Culture Ritual And Revolution In Vietnam

Originally published in 2002 Culture, Ritual and Revolution in Vietnam is a study of the history and consequences of the revolutionary campaign to transform culture and ritual in northern Vietnam. Based upon official documents and several years of field research in Thinh Liet Commune, a Red River delta community near Hanoi, it provides the first detailed account of the nature of revolutionary cultural reforms in Vietnam as how those reforms continue to animate contemporary socio-cultural life. The study examines the key foci of revolutionary cultural change, such as the articulation of a new moral system, the attempts to eliminate explanations that invoke supernatural causality, the creation of socialist weddings and funerals, and the development of innovation ties to commemorate war dead. By examining debates over culture, ritual, and morality that have emerged between residents, notably between men and women, and party members and non-party members, the study shows how ideas and values that preceded the revolution have entered into a creative dialogue with those that were articulated by the revolution, and how this has produced an innovative set of ritual and other practices, particularly since the relaxation of the cultural reform agenda in the post-1986 period.

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Examining gender in post-revolutionary Vietnam, focusing in particular on gender relations in both the family and state since the onset of economic reform in 1986, this book argues that, as in the socialist era, current gender relations bear the imprint of state gender policies and discourses.

The North Atlantic development establishment has had a blemished track record over the past 65 years. In addition to a sizeable portfolio of failure, the few economic success stories in the developing world, such as South Korea and China, have been achieved by rejecting the advice of Western experts. Despite these realities, debates within mainstream development studies have stagnated around a narrow, acultural emphasis on institutions or the size and role of government. Cultures of Development uses a contrapuntal comparison of Vietnam and Brazil to show why it is important for development scholars and practitioners to broaden their conceptualization of economies to include the socio-cultural. This smartly written book based on original, ethnographic research breathes new life into development studies by bringing cultural studies into conversation with development studies, with an emphasis on improving—rather than merely critiquing—market economies. The applied deployment of critical development studies, i.e., interpretive economics, results in a number of theoretical advances in both development and areas studies, demonstrating the economic importance of certain kinds of cultural work carried out by religious leaders, artists, activists, and educators. Most importantly, the reader comes to fully appreciate how economies are embedded within the subjectivities, discourses, symbols, rituals, norms, and values of a given society. This pioneering book revives development practice and policy by offering fresh insights and ideas about how development can be advanced. It will be of special interest to scholars and students of Development Studies, Sociology, Economics, Anthropology, and Area Studies.

One of the first books to look at how the Vietnamese themselves experienced the wars for Vietnam, including both the French and the American wars. Combining political, social, and cultural history, Bradley examines how the war was seen both by top policy makers and also everyday soldiers and civilians in both North and South Vietnam.

This book presents a historical and ethnographic study of changing mangrove management in northern Vietnam over the past 100 years, grounded in a case study in the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam. The book shows that three primary socio-economic dynamics have affected mangroves: enclosure movements that have restricted access by different user communities over time, such as the exclusion of women; changing valuation of mangroves and their products and services; and social and class differentiation caused by privatization of once common resources. The result of these pressures have been erosions of norms, rules, and collective action to protect and nurture mangroves, leading to widespread loss of coastal forests. Sustainable mangrove management will require attention to these dynamics to address current-day land conflicts. The book will be of interest to policy-makers, practitioners, and academics and students in forest policy, management and governance; rural livelihoods; and globalization and agrarian change.

How nonstate military strategies overturn traditional perspectives on warfare Since September 11th, 2001, armed nonstate actors have received increased attention and discussion from scholars, policymakers, and the military. Underlying debates about nonstate warfare and how it should be countered is one crucial assumption: that state and nonstate actors fight very differently. In Nonstate Warfare, Stephen Biddle upturns this distinction, arguing that there is actually nothing intrinsic separating state or nonstate military behavior. Through an in-depth look at nonstate military conduct, Biddle shows that many nonstate armies now fight more "conventionally" than many state armies, and that the internal politics of nonstate actors—their institutional maturity and wartime stakes rather than their material weapons or equipment—determines tactics and strategies. Biddle frames nonstate and state methods along a continuum, spanning Fabian-style irregular warfare to Napoleonic-style warfare involving massed armies, and he presents a systematic theory to explain any given nonstate actor’s position on this spectrum. Showing that most warfare for at least a century has kept to the blended middle of the spectrum, Biddle argues that material and tribal culture explanations for nonstate warfare methods do not adequately explain observed patterns of warmaking. Investigating a range of historical examples from Lebanon and Iraq to Somalia, Croatia, and the Vietcong, Biddle demonstrates that viewing state and nonstate warfighting as mutually exclusive can lead to errors in policy and scholarship. A comprehensive account of combat methods and military rationale, Nonstate Warfare offers a new understanding for wartime military behavior.

Though a generation has passed since the massacre of civilians at My Lai, the legacy of this tragedy continues to reverberate throughout Vietnam and the rest of the world. This text considers how Vietnamese villagers have assimilated the catastrophe of these mass deaths into their everyday ritual lives.