1 Urban expansion and emerging land disputes in periurban Hanoi during the late-socialist period: the case of Hòa Mục village Danielle Labbé, School of Community and Regional Planning, University of British-Columbia, Vancouver. Abstract Since the ổi Mới reforms, Vietnamese populations exert considerable pressures on the Party- State apparatus not only through the covert acts of resistance much studied in the literature on state society relations in socialist Vietnam but also through open confrontations. In the rapidly urbanizing outskirts of Hanoi (Vietnam), land has become a key-issue as pre-existing populations try to resist the conversion of farmland to urban uses. This paper links this rise in land dispute to recent changes in Hanoi‟s urbanization trajectory of urban policy frameworks. It uses the case of a periurban village to examine how, in this context, local people craft acts and discourse of resistance. In the village studied, the research indicates that groups of elderly assume leadership role. It further shows that while these people acknowledge the necessary integration of their locality into Hanoi‟s urban fabric and governance system, they resist urban transformations when they threaten moral relationships inherited from the pre-revolutionary and collectivization periods. Introduction It is hardly novel to say that Vietnamese cities have experienced considerable growth since the ổi Mới reforms 1 ; what is less well known, however, is how the process of urban expansion has lead to a rise of social conflicts. Since the late 1990s, overt and occasionally violent conflicts between local populations, land developers, local officials, and the state at large have become increasingly common at the periphery of Vietnam‟s largest cities. These disputes typically stage periurban villagers protesting against the annexation of farmland or residential expropriations by state-backed developers for the construction of new transportation infrastructure, industrial parks, recreational areas, or residential estates (e.g. Thanh Nhien 2009; Tran Thai 2008; Tran Dinh Thanh Lam 2006). Scholars have yet to make sense of this contentious politics in the context of rapidly expanding cities. The literature indicates that popular resistance is a long-standing feature of state-society relations in Vietnam (Marr 2004; Woodside 1989). Studies of contemporary Vietnamese society sketch a portrait of rural and urban households as „everyday‟ resisters, astutely negotiating the central state‟s rules –often in collaboration with local officials (Hardy 2001; Koh 2006; Kerkvliet 2005). But as Escobar (1992: 399) points out: “this literature, with few exceptions, has not pushed the question of resistance towards one of its possible logical conclusions, namely, that point at which resistance gives way to more organized forms of collective action” (see also McAdam et al. 1997). This is particularly problematic in post-ổi Mới Vietnam. Since the late 1990s, local populations are exerting considerable pressure on the Party-State apparatus, not only through covert acts of resistance but also through open confrontations (Hy Van Luong 2005; Trần Thị Thu Trang 2009). In the case of the land disputes arising at the edge of cities, the lack of attention to overt conflicts leaves several questions unanswered: Who are the agents of popular action during the urbanization process? What strategies do they rely upon? And, perhaps most importantly, what are these periurban resisters fighting for? 1 The ổi Mới (often translated as “socio-economic renovation”) refers to a set of reforms launched by the Vietnamese Party-State during the 1980s. These reforms fostered a greater reliance on market mechanisms, enhanced material incentives to producers, and moved policy-making away from the tight central planning and highly ideological discourse of the preceding decades.