9. As Time Goes by… Longitudinal Analysis of Dam Impacts Upon Livelihood Strategies in the Red River Valley

Dams are often components of socioeconomic modernisation projects. In Southwest China, ongoing hydropower expansion and the social project it partakes in have widely impacted ethnic minority societies for whom natural resources are core livelihood assets and cultural markers. Previous scholarship has demonstrated that these aspects receive little attention at the dam planning and implementation stages, when the interests and discourses of government and economic actors prevail over those of riparian ethnic minority farmers. Less is known about the emergence and evolution of the livelihood changes triggered by hydropower projects and about ethnic minority populations’ perceptions of these changes. Building on longitudinal ethnographic data, this chapter probes how a series of livelihood changes emerged and evolved through time after the Madushan Dam reservoir was created along the upper Red River. I find that hydropower expansion has fostered the penetration of the capitalist economy and triggered outward migration flows, which have in turn exposed ethnic minority farmers to external influences and have reshaped social networks in the Red River Valley. Riparian residents have concurrently adopted a sceptical attitude towards other components of the state modernisation agenda driving hydropower development in the first place.