Hy Van Luong - Böcker

The purpose of this volume is to highlight the impacts on civic engagement of social capital, and its various component parts (trust, norms, networks and associations), in diverse parts of Asia. Addressing the pressing need for improved governance within the spatial, political and cultural realities in the rapidly transforming landscapes of Asia, the contributors to the book bring together interdisciplinary work that focuses on the ways in which civic engagement can link with social capital building. The goal of this volume is to inspire policy that recognizes that a vibrant society with access to rich stores of positive social capital requires civil society, alternate civilities and the state. The result is a dialogue on the interplay of social capital and civic engagement in socio-political contexts quite different from those found in the West. This book contributes to current discussions about the nature of social relations and their connection to politics and change and offers a unique lens into the validity of these important concepts in contemporary research across a variety of Asian settings. It will be of interest to social scientists across the board, especially those with an interest in Asia and Asian development.

Tradition, Revolution, and Market Economy in a North Vietnamese Village examines both continuity and change over eight decades in a small rural village deep in the North Vietnamese countryside. Son Duong, a community near the Red River, experienced firsthand the ravages of French colonialism and the American war, as well as the socialist revolution and Vietnam's recent reintegration into the global market economy. In this revised and expanded edition of his 1992 book, Revolution in the Village, Hy V. Luong draws on newly available archival documents in Hanoi, narratives by villagers, and three field seasons from the late 1980s to 2006. He situates his finely drawn village portrait within the historical framework of the Vietnamese revolution and the recent reforms in Vietnam. The richness of the oral testimony of surviving villagers enables the author to follow them throughout political and economic upheavals, compiling a wealth of original data as they actively restructure their daily lives. In his analysis of the implications of these data for theoretical models of agrarian transformation, Luong argues that local traditions have played a major role in shaping villagers' responses to colonialism, socialist policies, and the global market economy. His work, spanning eight decades of sociocultural change, will interest students and scholars of the Vietnamese revolution, agrarian politics, peasant societies, French colonialism, and socialist transformation.