Minorities at Large: New Approaches to Minority Ethnicity in Vietnam

This collection represents a new approach to minority ethnicity in Vietnam. Drawing on ethnographic and historical research in the highlands and lowlands, eight essays provide rich descriptions of a wide variety of ethnic minority experiences. They offer provocative analyses that challenge stereotypes about minority groups in scholarship and official development policy. While powerful forces such as warring armies, the socialist state, or the market economy often are said to have undermined the livelihoods and identities of once-autonomous peoples, these studies reveal how peoples at the periphery of the modern nation state nonetheless have been active in the transformation and redefinition of their worlds. The chapters situate contemporary minority transnational networks in the context of older translocal affiliations, identities, and livelihood strategies. In contrast with the attention devoted in previous studies to the state ethnic classification project, the studies shed light on popular identifications in circulation, and transition, among ethnic minorities themselves.