“Apocalypse Now”

Abstract

“Apocalypse Now” is Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam in more ways than he understands. It isn't just a matter of the way the film's cost escalated to an astonishing $30 million, nor even the fact that the director didn't know how to end it. The movie is Coppola's Vietnam because it faithfully recapitulates the war in a much more basic way: it is filled with lies, megalomania, self-deception, high moral intent and real moral failure.     

Media Dissent and Peri-urban Land Struggles in Vietnam: The Case of the Văn Giang Incident

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of media-led dissent in Vietnam's contemporary land struggles. The analysis focuses on Vietnamese-language material published online by domestic and foreign media about the so-called V?n Giang incident – a high-profile land dispute that shook the country between 2009 and 2012. Looking at how the media treated this incident broadens studies of land struggles in Vietnam, which up till now have focused on peasants’ resistance strategies. This case not only shows that media practitioners engage in dissent with regard to land politics, but also that they engage in more straightforward criticism of the state and its corporate redevelopment partners than what most analyses of rural land struggles in Vietnam, centered on the micro-level and on “lawful” (O'Brien) forms of resistance, would lead one to believe. Illustrating this point, the author shows that media dissent throughout the V?n Giang land dispute openly challenged the government's justificatory discourse about “displacement for development” as well as the mismanagement of land resources on which political and economic elites rely to dispossess peasants from peri-urban lands. If it has not yet provoked major institutional changes, the media's contribution to land struggles has nevertheless succeeded in creating a genuine, national public debate on land politics in rapidly urbanizing Vietnam.     

RETHINKING ASIAN MOBILITIES

ABSTRACT

Vietnam's economic reforms have generated much praise for the country's rapid “opening” of its markets, as if the Vietnamese nation had previously existed in a state of isolation, closed to broader global influences and exchanges. Such discourses overlook the importance of transnational circulations of people, goods, technologies, and expertise during the socialist era that were vital to Vietnam's postwar national reconstruction and continue to play a role in post-socialist economic transformation today. This article traces the socialist pathways of labor migration between Vietnam and the former Soviet Bloc (specifically, East Germany) in the 1980s, mobilities that are generally absent in studies of contemporary export labor industries. Based on multi-sited ethnographic and archival research, the author follows Vietnamese workers first to the East German factories where they labored as “contract workers,” and then through their subsequent return and reintegration into Vietnamese society after the collapse of the Soviet Union. These mobilities bespeak of an alternative history and formation of diasporic communities that are little acknowledged or addressed in literature on labor migrations, and yet are important to understanding emerging forms of stratification today in Vietnam. Moreover, an analysis of early non-capitalist experiences with overseas labor regimes in the 1980s provides insights into contemporary Vietnamese governance practices that promote—rather uncritically, similar to other “emerging countries” —export labor as a nation-building strategy to reduce endemic poverty and develop a late socialist country.     

Between exception and rule

Abstract

This article challenges the all-too-common assumption in the literature on Vietnam that Ho Chi Minh City's political economy has evolved differently from the rest of the country since the economic reforms of the late 1980s. Questioning the association of Ho Chi Minh City with reform, the article charts the rise of new state business interests and the growth of the “gatekeeping” state in the city during the 1990s, as party-state institutions moved to exploit new opportunities that emerged with the dismantling of the central plan and the growth of the market economy. In light of this characterization, the article argues that rather than seeing the city as set apart from the rest of Vietnam we can speak of a “common reform political economy.” If correct, this position casts doubt on existing literature, which commonly explains Ho Chi Minh City's supposedly distinctive evolution under reform with reference to its unique pre-1975 history, especially the period from 1954 to 1975 when the country was divided along the seventeenth parallel. Asking how we might marry the fact ofHoChi Minh City's distinctive history with the reality of its un-distinctive evolution under reform, the article concludes by calling for a rethink not only of the legacy of 1954-75 for Ho Chi Minh City's latter-day development but also of the way in which the city's shorter period under central planning nevertheless left its mark.     

India and Vietnam compared: Family planning and everyda ylife

Abstract

In India and Vietnam, as in North America, the term “family planning” refers mainly to birth control. There is, however, a broader sense in which this term may be used, namely governmental planning for the welfare and happiness of families, and for democracy and social justice among their members. In this sense family planning is very prominent in Vietnam, but largely absent in India. It is in this sense that I prefer to use the term, although I will first discuss birth control in the overall context of planning for the size of families, as well as for the nation's population growth.     

Douglas Pike and the NLF

Abstract

Our tragically mistaken policy in Vietnam is in part at least the result of scholarly misapprehension of Vietnamese reality. Experts have not been totally lacking; but too many of these experts have distorted, consciously or unconsciously, the Vietnamese reality they report. Douglas Pike, our “most careful student of the Viet Cong” (Schlesinger, The Bitter Heritage, 36), is a case in point. His book, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (M.I.T. Press, 1966), received broad praise when it was issued. Bernard Fall called it “excellent” (Two Vietnams, 357); the APSR reviewer described it as “among the very, best (books) on any aspect of contemporary Vietnam” (American Political Science Review, LXI.2.495 (June 1967)). In this brief review of Viet Cong I shall indicate Pike's general bias, specific points in his argument, and objections to his framework.     

Books for review

The following books have been received for review:

“A Centuryof Exploration at Nineveh,” by R. Campbell Thompson and K. W. Hutchinson. 5¾"×8½". 146 pp. Illustrations and plans, (London : Luzac and Co. 1929. 7s. 6d.)

“Om Mani pudme hum” (Meine China u. Tibeterexpedition, 1925–28), by W. Filchner. 9" × 5½". 352 pp. 103 illustrations and a map. (Leipzig: Brockhaus. 1929.)

“Eabi'a the Mystic,” by Margaret Smith. 5¾"×8¾". xxv+219 pp. (Cambridge: University Press. 1929. 10s. 6d.)

“Modern Chinese Civilization.” Translation from the Erench by E. M. Jones. (London : Jonathan Cape.) “The Arab's Place in the Sun,” by Richard Coke. 6"×8¾". 318 pp. Illustrations. (London: Thornton Butterworth. 1929. 21s.)     

Yale

Abstract

During the summer, Yale CCAS will sponsor a series of 5 public lectures on Asian studies as well as a number of informal open seminars on the nature of Asian studies in the U.S., American foreign policy in Asia, comparative study of China and Vietnam, and other topics to be decided by planners and participants. All suggestions are welcomed. Plans are being made to show several films, including “Remember Vietnam” and “In the Year of the Pig.”     

“The greenery of well-engineered factory complexes”: Fiji's garment-led export industrialization strategy

Abstract

In February 1990 Navitilai Naisoro, the Sussex University-educated permanent secretary to the Fiji Ministry of Trade and Commerce, outlined to students at the University of the South Pacific in Suva his vision for Fiji's future. “My hope,” he said, “is that one day instead of seeing the greenery of sugar cane fields, we see the greenery of well-engineered factory complexes.” In 1990 he had every reason to believe that his dream was well on its way to fruition. As one of the self-proclaimed “New Fijian” economic managers appointed following the 1987 military coups, Naisoro had been at the forefront of a radical redirection in Fiji's economic policies. The coups had precipitated a massive currency devaluation of 35 percent, 12 percent inflation (unofficial estimates placed inflation at 26 percent), a new wage freeze, an upsurge in unemployment, and growing levels of poverty and destitution. Investment capital had dried up and the economy contracted, affecting Fiji's predominant import substitution industries in a way that high protective barriers could not assist.     

Circles of esteem,standard works,and Euphoric couplets

Abstract

Indonesian Studies as a field is strongly influenced by its own social character as a community of competing and cooperating scholars. Outside individual universities, the dominant social form is not the powerful professor, but rather the “circle of esteem,” a cluster of scholars who respect each other, cite each other's work, push each other's ideas into the academic marketplace, and, occasionally, rise to each other's defense. Circles of esteem arise because academic work has less to do with the industrial production of knowledge than with a constant search for novelty, which may arise from new sources or new uses of sources. Although novelty is prized, the value of new work is hard to judge, and it will be more easily accepted when backed by a circle of esteem. There are two effective ways to gain academic prestige outside a circle of esteem. The first is to write a standard work, a conservative strategy to create a work that will become citation fodder for others. The second way is to coin a “euphoric couplet,” which is an unexpected adjective-noun combination encapsulating a previously elusive analytical truth. Euphoric couplets are easy to remember, dissociated from theory, and intriguingly ambiguous.     

Communications

Abstract

“You don't have to be German to be a good German.” (Graffiti on the wall of Pupin Hall, Columbia University, April, 1972.)     

Pakistan: Crisis of a Frontline State

For more than 50 years, Pakistan has functioned as imperialism's “frontline state.” The military has remained the country's dominant political player and the basic precepts of bourgeois democracy remain conspicuous by their absence. Since the military coup in October 1999, the configuration of power in Pakistan has become subject to serious internal contradictions, in large part because of the “war on terror” and the loss of public prestige of the military. These contradictions have intensified in the wake of a lawyer-led street movement sparked by the military top brass' dismissal of the country's chief justice in March 2007. Since then the country's most well-known politician, Benazir Bhutto, has been assassinated and her Pakistan People's Party has swept to power in general elections held in February 2008. However, the crisis of the frontline state has not ebbed, and the oligarchic system of power remains subject to rupture.     

Extremists are extremely extreme

Abstract

China's foreign policy during the Cultural Revolution is usually treated as a non-event. Melvin Gurtov in his careful and extremely useful chronological account of China's foreign policy at this time (RAND, RM-5934-PR) still deems it “an aberrant episode” (VII, 83). He describes it as the manifestation of a power struggle between extreme young zealots and implacable older powerholders. “Substantive policy views” are almost beside the point (76). Far Eastern Economic Review (1968 Year Book) also characterizes Cultural Revolution foreign policy as one of “excesses” and “‘extreme’ behavior,” giving anti-foreignism as its content. Anti-foreignism is seen as a deeply felt belief that an attempt to borrow from foreigners has resulted in “manipulation and exploitation” by foreigners. Yung Ho, writing for the Union Research Institue's (URI) Communist China 1967, finds the essence of Mao's thought to be opposition to “anything foreign,” and China's attempt at “propagating Mao-Tse-tung's thought abroad” to be an aggressive policy “even worse than Hitler's rule,” one which inevitably produced setbacks which further isolate China (326–327).     

The Kurds in Iraq

The following briefs are edited versions of papers presented at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association in Anchorage, Alaska, November 8, 2003. The editors were Hakan Yavuz and Michael Gunter, whose papers are included below. Why Kurdish Statehood is Unlikely , Michael M. Gunter, professor of political science, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, Tennessee Transnational Networks: New Opportunities and Constraints for Kurdish Statehood , Denise Natali, visiting research fellow, Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI); director of WKI's transnational project Turkey and Kurdistan‐Iraq, 2003 , Robert Olson, professor of Middle East and Islamic history, University of Kentucky Could a Kurdish State Be Set Up in Iraq? , Nihat Ali Özcan, author of PKK (Kurdistan ýpçi Partisi) Tarihi, Ideolojisi ve Yönetimi (Ankara: Asam, 1999) Kurdish Reality in an Emerging Iraq , Khaled Salih, University of Southern Denmark Provincial Not Ethnic Federalism in Iraq , M. Hakan Yavuz, associate professor of political science, University of Utah     

Impressions of Indo‐China

The Mizan Newsletter. Issued monthly by the Central Asian Research Centre and St. Antony's College, Oxford. Price Ios. per month, or £6 per annum post free.

Official Histories of the Indian Armed Forces in the Second World War, 1939–45. Historical Section, India and Pakistan. Distributors, Orient Longmans.

Expansion of the Armed Forces and Defence Organization. Pp. 397. 15 charts and graphs; appendices and index. 45s.

Campaign in Western Asia. Pp. 461. 37 maps; plates, appendices and index. 45s.

Reconquest of Burma. Vol. I. Pp. 403. 36 maps and charts; appendices and index. 50s.

The North African Campaign, 1940–43. Pp. 515. 43 maps; plates, appendices and index. 50s.

The Origins of Russia. By George Vernadsky. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press. 1959. 8vo, cloth, pp. xi, 354, 3 figs.

Bibliography of Recent Soviet Source Material on Soviet Central Asia and the Borderlands.

Die Mongolei. Land, Volk und Wirtschaft der Mongolischen Volksrepublik. By Erich Thiel. Isar Verlag Munchen (German). Pp. 495. Ill., maps.

My Golden Road from Samarkand. By Jascha Golowanjuk. Translated by Frances Hogarth‐Gaute. Published by Geo. G. Harrap and Co., Ltd. Pp. 215. 18s.

Egypt in Transition. By Jean and Simonne Lacouture. Methuen and Co., Ltd. 532 pp. Illustrated, index. 35s.

Egypt in the Sudan, 1820–81. By Richard Hill. Issued under the auspices of Chatham House. Published by Oxford University Press. 1959. Pp. 188. Index; map; bibliography. 25s. in U.K.

The English Utilitarians and India. By Eric Stokes. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Pp.350. 45s.

India, Pakistan and the West. The Home University Library of Modern Knowledge. Oxford University Press. 1958. Pp. 242. Index. 7s. 6d.

The Oxford History of India. By the late Vincent A. Smith, C.I.E. Third edition, edited by Percival Spear. Oxford University Press. 1958. Pp. 849. Index; maps; illustrations. 42s.

Malaya. A Political and Economic Appraisal. By Lennox A. Mills. Oxford University Press. Pp. 234. Index. 30s.

Aden. By Sir Tom Hickinbotham. Constable. 1958. Pp. xii + 242. 13 plates; 1 map. Index. Price 21s.

The Near East. By William Yale. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 1958. Pp. 486 + xix.

Major Governments of Asia. Edited by George McT. Kahin. Published by Cornell University Press (Oxford University Press, London), 1958. Pp. 607. Index, maps, bibliographies. 45s.

Himmelstier und Gletscherlowe. Mythen, Sagen und Fabcln aus Tibet. In langjährigen völkerkundlichen Forschung unter den Amdo‐Tibetern aufgenom‐men von Prof. Dr. Matthias Hermanns, S.V.D., Bombay. “Das Gesicht der Völker,” der zentralasiatiske Kulturkreis, tibetische Dichtung. Im Erich Röth‐Verlag, Kassel, 1955. Pp. 260, with one frontispiece illustration, two maps and six artistic initials. DM. 4.80.

Amiran‐Darejaniani: A Cycle of Mediæval Georgian Tales ascribed to Mose Khoneli, translated by R. H. Stevenson. Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press. 1958. 8vo, cloth, pp. xxxiii, 240.

The Rebel Emperor. By Lady Flavia Anderson. Published by Gollancz. Pp. 356. Index; biblio. 25s.

Mountains and a Monastery. By Peter Holmes. Published by Geoffrey Bles, Ltd. Pp. 191. Ill.; index. 21s.

Gateway to the Khyber. By Robin Bryans. Robert Hale. 1959. 8¾” × 5¾”. Pp. 173. Ill., index. 18s.

Preface to Cairo. A Survey of pre‐Cairo in history and legend. By Kenneth P. Kirkwood. Mutual Press Ltd., Ottawa.     

“Making the Crooked Straight”: China's Grand Strategy of “Peaceful Rise” and its Central Asian Dimension

Abstract

This article argues that China's foreign policy since 1991 has been guided by the evolution of a grand strategy of “peaceful rise” that seeks to ensure China's smooth transition to great power status. Moreover, it suggests that a strategic preoccupation with Central Asia has become an important expression of this grand strategy. Framing these arguments is a third overarching one that postulates that China's foreign policy in Central Asia is not only intimately related to the strategy of “peaceful rise” but also to a particular, historically and geopolitically informed narrative of China's “Inner Asian” power.     

DIALOGUE WITH THE WEST

Abstract

This portrayal of China by one of the most respected intellectuals ever to emerge from the shadowy labyrinth of the American diplomatic establishment mirrors twenty years of concentrated work by American China scholars. Not every China expert would accept all of Kennan's assumptions or express them in such strident form. Yet over the last two decades the China profession has evolved a style of thought, a mode of asking questions, which has largely substantiated such views in both the public and scholarly worlds. The majority of China watchers have pleaded for “tolerance” and “patience” towards the People's Republic as she gradually learns, aided by a flexible American containment policy, to “adjust” to the “international community of nations” and the “rationalizing” qualities implicit in the “modernization” process. While protesting against certain aspects of America's foreign policy toward China, however, their thought and work has reinforced, at times deepened, the ideological justifications that support America's role in Asia and her attitudes towards China.     

A tribute to Leo Cawley, 1944–1991

Abstract

In the late sixties, after his tour of active duty as a marine in Vietnam from 1965 to 66, Leo Cawley returned to the United States and became an economics major at Columbia University. There he joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the Columbia University chapter of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS), whose national organization founded the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. In March and April of 1972 he traveled to the People's Republic of China with the second CCAS delegation. Leo reviewed Waldemar A. Nielson's The Big Foundations in volume 6, number 3 of BCAS in 1974, and from 1985 to 1987 he was book review editor for BCAS. Leo also contributed money to BCAS even in the last year of his life when his medical expenses were skyrocketing. Above all, however, Leo stood for everything BCAS has stood for over the years, and he was a close friend and inspiration to some of BCAS's staunchest supporters.     

Reflections on the implications of the Vietnam Caucus

Abstract

It is revealing that a Vietnam Caucus held in March 1968 should end its meeting by beginning an evaluation of the professional “conscience” of Asian scholars. That it took this war to raise the latent problems in the profession is itself a depressing commentary on the state of the field. But the desire on the part of some individuals to create a nationwide inter-university student-faculty Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars to pose and then seek to resolve these problems fulfills one of the organizers' hopes.     

What happened in Korea? Rethinking Korean history 1945–1953

Abstract

The Pueblo incident was a stunning reminder of the hysteria and racism associated with the word Korea in the U.S. In spite of Vietnam and the great changes that have taken place within American society, the U.S. government and the military had little trouble in resuscitating the spectre of “brainwashing” and torture. The most diabolical cunning was attributed to the Koreans, who had legally captured the Pueblo and its crew. But as though at the touch of a switch, the American media and much of the nation again began to call for blood as they had done in the years 1950 to 1953. It would be a mistake to underestimate the success of America's campaign of vilification against the Korean people and the Korean revolutionary movement. At times the phobia reaches absurd proportions.