The Raglai people in Bac Ai, Ninh Thuan have a habit that seems quite strange compared to modern market logic: When they harvest agricultural produce or gather forest products, they rarely take them to the central market to sell to strangers, even if they could get a better price. Instead, they choose to sell them to a familiar shopkeeper at the edge of the village or to mobile traders, even knowing that the purchase price there may be lower than the general market rate. Conversely, when they need to shop, they are willing to stop by that same familiar shop to buy items at prices higher than those in unfamiliar stores on the big streets.
If calculated according to conventional economic logic and judging that behavior in isolation, many would hastily label it as "irrational" or "uneconomical" exchange. In reality, during our field trips and direct interactions with the community, we often hear familiar biased remarks from many residents and officials: "The Raglai people don't know how to trade.", "The Raglai people don't know how to calculate.".
But the Vi Heritage team has a different perspective.
If we place this form of exchange within the broader socio-economic picture of the Raglai people, where cash is always scarce and savings are almost non-existent, this sentiment-driven way of buying and selling ensures the sustainable survival of an entire family.
Living in the sunny and windy highlands, the Raglai do not produce large-scale surplus goods to take to the market every day. Through long-standing close relationships with village-edge shopkeepers or mobile traders on the "running markets" along the villages, people can still exchange for rice, fish sauce, salt, and essential daily necessities even when they have absolutely no cash on hand. It is a form of credit line based on absolute trust that permanent central markets, where buyers and sellers are strangers passing through, can never provide.
That relationship transcends the fairness of currency. People can borrow a large sum of money from a familiar shopkeeper or street vendor when the family has an urgent matter—when crops fail, when a loved one is sick, or when the family has a funeral or an important ritual. In return, the "disadvantage" in pricing when selling agricultural products is how the Raglai pay the interest of gratitude, a way to strengthen the social safety net based on a spirit of symbiosis.
Because this exchange custom is organically linked to the rhythm of life and the community structure, the permanent markets invested in by the State with billions of dong but lacking an understanding of indigenous culture have fallen into cold, abandoned states. The market of the Raglai does not lie in cold concrete kiosks, but in the close bond between people.
The story of how the Raglai trade teaches us many things. To fully understand the value of a cultural practice, one must never use the subjective lens of one culture to impose it upon another cultural space. The form of "buying high, selling low" may seem irrational at first glance to those with stable incomes in the city, but under the specific economic conditions of the Raglai, it is the wisest and most humane choice to rely on each other to live through years of poverty and hardship.
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