Taking a developmental approach, this book critically reviews Vietnam's reform process and shows how the country’s reform agenda is still dominated by a ‘developmental orthodoxy’ inspired by a post-Washington consensus. The author argues that a wider debate is needed in order to give national policy makers the full spectrum of alternatives to support well-informed policy decisions. In particular, the book indicates that two issues central for any analysis of the Vietnamese development reform process are substantially underdeveloped in the current scientific debate: the experience of the East Asian developmental state and the question of socialism. Presenting a way of thinking about Vietnam that goes beyond the orthodox, the book sets out the various paradigms through which the Vietnamese economy can be analyzed. This is a welcome addition to the literature and will appeal to both practitioners working in the field and the academic community in Southeast Asian studies, economics and development.
Based on official army records, these eyewitness accounts of seven hellacious battles serve as a brief history of the Vietnam conflict. From a fierce fight on the banks of the Ia Drang River in 1965 to a 1968 gunship mission, this illustrated report conveys the heroism and horror of warfare.
Vietnam: Rethinking the State offers an exciting and up-to-date look at the politics of this fascinating country as it seeks to make the transition from war-torn economic backwater to a dynamic and modern society. The book argues for a move away from the commonly associated idea of 'reform', arguing for a deeper understanding of the concept and questioning the idea of state-retreat. The result is a path-breaking book which gets beneath the surface of Vietnam's politics in a way which few outsiders otherwise could.
Transition economies allow the study of fundamental questions about the nature of markets. How do they arise and do they necessarily follow the same modus operandi as markets in other countries? How does the opening of the economy to global market influences affect the process of institutional change? And how in the context of an underdeveloped transitional economy like Vietnam, do such influences affect the prospects for sustainable and equitable development? This book focuses on the differentiated ways in which the double transition in Vietnam, from central planning and from under-development, affects various sectors of the population.
This book explores the way in which the state has become commercialised under reform as party and government officials have gone into business and considers the impact that this has had on politics within Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. The book charts the way in which power has been decentralised to the lower levels of the party-state but argues that the central state retains significant power. These issues are explored through a variety of case studies including the implementation of different reform policies, struggles over political and business activity, and the prosecution of two major corruption cases. Particular emphasis is placed on piecing together the myriad of informal practices which dominate business and political life in Vietnam.
Wave after wave of political and economic refugees poured out of Vietnam beginning in the late 1970s, overwhelming the resources available to receive them. Squalid conditions prevailed in detention centers and camps in Hong Kong and throughout Southeast Asia, where many refugees spent years languishing in poverty, neglect, and abuse while supposedly being protected by an international consortium of caregivers. Voices from the Camps tells the story of the most vulnerable of these refugees: children alone, either orphaned or separated from their families. Combining anthropology and social work with advocacy for unaccompanied children everywhere, James M. Freeman and Nguyen Dinh Huu present the voices and experiences of Vietnamese refugee children neglected and abused by the system intended to help them. Authorities in countries of first asylum, faced with thousands upon thousands of increasingly frightened, despairing, and angry people, needed to determine on a case-by-case basis whether they should be sent back to Vietnam or be certified as legitimate refugees and allowed to proceed to countries of resettlement. The international community, led by UNHCR, devised a well-intentioned screening system. Unfortunately, as Freeman and Nguyen demonstrate, it failed unaccompanied children. The hardships these children endured are disturbing, but more disturbing is the story of how the governments and agencies that set out to care for them eventually became the children�s tormenters. When Vietnam, after years of refusing to readmit illegal emigrants, reversed its policy, the international community began doing everything it could to force them back to Vietnam. Cutting rations, closing schools, separating children from older relations and other caregivers, relocating them in order to destroy any sense of stability--the authorities employed coercion and effective abuse with distressing ease, all in the name of the �best interests� of the children. While some children eventually managed to construct a decent life in Vietnam or elsewhere, including the United States, all have been scarred by their refugee experience and most are still struggling with the legacy. Freeman and Nguyen�s presentation and analysis of this sobering chapter in recent history is a cautionary tale and a call to action.
This book, written by economists of Vietnamese origin, is an extremely comprehensive collection on economic issues facing Vietnam. The spectrum of topics covered includes macroeconomics, microeconomics, international trade, agriculture, education, communication, institutional reforms, income distribution and poverty measurement.Themes include:* the
“My husband doesn’t have a head for business,” complained Ngoc, the owner of a children’s clothing stall in Ben Thanh market. “Naturally, it’s because he’s a man.” When the women who sell in Ho Chi Minh City’s iconic marketplace speak, their language suggests that activity in the market is shaped by timeless, essential truths: Vietnamese women are naturally adept at buying and selling, while men are not; Vietnamese prefer to do business with family members or through social contacts; stallholders are by nature superstitious; marketplace trading is by definition a small-scale enterprise. Essential Trade looks through the façade of these “timeless truths” and finds active participants in a political economy of appearances: traders’ words and actions conform to stereotypes of themselves as poor, weak women in order to clinch sales, manage creditors, and protect themselves from accusations of being greedy, corrupt, or “bourgeois” – even as they quietly slip into southern Vietnam’s growing middle class. But Leshkowich argues that we should not dismiss the traders’ self-disparaging words simply because of their essentialist logic. In Ben Thanh market, performing certain styles of femininity, kinship relations, social networks, spirituality, and class allowed traders to portray themselves as particular kinds of people who had the capacity to act in volatile political and economic circumstances. When so much seems to be changing, a claim that certain things or people are inherently or naturally a particular way can be both personally meaningful and strategically advantageous. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and life history interviewing conducted over nearly two decades, Essential Trade explores how women cloth and clothing traders like Ngoc have plied their wares through four decades of political and economic transformation: civil war, postwar economic restructuring, socialist cooperativization, and the frenetic competition of market socialism. With close attention to daily activities and life narratives, this groundbreaking work of critical feminist economic anthropology combines theoretical insight, vivid ethnography, and moving personal stories to illuminate how the interaction between gender and class has shaped people’s lives and created market socialist political economy. It provides a compelling account of postwar southern Vietnam as seen through the eyes of the dynamic women who have navigated forty years of profound change while building their businesses in the stalls of Ben Thanh market.
Masina reassesses the last thirty years of economic development in East Asia in light of recent dramatic events, challenging scholars and policy makers to critically review development strategies.
2018 GOLD MEDAL WINNER (MILITARY WRITERS SOCIETY OF AMERICA) This award-winning Vietnam War memoir from an Air Force flight surgeon is “a superb, first-hand account of combat flying” (Dan Hampton, New York Times–bestselling author of Viper Pilot) In 1971, United States Air Force flight surgeon John Pendergrass spent much of his time in the backseat of an F-4 Phantom, racing across the skies of Vietnam. Forty-five years later, he boards an altogether different type of aircraft and heads back to Vietnam for an altogether different kind of race—an IRONMAN® triathlon. A veteran of IRONMAN triathlons on six continents, Racing Back to Vietnam follows John’s year in combat and his return to Vietnam, revisiting a country that, for him, is bound up in history, memory and emotion. A memoir of war as seen from the skies and a reflection on life’s high adventure, John tries to reconcile the Vietnam he saw from the backseat of a fighter jet with today’s modern Vietnam. Thought-provoking, heartfelt and gripping, Racing Back to Vietnam is one man’s trip back through time on a journey of rediscovery.
