Indigenizing Colonial Modernity in Nam Bo

Abstract

The Vietnamese economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s were accompanied by a number of significant reversals among state social scientists writing on the legacy of pre-socialist alternatives in southern Vietnam. After the failed attempt to carry the momentum of military victory into the project of post-war economic development, Vietnam's communist leaders identified "voluntarism" and lack of attention to "objective conditions" as the key weaknesses of their economic unification policies. To revitalize the project of constructing socialism, social science researchers were charged with reinventorying the distinctive attributes which the area of Vietnam below the 17th parallel, could contribute to the nation's reforms. Show more