ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to understand injustices by combining historical and ethnographic perspectives based on field visits to the Phong Nha Ke Bang area in 2015 and 2016. The field research forms part of a larger research initiative conducted in collaboration with Nghiem Thi Kim Hoa, Nguyen Duy Luong and Nguyen Linh Giang. The chapter explores how World Heritage designation affected land, resource and property rights as well as livelihood and development rights. It addresses the theme of indigenous, ethnic minority and cultural rights as well as implications in terms of rights to consultation, participation and consent. There is, arguably, no stable terrain of rights in the seemingly cosmopolitan World Heritage assemblage. World Heritage processes in Vietnam have been embraced and gained high visibility through multiple nominations and outward-looking diplomatic activity, alongside soaring tourism figures. The economic rights paradigm had in practice shifted from socialist prerogatives to a particular state-embedded neoliberal credo of private entrepreneurship and business rights.
