R.B. (1991), “Blame analysis: accounting for the behavior of protected groups”, The American
Sociologist, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 5-23.
Forbes-Mewett, H. and Nguyen-Trung, K. (2022), “Global markets, risk, and organized irresponsibility
in regional Australia: emergent cosmopolitan identities among local food producers in the
Liverpool plains”, Rural Sociology, Vol. 87 No. 3, pp. 1111-1134, doi: 10.1111/ruso.12442.
Fritz, C.E. (1961), “Disaster”, in Merton, R.K. and Nisbet, R.A. (Eds), Social Problems, Harcourt, Brace,
New York.
Gaillard, J. (2021), The Invention of Disaster: Power and Knowledge in Discourses on Hazard and
Vulnerability, Routledge, London.
Gaillard, J. and Raju, E. (2022), “On priorities, values and relationships in practice: a new road for
disaster scholarly publishing”, Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal,
Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 333-334.
General Statistics Office of Vietnam (2020), Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing, General Statistics Office of
Vietnam, available at: (Accessed 6 November, 2020).
Giddens, A. (1990), The Consequences of Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Giddens, A. (1991), Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Stanford
University Press, Standford.
Heider, F. (1958), The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, Wiley, New York.
Hewitt, K. (1983), “The idea of calamity in a technocratic age”, Interpretations of Calamity from the
Viewpoint of Human Ecology, Vol. 1, pp. 3-32.
Kelley, H.H. (1967), “Attribution theory in social psychology”, in Levine, D. (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium
on Motivation, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, pp. 192-238.
Kelley, H.H. (1973), “The processes of causal attribution”, American Psychologist, Vol. 28 No. 2, p. 107.
Kien, N.T. (2015), “The ‘sacred face’: what directs Vietnamese people in interacting with others in
everyday life”, Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol. 1 No. 3, pp. 246-259, doi: 10.1172/
vjossh.v1i3.29.
Lamaison, P. and Bourdieu, P. (1986), “From rules to strategies: an interview with Pierre Bourdieu”,
Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 110-120.
Lash, S. (1993), “Reflexive modernization: the aesthetic dimension”, Theory, Culture and Society,
Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 1-23.
Lash, S. (1994), “Reflexivity and its doubles: structure, aesthetics, community”. Reflexive
Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, pp. 110-173.
Lash, S. (2000), “Risk culture”, in Adam, B., Beck, U. and Loon, J.V. (Eds), The Risk Society and beyond:
Critical Issues for Social Theory, Sage, London, pp. 47-62.
Le Dang, H., Li, E., Nuberg, I., et al. (2014), “Farmers’ perceived risks of climate change and influencing
factors: a study in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam”, Environmental Management, Vol. 54 No. 2,
pp. 331-345.
Loftland, J., Snow, D., Anderson, L., et al. (2006), Analyzing Social Settings: A Guide to Qualitative
Observation and Analysis, Wadsworth Thomson, Belmont CA.
Lupton, D. and Tulloch, J. (2002), “Risk is part of your life’: risk epistemologies among a group of
Australians”, Sociology, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 317-334.
Lyng, S. (2016), “Goffman, action, and risk society: aesthetic reflexivity in late modernity”, UNLV
Gaming Research and Review Journal, Vol. 20 No. 1, p. 4.
Malhotra, N. and Kuo, A.G. (2008), “Attributing blame: the public’s response to Hurricane Katrina”,
The Journal of Politics, Vol. 70 No. 1, pp. 120-135.
McClean, S. (2005), “The illness is part of the person’: discourses of blame, individual responsibility
and individuation at a centre for spiritual healing in the North of England”, Sociology of Health
and Illness, Vol. 27 No. 5, pp. 628-648.
Responsibility
attribution
DPM
Nguyen, K. (2016), “Daily deference rituals and social hierarchy in Vietnam”, Asian Social Science,
Vol. 12 No. 5, pp. 33-46, doi: 10.5539/ass.v12n5p33.
Nguyen, V.K., Dumaresq, D. and Pittock, J. (2018), “Impacts of rice intensification on rural households
in the Mekong Delta: emerging relationships between agricultural production, wild food supply
and food consumption”, Food Security, Vol. 10 No. 6, pp. 1615-1629.
Nguyen-Trung, K. (2019), “Vulnerability to natural disasters: the case of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta”, in
Forbes-Mewett, H. (Ed.), Vulnerability in a Mobile World, Emerald Publishing, Bingley,
pp. 71-90.
Nguyen-Trung, K. (2021), “Understanding disaster vulnerability in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta”,
PhD thesis, Monash University, doi: 10.26180/15089910.v2.
Nguyen-Trung, K. (2022), “Risk epistemologies and aesthetic reflexivity of a disaster-affected
community: findings from Vietnam”, Sociological Research Online. doi: 10.1177/
13607804221133120.
Nguyen-Trung, K., Forbes-Mewett, H. and Arunachalam, D. (2020), “Social support from bonding and
bridging relationships in disaster recovery: findings from a slow-onset disaster”, International
Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, Vol. 46, 101501, doi: 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101501.
Oliver-Smith, A. (1999), “Peru’s five hundred-year earthquake: vulnerability in historical context”, in
Hoffman AO-Sa, S. (Ed.), The Angry Earth: Disasters in Anthropological Perspective, Routledge,
New York, pp. 74-88.
Oliver-Smith, A., Alc#antara-Ayala, I., Burton, I., et al. (2017), “The social construction of disaster risk:
seeking root causes”, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, Vol. 22, pp. 469-474.
Oz, T. and Bisgin, H. (2016), “Attribution of responsibility and blame regarding a man-made disaster:
# flintwatercrisis”, arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.03480, doi: 10.48550/arXiv.1610.03480.No.
RADIX: Radical Interpretations of Disasters (2019), “Power, prestige & forgotten values: a disaster
studies manifesto”, available at: (accessed 1
October).
Schad, I., Schmitter, P., Saint-Macary, C., et al. (2012), “Why do people not learn from flood disasters?
Evidence from Vietnam’s northwestern mountains”, Natural Hazards, Vol. 62 No. 2, pp. 221-241.
Soc Trang Division of Statistics Office (2017), Statistical Yearbook of Long Phu District 2016, Soc
Trang Division of Statistics Office, Soc Trang province.
Tan Hung CPC (2016a), “Household poverty data 2016”, in Tan Hung Commune People’s Committee,
Tan Hung commune, Long Phu district, Soc Trang province.
Tan Hung CPC (2016b), Report on Key Outcomes of the 2016 Socio-Economic Plan and Key Directions
and Tasks for 2017, Tan Hung commune: Tan Hung Commune People’s Committee.
Tan Hung CPC (2018), “Tan Hung commune’s household poverty 2017: annexes”, in Tan Hung
Commune People’s Committee, Tan Hung commune, Long Phu district, Soc Trang province.
Taylor, S.J. and Bogdan, R. (1984), Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods: The Search for
Meaning, John Wiley & Sons.
Tran, T.A., Rigg, J., Taylor, D., Miller, M.A., Pittock, J. and Le, P.T. (2022), “Social memory in the
mekong’s changing floodscapes: narratives of agrarian communities’ adaptation”, Human
Ecology, Vol. 50 No. 5, pp. 879-879, doi: 10.1007/s10745-022-00362-0.
United Nations (2016), “Vietnam is recovering from its strongest ever drought and saltwater
intrusion”, available at: />081116_ENG.pdf (accessed 1 November).
Wehde, W. and Nowlin, M.C. (2021), “Public attribution of responsibility for disaster preparedness
across three levels of government and the public: lessons from a survey of residents of the US
South Atlantic and Gulf Coast”, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Vol. 51 No. 2, pp. 212-237.
Wisner, B. (2013), “Disaster risk and vulnerability reduction”, in Sygna, L., O’Brien, K. and Wolf, J.
(Eds), A Changing Environment for Human Security, Routledge, London, pp. 257-276.
Wisner, B. (2016), “Vulnerability as concept, model, metric, and tool”, Natural Hazard Science: Oxford
Research Encyclopedias.
Wisner, B., Gaillard, J. and Kelman, I. (2012), “Framing disaster: theories and stories seeking to
understand hazards, vulnerability and risk”, in Wisner, B., Gaillard, J.C. and Kelman, I. (Eds),
The Routledge Handbook of Hazards and Disaster Risk Reduction, Routledge, London, pp. 18-34.
Wisner, B., Blaikie, P., Cannon, T., et al. (2014), At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability and
Disasters, Routledge, London.
Yadav, P., Lassa, J., Marchezini, V., et al. (2022), “Guest editorial: introduction to calling for change in
disaster studies–rethinking disaster studies”, Disaster Prevention and Management: An
International Journal, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 177-181.
Yin, R.K. (2014), Case Study Research: Design and Methods, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Corresponding author
Kien Nguyen-Trung can be contacted at:
For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website:
www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm
Or contact us for further details:
Responsibility
attribution
