Vietnam’s Dissidents

This book is the first ethnography on Vietnam’s contemporary dissident movement. As a country that became known and is still remembered as one of the last remnants of Communist revolutions, Vietnam has managed to lift itself from one of the poorest war-torn post-colonies to one of the fastest growing market economies in Southeast Asia. Yet, while holding on to the legacy of a communist-led liberation movement, the present-day Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) finds itself subject to political challenges from below. In recent years, dissident voices critical of the party-state's malgovernance over social, economic and environmental issues have mushroomed across classes, generations and provinces. Based on extensive ethnographic data, this book explores distinct political practices and political ideas of Vietnam's dissidents. It examines different anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian practices of democracy, labour, peasant and religious activists and reveals that anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian practices are—at times—motivated by nationalist, anti-communist and statist ideas and ideologies. Understanding this dissonance between political practices and political ideas within the context of global capitalism and coloniality lies at the heart of this book.