Please find below some details on the forthcoming Vietnam Update at the Australian National University.
Registration is required for audience members and can be done through the conference website: http://bellschool.anu.edu.au/news-events/events/5630/2017-vietnam-update-politics-life
2017 Vietnam Update: The Politics of Life
20-21 November 2017
Australian National University, Canberra
Vietnamese today are questioning ends and means, particularly as they relate to human security. Thirty years after the country’s communist leadership decisively embraced market integration policies, poverty is declining, incomes are rising, and lives and livelihoods are being transformed. However, as regional tensions create new uncertainties, citizens are preoccupied with trust, accountability and control as they grapple with widening social disparities, opaque governance, environmental insecurity and increasing life complexities. As debates rage about how best to safeguard the nation’s wellbeing, Vietnamese show that they thirst for transparency, fairness and reliable ways to assert control over life. Increasingly, questions are being asked as to whether life might be lived in a better way.
The 2017 Vietnam Update is dedicated to examining the politics of life. During a two-day public workshop in Canberra on 20-21 November 2017, sixteen academic specialists will analyze significant developments in Vietnam’s society, politics and international relations. Presenters will document the challenges to life posed by regional power disparities, social inequalities, environmental destruction and state incapacity. They trace new varieties of political activism and examine the strategies citizens utilize to mitigate risk and suture gaps through mutual assistance and security from below. As Vietnamese people confront new threats, the papers show that they also endeavour to wrest control over life through deliberative modes of living and being.
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
DAY 1 – MONDAY 20 NOVEMBER
Conference Opening
Michael Wesley, Dean, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific
Political Review: Vietnam in 2017
Carlyle Thayer, The University of New South Wales, Canberra
Vietnam’s Economy in 2017 and Beyond
Vu Thanh Tu Anh, Fulbright School of Public Policy and Management, Vietnam
On the Political Economy of Rice Policy in Vietnam
Hoa-Thi-Minh Nguyen and Do Lien Huong, Australian National University (with Adrian Kay, Tran Cong Thang and Nguyen Thi Cam Nhung)
The Dynamics of Inequality in Vietnam
Nguyen Tran Lam, Oxfam, Vietnam, Nguyen Viet Cuong, Mekong Development Research Institute and Hoang Xuan Thanh, Ageless Consultants, Vietnam
Micro-politics of Contemporary Land Disputes in Vietnam
Andrew Wells-Dang, Oxfam, Vietnam
Environment and Conservation: People, State and Civic Space in Vietnam
Hiep Duc Nguyen, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City
I just want Cam Thanh to be Beautiful like Cam Thanh: Organic Farming as Life
Ashley Carruthers, Australian National University, and Dang Huong Giang, Action for the City
Migration as a Survival Strategy in a Multi-ethnic Village of the Mekong Delta since 1975
Hisashi Shimojo, Kyoto University
Illicit and Important: State, Industry and Local Livelihoods in the Mekong Cross Border Timber Trade
Phuc Xuan To and Sango Mahanty, Australian National University
DAY 2 – TUESDAY 21 NOVEMBER
Biopower with Socialist Characteristics: Poverty and Welfare in Post-Transition Vietnam
Martha Lincoln, San Francisco State University
Overload: The Crisis of Overcrowding in Vietnam’s Leading Hospitals
Maria Stalford, Harvard University
Elderly Women’s Buddhist ‘Work’ as Continuity of Care and the Enchantment of Old Age in Contemporary Urban Vietnam
Le Hoang Anh Thu, Hoa Sen University, Ho Chi Minh City
The Troubled Generation: Urban Youth, Vietnamese Buddhism, and the Biopolitics of Precarious Mindfulness
Dat Manh Nguyen, Boston University
Hoa Hao Herbal Medicine and the Production of Merit
Vo Duy Thanh, Australian National University
Mediated Intimacy: Fandom as a Way of Life
Ha Hoang, Western Sydney University
Floating Academy: The Precarious Lives of Foreign Academics at an International University in Vietnam
Jodie-Lee Trembath, Australian National University
Policing Vietnam: An Ethnography of Police Culture, Norms and Practices in Transition
Melissa Jardine, University of New South Wales Law School
Plenary Discussion
CONFERENCE WEBSITE
http://bellschool.anu.edu.au/news-events/events/5630/2017-vietnam-update-politics-life