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Southeast Asia
Claire Edington
University of California, San Diego, United States
Martha Lincoln
San Francisco State University, United States
Ann Marie Leshkowich
College of the Holy Cross, United States
Claire Edington
University of California, San Diego, United States
Anh Sy Huy Le
Michigan State University, United States
Martha Lincoln
San Francisco State University, United States
Allen Tran
Bucknell University, United States
Ann Marie Leshkowich
College of the Holy Cross, United States
Session Abstract: From the pre-colonial period to the present day, projects to discipline individual bodies and to manage populations have been central, constitutive aspects of state power and social norms in Vietnam. During the socialist period, these initiatives had profound ideological and material effects on every aspect of everyday life, from consumption to housing to education. Area studies scholarship has addressed aspects of state-led biopolitical projects -- for example, the socialist state’s historic and contemporary efforts to shape and manage medical practices and institutions and to influence reproductive decision-making and family life. This scholarship offers intriguing clues about how biopower has functioned in Vietnamese history and society. However, a comprehensive account of Vietnamese state biopolitics in any historic period has yet to be written.
Together the panel’s four papers - on the biopolitics of drug addiction in French Indochina; debates over the repatriation of dead bodies in French Cochinchina; psychopharmaceutical adherence in contemporary Ho Chi Minh City; and state-guided efforts at poverty management and reduction in post-transition Vietnam - address the development of a distinct Vietnamese biopolitics from different disciplinary and historical perspectives. In particular, this panel asks: How would perspectives on Vietnamese history and society shift if we were to reorganize our thinking to place biopolitics at the center of critical analysis? How can debates around biopower - which largely remain Eurocentric - be broadened by an engagement with Vietnam? How can the concept of biopolitics itself be shifted and expanded by insights from Vietnamese history?
Paper Presenter: Claire Edington – University of California, San Diego
Paper Presenter: Anh Sy Huy Le – Michigan State University
Paper Presenter: Martha Lincoln – San Francisco State University
Paper Presenter: Allen Tran – Bucknell University
