Financialization and Indebtedness of Coho-Chil Ethnic Minority Communities in the Central Highlands, Vietnam

Since Đổi Mới (1986), the Coho-Chil community in Vietnam’s Central Highlands has become increasingly integrated into regional and global markets. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, this article demonstrates that indebtedness profoundly shapes household production, social relations, and everyday cultural life. With unstable crop incomes and expanding consumption demands, Chil households depend on informal loans with high interest rates, leading to land dispossession and chronic debt. Processes of cultural appropriation and the internalization of market values render debt both pervasive and morally sanctioned. Financialization, as a socially embedded process, perpetuates inequality in ethnic minority communities in Vietnam’s Central Highlands.