Unearthing Politics / Progress in Mathematics (PDF)

"Unearthing Politics: Environment and Contestation in Post-Socialist Vietnam is the best single study of domestic Vietnamese politics during the post-reform era. Through an exhaustive examination of the contest over Chinese bauxite mining in the Central Highlands, this book sheds a bright light on the emergence in late communist Vietnam of new flashpoints for political conflict, novel modes of political organization and innovative forms of political struggle. Unearthing Politics will be a required reading for scholars of environmental conflict, late-communist political culture and contemporary Vietnamese studies."

- Peter Zinoman, author of Vietnamese Colonial Republican: The Political Vision of Vu Trong Phung, History, UC Berkeley

"The bauxite mining controversy in 2009 opened up an unprecedented era of contentious politics and heralded the rise of a civil society in Vietnam that continues to challenge the domination of the communist regime today. As the first detailed account of this event, Morris-Jung offers a compelling analysis of how politics in one of the few remaining communist states has evolved in the last decade."

- Tuong Vu, author of Vietnam's Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology, Political Science, University of Oregon

"Morris-Jung unpacks Vietnam's political economic transition through a critical moment: that of public opposition to the idea and practice of bauxite mining by Chinese companies in post-reform Vietnam. The book's echoes of and divergences from socio-environmental politics elsewhere in the expanding world of Chinese investment, development, and extraction, make this an extremely important read."

- Nancy Lee Peluso, co-editor of New Frontiers of Land Control, Environmental Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley

This book examines an important socio-political challenge to the ruling party regime in Vietnam that emerged within a controversy over bauxite mining in the late 2000s. Highlighting a confluence of trends disrupting the nation's "encrusted politics," this book opens up a space for in-depth study of the most sensitive issues, bravest activists, and most off limit struggles within the Vietnamese party-state today.

Jason Morris-Jung is Associate Faculty at the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS).