ABSTRACT
Important work on peasant societies had been done by colonial officials and ethnologists who were often linked to colonial bureaucracies. In the Southeast Asian context, G. W. Skinner’s reworking of Eric Wolf's closed and open village types is unhelpful for several reasons. Modes of community relief and other methods of resource distribution within the village are perhaps the most variable of the indices of village cohesion. The image of the village pulling together in times of severe crisis is found in the literature on rural conditions in Vietnam. Despite the readily apparent differences between the villages of northern Vietnam and Lower Burma, there are at least two similarities that are striking and interrelated: the power of the local gentry and a corresponding weakness on the part of the state to intervene in village affairs. In northern Vietnam, French options were severely restricted by dense concentrations of population and a corresponding scarcity of open land in most areas.
