Special Focus on Post-War Vietnam: Introduction: Brokering Peace: Post-War Vietnam in Anthropological Perspective

Abstract

Soon after the end of the Vietnam War, in the central Vietnamese province of Ha Tinh, provincial officials reported a rise in social malaise, including such anti-social acts as the pilfering of communal resources and widespread non-compliance with state orders, culminating in the detonation of homemade bombs that killed a police chief in the late 1990s. During the height of the Vietnam conflict in the 1960s and 1970s the people in the highland areas of the province had endured heavy sacrifices as they answered the call of their leaders to maintain the famed Ho Chi Minh Trail supply route to southern Vietnam (McElwee, this edition).