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Palgrave Macmillan

Unearthing Politics

Environment and Contestation in Post-socialist Vietnam

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

  • Explores recent socio-political challenge to the ruling party regime in Vietnam
  • Considers the controversy over bauxite mining in the late 2000
  • Offers a forum to examine sensitive issues and controversial struggles with the party-state in Vietnam today

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

This book examines an important socio-political challenge to the ruling party regime in Vietnam. Vietnam has been the subject of substantial controversy and challenge to the Vietnamese party regime since market reform in the 1980s, especially since the controversy over bauxite mining in the late 2000. Using the environmental dimensions of this problem to highlight a confluence of trends disrupting the nation’s “encrusted politics”, this book open up a space for the in-depth study of the most sensitive issues, bravest activists, and most off limit struggles with the party-state in Vietnam today.

Reviews

Unearthing Politics: Environment and Contestation in Post-Socialist Vietnam is the best single study of domestic Vietnamese politics during the post-reform era. Through an exhaustive examination of the contest over Chinese bauxite mining in the Central Highlands, this book sheds a bright light on the emergence in late communist Vietnam of new flashpoints for political conflict, novel modes of political organization and innovative forms of political struggle. Unearthing Politics will be a required reading for scholars of environmental conflict, late-communist political culture and contemporary Vietnamese studies.” (Peter Zinoman, author of Vietnamese Colonial Republican: The Political Vision of Vu Trong Phung, History Professor, UC Berkeley, Department of History, Berkeley, USA)

“The bauxite mining controversy in 2009 opened up an unprecedented era of contentious politics and heralded the rise of a civil society in Vietnam that challenges the dominationof the communist regime. In this event, Vietnamese intellectuals, professionals, and activists came together to oppose a major national project out of their concerns for its environmental impacts, their fears of Chinese involvement, and their frustration with Vietnam’s corrupt and repressive government. As the first detailed account of this event, Jason Morris-Jung offers a compelling analysis of how politics in one of the few remaining communist states has evolved in the last decade.” (Tuong Vu, author of Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology, Professor of Political Sciences, University of Oregon, Oregon, USA)

“In Unearthing Politics, Jason Morris-Jung reveals the surprising and unexpected public opposition to both the idea and practice of bauxite mining by Chinese companies in post-reform Vietnam. As in other countries of Southeast Asia, the project generated profound and contentious concern over this particularly toxic form of mining’s threat to one of the nation’s iconic agrarian-environments. Morris-Jung shows the ways the opposition came at and contributed to a pivotal moment in the country’s contemporary history, engaged ordinary people, founders of the republic, revered intellectuals, and the on-line media in unprecedented ways. The book’s echoes of and divergences from socio-environmental politics elsewhere in the expanding world of Chinese investment, development, and extraction, make this an extremely important read.” (Nancy Lee Peluso, University of California, Berkeley, USA)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Singapore University of Social Sciences, Singapore, Singapore

    Jason Morris-Jung

About the author

Jason Morris-Jung is Associate Faculty at the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS), Singapore.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Unearthing Politics

  • Book Subtitle: Environment and Contestation in Post-socialist Vietnam

  • Authors: Jason Morris-Jung

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3124-5

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-16-3123-8Published: 09 March 2022

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-981-16-3126-9Published: 10 March 2023

  • eBook ISBN: 978-981-16-3124-5Published: 08 March 2022

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIII, 241

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 10 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Environmental Policy, Conflict Studies, Asian Politics, Social Justice, Equality and Human Rights

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