Between War and the State: Civil Society in South Vietnam, 1954–1975 - Softcover

Nguyen-Marshall, Van

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501770586 ISBN 13: 9781501770586

Publisher: Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2023

Synopsis

In Between War and the State, Van Nguyen-Marshall examines an array of voluntary activities, including mutual-help, professional, charitable, community development, student, women's, and rights organizations active in South Vietnam from 1954 to 1975. By bringing focus to the public lives of South Vietnamese people, Between War and the State challenges persistent stereotypes of South Vietnam as a place without society or agency. Such robust associational life underscores how an active civil society survived despite difficulties imposed by the war, government restrictions, economic hardship, and external political forces. These competing political forces, which included the United States, Western aid agencies, and Vietnamese communist agents, created a highly competitive arena wherein the South Vietnamese state did not have a monopoly on persuasive or coercive power. To maintain its influence, the state sometimes needed to accommodate groups and limit its use of violence. Civil society participants in South Vietnam leveraged their social connections, made alliances, appealed to the domestic and international public, and used street protests to voice their concerns, secure their interests, and carry out their activities.

About this title

About the Author

Van Nguyen-Marshall is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Trent University. She is the author of In Search of Moral Authority.

Edition details

• Publisher: Southeast Asia Program Publications
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1501770586
• ISBN 13: 9781501770586
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240