Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Vietnam (ii)

from sociologist Jonathan D. London and Vietnamese studies

Colors of Asia, the return address said, in Ithaca where I began using Vietnamese language in class with authors Barbara Cohen, Bob Brigham, and Dana Sachs over the summer of 1991. Keith Taylor explained to us how dissatisfied he was with his history The Birth of Vietnam.

We watched the anthropologist Tran Van Thuy’s movie How to Behave from the market transformation going on in Viet Nam. Barbara had served there as a physician during the war. Bob already had visited as an historian on friendship diplomacy. Dana had shot a movie there with her sister.

After I went back to work in New Haven, David Gelertner ignited one of Ted’s bombs in the mail, at his office just around the corner from mine at the Yale Council on Southeast Asia Studies. The bursary student there went on to be professionally murdered, as did the Washington lawyer who once came to town to help our sister city initiative with Hue.

I don’t open every package. But I was looking out for this one. It’s got a topic, Viet Nam, deep and wide in coverage within the borders of the nation, rather than its network abroad where I live.

It’s got an author. Of the about 40 authors of 28 numbered articles I know personally 13, a low percentage for me. Had I been going to meetings this century I would know them all, the network of Vietnamese studies. I do know the sole author in the publishing contract,

the one on the cover of the book. Jonathan London earned his doctorate at Madison where the sociologists pride themselves on mastering in coherence a body of incommensurable traditions about human life. In anthropology at Chapel Hill we do this by focusing on our species.

Sociologists focus instead on our distinctive practice among species, institutions, the accumulating and enduring social arrangements that average risk across generations and populations. As all the humans of anthropology are homologous while we differ, so too are all our distinct institutions.

What is most interesting and important about Viet Nam among the nations? That Viet Nam has come into being. Keith is one of many historians who will tell you all about it. You really need to know that stuff if only, as he did for us that summer, unlearn all the unknown knowns.

Who is responsible for this new nation? The Viet Cong, of course, the Vietnamese Communist Party, known in this book as the CPV. After a preface on how to study Viet Nam, Jonathan kicks it off with a chapter on this institution, the one that defends and penetrates all the others of the book.

This was the second Viet Nam letter of 4 so far addressed to The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Vietnam, edited by Jonathan D. London. The first went out on January 5, 2023 and the third on February 10, 2023.

The fourth, on April 14, 2023, was also the first of 1 so far on The Communist Party of Vietnam, also by Jonathan D. London.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.