Description:
Ordinary people's everyday political behavior can have a huge impact on national policy: that is the central conclusion of this book on Vietnam. In telling the story of collectivized agriculture in that country, Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet uncovers a...
Brief description: Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet is Professor and head of the Department of Political and Social Change at The Australian National University. He is the author of Everyday Politics in the Philippines: Class and Status Relations in a Central Luzon Village and The Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines.
Review Quotes:
"Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet again enlarges our understanding of subaltern agency and politics. This splendid volume is a great tribute to the capacity of Vietnamese villagers to doggedly defend their basic interests and restrict the options of elites. The Power of Everyday Politics is also a great tribute to Kerkvliet as the political analyst and ethnographer of this important struggle. It is an essential contribution to Southeast Asian studies and to our understanding of socialist bloc agriculture and of the 'other' struggle of the Vietnamese people."
--James C. Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Anthropology and Director, Program in Agrarian Studies, Yale University