Podcasts about bureaucratic power

Show Notes: [0:00] Welcome back to The Kathy Barnette Show. Kathy introduces guest, General Mike Flynn to the listeners[0:30] Kathy gives listeners a detailed bio of Mike Flynn[5:00] Flynn's early career and achievements[11:00] Flynn's Military Career and Role in the Obama Administration[15:00] Insights into National Security Challenges[18:00] The controversial exit from the Trump administration after only 22 days[29:30] “I wanted the listeners to hear [your side of the story] because again, from my awareness, you were the first casualty of the weaponization of our government.”[33:00] History of assassinations in America  [35:00] Reflections on political biases and challenges[41:10] “They fear me because they can't control me.”[52:30] The role and impact of the administrative state[55:00] Discussion on the future of American politics[1:05:00] Thanks for listening to this episode of The Kathy Barnette Show. Don't forget to subscribe for more insightful conversations, share this episode with those interested in understanding the deeper aspects of our government, and provide your feedback for future topics.

Though human rights monitors talk of fact-finding missions and reports, human rights facts are, like all social phenomena, not in fact found but made — through processes by which we come to know and talk about them. But how exactly does that happen? And how, by attending to these processes, might we arrive at a more robust understanding of human rights facts? These are the kinds of questions animating Ken MacLean's new book, Crimes in Archival Form: Human Rights, Fact Production and Myanmar (University of California Press, 2022). In this episode Ken joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to explore some of the answers he arrived at after years of research on the complexities of human rights fact production about crimes against humanity in eastern Myanmar, or Burma, and to discuss how it is possible to cast a critical eye over how human rights facts are made and not only remain engaged in causes for human rights, but to make them even stronger at a time that human rights facts are sorely tested, and the truth about facts has never been more contested. Like this interview? If so you might also be interested in: Lynette Chua, The Politics of Love in Myanmar: LGBT Mobilisation and Human Rights as a Way of Life Tyrell Haberkorn, In Plain Sight: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand Ken MacLean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam Nick Cheesman is Associate Professor, Department of Political & Social Change, Australian National University and Senior Fellow, Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, University at Buffalo (Fall 2022). He hosts the New Books in Interpretive Political & Social Science series on the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Though human rights monitors talk of fact-finding missions and reports, human rights facts are, like all social phenomena, not in fact found but made — through processes by which we come to know and talk about them. But how exactly does that happen? And how, by attending to these processes, might we arrive at a more robust understanding of human rights facts? These are the kinds of questions animating Ken MacLean's new book, Crimes in Archival Form: Human Rights, Fact Production and Myanmar (University of California Press, 2022). In this episode Ken joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to explore some of the answers he arrived at after years of research on the complexities of human rights fact production about crimes against humanity in eastern Myanmar, or Burma, and to discuss how it is possible to cast a critical eye over how human rights facts are made and not only remain engaged in causes for human rights, but to make them even stronger at a time that human rights facts are sorely tested, and the truth about facts has never been more contested. Like this interview? If so you might also be interested in: Lynette Chua, The Politics of Love in Myanmar: LGBT Mobilisation and Human Rights as a Way of Life Tyrell Haberkorn, In Plain Sight: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand Ken MacLean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam Nick Cheesman is Associate Professor, Department of Political & Social Change, Australian National University and Senior Fellow, Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, University at Buffalo (Fall 2022). He hosts the New Books in Interpretive Political & Social Science series on the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Though human rights monitors talk of fact-finding missions and reports, human rights facts are, like all social phenomena, not in fact found but made — through processes by which we come to know and talk about them. But how exactly does that happen? And how, by attending to these processes, might we arrive at a more robust understanding of human rights facts? These are the kinds of questions animating Ken MacLean's new book, Crimes in Archival Form: Human Rights, Fact Production and Myanmar (University of California Press, 2022). In this episode Ken joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to explore some of the answers he arrived at after years of research on the complexities of human rights fact production about crimes against humanity in eastern Myanmar, or Burma, and to discuss how it is possible to cast a critical eye over how human rights facts are made and not only remain engaged in causes for human rights, but to make them even stronger at a time that human rights facts are sorely tested, and the truth about facts has never been more contested. Like this interview? If so you might also be interested in: Lynette Chua, The Politics of Love in Myanmar: LGBT Mobilisation and Human Rights as a Way of Life Tyrell Haberkorn, In Plain Sight: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand Ken MacLean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam Nick Cheesman is Associate Professor, Department of Political & Social Change, Australian National University and Senior Fellow, Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, University at Buffalo (Fall 2022). He hosts the New Books in Interpretive Political & Social Science series on the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Though human rights monitors talk of fact-finding missions and reports, human rights facts are, like all social phenomena, not in fact found but made — through processes by which we come to know and talk about them. But how exactly does that happen? And how, by attending to these processes, might we arrive at a more robust understanding of human rights facts? These are the kinds of questions animating Ken MacLean's new book, Crimes in Archival Form: Human Rights, Fact Production and Myanmar (University of California Press, 2022). In this episode Ken joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to explore some of the answers he arrived at after years of research on the complexities of human rights fact production about crimes against humanity in eastern Myanmar, or Burma, and to discuss how it is possible to cast a critical eye over how human rights facts are made and not only remain engaged in causes for human rights, but to make them even stronger at a time that human rights facts are sorely tested, and the truth about facts has never been more contested. Like this interview? If so you might also be interested in: Lynette Chua, The Politics of Love in Myanmar: LGBT Mobilisation and Human Rights as a Way of Life Tyrell Haberkorn, In Plain Sight: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand Ken MacLean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam Nick Cheesman is Associate Professor, Department of Political & Social Change, Australian National University and Senior Fellow, Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, University at Buffalo (Fall 2022). He hosts the New Books in Interpretive Political & Social Science series on the New Books Network. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Though human rights monitors talk of fact-finding missions and reports, human rights facts are, like all social phenomena, not in fact found but made — through processes by which we come to know and talk about them. But how exactly does that happen? And how, by attending to these processes, might we arrive at a more robust understanding of human rights facts? These are the kinds of questions animating Ken MacLean's new book, Crimes in Archival Form: Human Rights, Fact Production and Myanmar (University of California Press, 2022). In this episode Ken joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to explore some of the answers he arrived at after years of research on the complexities of human rights fact production about crimes against humanity in eastern Myanmar, or Burma, and to discuss how it is possible to cast a critical eye over how human rights facts are made and not only remain engaged in causes for human rights, but to make them even stronger at a time that human rights facts are sorely tested, and the truth about facts has never been more contested. Like this interview? If so you might also be interested in: Lynette Chua, The Politics of Love in Myanmar: LGBT Mobilisation and Human Rights as a Way of Life Tyrell Haberkorn, In Plain Sight: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand Ken MacLean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam Nick Cheesman is Associate Professor, Department of Political & Social Change, Australian National University and Senior Fellow, Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, University at Buffalo (Fall 2022). He hosts the New Books in Interpretive Political & Social Science series on the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

Morgan Zegers is joined by Turning Point Ambassador, Micah Bock, to discuss how the legislature vested a significant amount of its powers to the executive branch. Our founders never envisioned additional executive arms of the government within three-letter bureaucratic agencies with potential to utilize force similar to that of the military.Hamilton believed that the people's confidence and obedience to the government would largely depend on the goodness or badness of the administration. Morgan and Micah disagree with his belief, faulting the current divisive two-party system where simply doing a good job is no longer enough to avoid criticism.Join Morgan Zegers weekly on Freedom Papers for a conversation that focuses on the necessity of America's most important manuscripts and the debates surrounding them!#TaxationIsTheft #FreedomPapers #iHeartAmerica #BigGovSucks #FederalistPapers

Morgan Zegers is joined by Turning Point Ambassador, Micah Bock, to discuss how the legislature vested a significant amount of its powers to the executive branch. Our founders never envisioned additional executive arms of the government within three-letter bureaucratic agencies with potential to utilize force similar to that of the military.Hamilton believed that the people's confidence and obedience to the government would largely depend on the goodness or badness of the administration. Morgan and Micah disagree with his belief, faulting the current divisive two-party system where simply doing a good job is no longer enough to avoid criticism.Join Morgan Zegers weekly on Freedom Papers for a conversation that focuses on the necessity of America's most important manuscripts and the debates surrounding them!#TaxationIsTheft #FreedomPapers #iHeartAmerica #BigGovSucks #FederalistPapers

In this episode, Michael speaks with Hallie Eakin, a professor in the School of Sustainability, College of Global Futures at Arizona State University. They discuss Hallie's research on social adaptation and vulnerability in Mexico, Latin America, and the American Southwest.  Hallie's website: https://sustainability-innovation.asu.edu/person/hallie-eakin/ Website for the megadapt project: http://megadapt.weebly.com/   References Eakin, Hallie, et al. 2016. “Adapting to Risk and Perpetuating Poverty: Household's Strategies for Managing Flood Risk and Water Scarcity in Mexico City.” Environmental Science & Policy 66 (December): 324–33. Book that Michael mentions on academic norms: Berg, Maggie, and Barbara K. Seeber. 2016. The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy. University of Toronto Press. Book by James Ferguson that Michael mentions: Ferguson, James. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine: 'development', Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. University of Minnesota Press.

In this episode, Michael spoke with Nejem Raheem. Nejem is an associate professor of economics at Emerson College. They talked about Nejem's work on ecosystem services and how he applied this framework to the traditional acequia irrigation systems of New Mexico. They discussed several important challenges that this approach faces, such as the incommensurability of different values and the downplaying of reciprocal relationships that many humans have with the environment. Nejem's website: https://www.emerson.edu/faculty-staff-directory/nejem-raheem   References: Raheem, N., S. Archambault, E. Arellano, M. Gonzales, D. Kopp, J. Rivera, S. Guldan, et al. 2015. “A Framework for Assessing Ecosystem Services in Acequia Irrigation Communities of the Upper Río Grande Watershed.” WIREs. Water 2 (5): 559–75. https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1091. Raheem, Nejem, and Danielle Schwarzmann. 2021. “Making Ecosystem Services Flexible: Why a Whole New Framework Is a Bad Idea for Practitioners.” WIREs. Water 8 (6). https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1553. Paper that Michael mentions on the “tribe of the Econ”: Leijonhufvud, Axel. 1973. “Life among the Econ.” Economic Inquiry 11 (3): 327–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7295.1973.tb01065.x. Book by James Ferguson that Michael mentions Ferguson, James. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine:'development', Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. University of Minnesota Press.

…as Leninist, Noah Smith as Burkean. We neoliberals and neoliberal-adjacents need to come up with five significant discrete policies to make the world economy work better to reduce not just extreme but regular poverty over the next generation, rather than rest on fictitious laurels…Max Roser: “Most people in the world live in poverty. 85% of the world live on less than $30 per day, two-thirds live on less than $10 per day, and every tenth person lives on less than $1.90 per day. In each of these statistics price differences between countries are taken into account to adjust for the purchasing power in each country…”References:Robert Allen: Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction James Ferguson: The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development”, Depolitization, & Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho James Ferguson: Expectations of Modernity: Myths & Meanings of Urban Life in the Zambian Copper Belt Jason Hickel: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality & its Solutions Noah Smith: Against Hickelism: Poverty Is Falling, & It Isn't Because of Free-Market Capitalism Karl Polanyi: The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time Max Roser & al.: Our World in Data &, of course:Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep (Remember: You can subscribe to this… weblog-like newsletter… here: There’s a free email list. There’s a paid-subscription list with (at the moment, only a few) extras too.) Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

How do states use cultural policy? In Culture as Renewable Oil: How Territory, Bureaucratic Power and Culture Coalesce in the Venezuelan Petrostate (Routledge, 2018), Penelope Plaza Azuaje, a lecturer in architecture at the University of Reading explores the case study of Venezuela to think through the relationship between states, territory, and culture. The book develops the idea of culture as a resource, showing the close relationship between oil and culture, and culture and oil, along with the history of the Venezuelan petrostate. Packed with detailed visual analysis, along with a rich theoretical framework covering urban development, bureaucracy, and power, the book will be essential reading for anyone concerned with the role of culture in the city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do states use cultural policy? In Culture as Renewable Oil: How Territory, Bureaucratic Power and Culture Coalesce in the Venezuelan Petrostate (Routledge, 2018), Penelope Plaza Azuaje, a lecturer in architecture at the University of Reading explores the case study of Venezuela to think through the relationship between states, territory, and culture. The book develops the idea of culture as a resource, showing the close relationship between oil and culture, and culture and oil, along with the history of the Venezuelan petrostate. Packed with detailed visual analysis, along with a rich theoretical framework covering urban development, bureaucracy, and power, the book will be essential reading for anyone concerned with the role of culture in the city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do states use cultural policy? In Culture as Renewable Oil: How Territory, Bureaucratic Power and Culture Coalesce in the Venezuelan Petrostate (Routledge, 2018), Penelope Plaza Azuaje, a lecturer in architecture at the University of Reading explores the case study of Venezuela to think through the relationship between states, territory, and culture. The book develops the idea of culture as a resource, showing the close relationship between oil and culture, and culture and oil, along with the history of the Venezuelan petrostate. Packed with detailed visual analysis, along with a rich theoretical framework covering urban development, bureaucracy, and power, the book will be essential reading for anyone concerned with the role of culture in the city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do states use cultural policy? In Culture as Renewable Oil: How Territory, Bureaucratic Power and Culture Coalesce in the Venezuelan Petrostate (Routledge, 2018), Penelope Plaza Azuaje, a lecturer in architecture at the University of Reading explores the case study of Venezuela to think through the relationship between states, territory, and culture. The book develops the idea of culture as a resource, showing the close relationship between oil and culture, and culture and oil, along with the history of the Venezuelan petrostate. Packed with detailed visual analysis, along with a rich theoretical framework covering urban development, bureaucracy, and power, the book will be essential reading for anyone concerned with the role of culture in the city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do states use cultural policy? In Culture as Renewable Oil: How Territory, Bureaucratic Power and Culture Coalesce in the Venezuelan Petrostate (Routledge, 2018), Penelope Plaza Azuaje, a lecturer in architecture at the University of Reading explores the case study of Venezuela to think through the relationship between states, territory, and culture. The book develops the idea of culture as a resource, showing the close relationship between oil and culture, and culture and oil, along with the history of the Venezuelan petrostate. Packed with detailed visual analysis, along with a rich theoretical framework covering urban development, bureaucracy, and power, the book will be essential reading for anyone concerned with the role of culture in the city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than forty year after its end the Vietnam War casts a long shadow over our understanding of Vietnam’s modern history. But the acute focus on the war has perhaps distorted our understanding of modern Vietnam. Christopher Goscha’s award-winning new book, Vietnam: A New History (Basic Books, 2016), brilliantly paints a picture of an ancient, diverse, and complex country which had already begun to modernize before the arrival of the French (let alone the Americans) and which was itself an imperial power. In Vietnam: a New History Ho Chi Minh and the communists were not the only anti-colonial nationalists, but rather one of a number of groups fired by the radical new idea of republicanism.Vietnam: a New History takes us beyond the bitter divide in Vietnamese historiography between the “orthodox” and “revisionist” interpretations of Vietnam’s modern history. Goscha provokes the reader to become aware of the haunting possibility that Vietnam’s modern history could have been different – which in turn stimulates the reader to think of new possibilities for a future Vietnam. Listeners of this episode might also enjoy listening to: Max Hastings, Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 (Harper, 2018)Ken Maclean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam (U of Wisconsin Press, 2013)Patrick Jory teaches Southeast Asian History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland. He can be reached at: p.jory@uq.edu.au. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than forty year after its end the Vietnam War casts a long shadow over our understanding of Vietnam’s modern history. But the acute focus on the war has perhaps distorted our understanding of modern Vietnam. Christopher Goscha’s award-winning new book, Vietnam: A New History (Basic Books, 2016), brilliantly paints a picture of an ancient, diverse, and complex country which had already begun to modernize before the arrival of the French (let alone the Americans) and which was itself an imperial power. In Vietnam: a New History Ho Chi Minh and the communists were not the only anti-colonial nationalists, but rather one of a number of groups fired by the radical new idea of republicanism.Vietnam: a New History takes us beyond the bitter divide in Vietnamese historiography between the “orthodox” and “revisionist” interpretations of Vietnam’s modern history. Goscha provokes the reader to become aware of the haunting possibility that Vietnam’s modern history could have been different – which in turn stimulates the reader to think of new possibilities for a future Vietnam. Listeners of this episode might also enjoy listening to: Max Hastings, Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 (Harper, 2018)Ken Maclean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam (U of Wisconsin Press, 2013)Patrick Jory teaches Southeast Asian History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland. He can be reached at: p.jory@uq.edu.au. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than forty year after its end the Vietnam War casts a long shadow over our understanding of Vietnam’s modern history. But the acute focus on the war has perhaps distorted our understanding of modern Vietnam. Christopher Goscha’s award-winning new book, Vietnam: A New History (Basic Books, 2016), brilliantly paints a picture of an ancient, diverse, and complex country which had already begun to modernize before the arrival of the French (let alone the Americans) and which was itself an imperial power. In Vietnam: a New History Ho Chi Minh and the communists were not the only anti-colonial nationalists, but rather one of a number of groups fired by the radical new idea of republicanism.Vietnam: a New History takes us beyond the bitter divide in Vietnamese historiography between the “orthodox” and “revisionist” interpretations of Vietnam’s modern history. Goscha provokes the reader to become aware of the haunting possibility that Vietnam’s modern history could have been different – which in turn stimulates the reader to think of new possibilities for a future Vietnam. Listeners of this episode might also enjoy listening to: Max Hastings, Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 (Harper, 2018)Ken Maclean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam (U of Wisconsin Press, 2013)Patrick Jory teaches Southeast Asian History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland. He can be reached at: p.jory@uq.edu.au. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than forty year after its end the Vietnam War casts a long shadow over our understanding of Vietnam’s modern history. But the acute focus on the war has perhaps distorted our understanding of modern Vietnam. Christopher Goscha’s award-winning new book, Vietnam: A New History (Basic Books, 2016), brilliantly paints a picture of an ancient, diverse, and complex country which had already begun to modernize before the arrival of the French (let alone the Americans) and which was itself an imperial power. In Vietnam: a New History Ho Chi Minh and the communists were not the only anti-colonial nationalists, but rather one of a number of groups fired by the radical new idea of republicanism.Vietnam: a New History takes us beyond the bitter divide in Vietnamese historiography between the “orthodox” and “revisionist” interpretations of Vietnam’s modern history. Goscha provokes the reader to become aware of the haunting possibility that Vietnam’s modern history could have been different – which in turn stimulates the reader to think of new possibilities for a future Vietnam. Listeners of this episode might also enjoy listening to: Max Hastings, Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 (Harper, 2018)Ken Maclean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam (U of Wisconsin Press, 2013)Patrick Jory teaches Southeast Asian History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland. He can be reached at: p.jory@uq.edu.au. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the course of the 1930s, Vietnamese author Vũ Trọng Phụng published eight novels, hundreds of works of narrative nonfiction, stories, plays, essays and articles. He was a best-selling writer in his own day who sharpened his acute literary talents, Peter Zinoman observes in the opening pages of Vietnamese Colonial Republican: The Political Vision of Vu Trong Phung (University of California Press, 2014), “as a lower-class, untraveled, half-educated, opium addicted, colonized subject from a remote outpost of France’s second-rate empire”. He died in 1939, aged just 28. Today he is remembered as a literary giant, for Zinoman, comparable to Orwell in the English-reading world. Like Orwell, he was a complex and defiant figure whose work crossed genres and drew deeply on his rich life experiences as well as his wide reading in literature, politics, and psychology. His views on a range of topics attracted heated debate in his own lifetime, in which he engaged vigorously. He had a persistent interest in sexuality and sexual promiscuity, and for this some critics labeled his work obscene. After his death, he was for a quarter century denounced and banned by the ruling communist party, before being rehabilitated in the 1990s. Peter Zinoman joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss Vũ Trọng Phụng’s life and oeuvre, why he is best characterized as a Vietnamese colonial republican, and how a reappraisal of his political interests and commitments through this category opens up opportunities for a more nuanced account of Vietnamese political history beyond the usual binaries of pro-French versus anti-French; collaborators versus nationalists; and capitalists versus communists. Listeners of this episode might also be interested in: * Eric Jennings, Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina * Ken Maclean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the course of the 1930s, Vietnamese author Vũ Trọng Phụng published eight novels, hundreds of works of narrative nonfiction, stories, plays, essays and articles. He was a best-selling writer in his own day who sharpened his acute literary talents, Peter Zinoman observes in the opening pages of Vietnamese Colonial Republican: The Political Vision of Vu Trong Phung (University of California Press, 2014), “as a lower-class, untraveled, half-educated, opium addicted, colonized subject from a remote outpost of France’s second-rate empire”. He died in 1939, aged just 28. Today he is remembered as a literary giant, for Zinoman, comparable to Orwell in the English-reading world. Like Orwell, he was a complex and defiant figure whose work crossed genres and drew deeply on his rich life experiences as well as his wide reading in literature, politics, and psychology. His views on a range of topics attracted heated debate in his own lifetime, in which he engaged vigorously. He had a persistent interest in sexuality and sexual promiscuity, and for this some critics labeled his work obscene. After his death, he was for a quarter century denounced and banned by the ruling communist party, before being rehabilitated in the 1990s. Peter Zinoman joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss Vũ Trọng Phụng’s life and oeuvre, why he is best characterized as a Vietnamese colonial republican, and how a reappraisal of his political interests and commitments through this category opens up opportunities for a more nuanced account of Vietnamese political history beyond the usual binaries of pro-French versus anti-French; collaborators versus nationalists; and capitalists versus communists. Listeners of this episode might also be interested in: * Eric Jennings, Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina * Ken Maclean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the course of the 1930s, Vietnamese author Vũ Trọng Phụng published eight novels, hundreds of works of narrative nonfiction, stories, plays, essays and articles. He was a best-selling writer in his own day who sharpened his acute literary talents, Peter Zinoman observes in the opening pages of Vietnamese Colonial Republican: The Political Vision of Vu Trong Phung (University of California Press, 2014), “as a lower-class, untraveled, half-educated, opium addicted, colonized subject from a remote outpost of France’s second-rate empire”. He died in 1939, aged just 28. Today he is remembered as a literary giant, for Zinoman, comparable to Orwell in the English-reading world. Like Orwell, he was a complex and defiant figure whose work crossed genres and drew deeply on his rich life experiences as well as his wide reading in literature, politics, and psychology. His views on a range of topics attracted heated debate in his own lifetime, in which he engaged vigorously. He had a persistent interest in sexuality and sexual promiscuity, and for this some critics labeled his work obscene. After his death, he was for a quarter century denounced and banned by the ruling communist party, before being rehabilitated in the 1990s. Peter Zinoman joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss Vũ Trọng Phụng’s life and oeuvre, why he is best characterized as a Vietnamese colonial republican, and how a reappraisal of his political interests and commitments through this category opens up opportunities for a more nuanced account of Vietnamese political history beyond the usual binaries of pro-French versus anti-French; collaborators versus nationalists; and capitalists versus communists. Listeners of this episode might also be interested in: * Eric Jennings, Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina * Ken Maclean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the course of the 1930s, Vietnamese author Vũ Trọng Phụng published eight novels, hundreds of works of narrative nonfiction, stories, plays, essays and articles. He was a best-selling writer in his own day who sharpened his acute literary talents, Peter Zinoman observes in the opening pages of Vietnamese Colonial Republican: The Political Vision of Vu Trong Phung (University of California Press, 2014), “as a lower-class, untraveled, half-educated, opium addicted, colonized subject from a remote outpost of France’s second-rate empire”. He died in 1939, aged just 28. Today he is remembered as a literary giant, for Zinoman, comparable to Orwell in the English-reading world. Like Orwell, he was a complex and defiant figure whose work crossed genres and drew deeply on his rich life experiences as well as his wide reading in literature, politics, and psychology. His views on a range of topics attracted heated debate in his own lifetime, in which he engaged vigorously. He had a persistent interest in sexuality and sexual promiscuity, and for this some critics labeled his work obscene. After his death, he was for a quarter century denounced and banned by the ruling communist party, before being rehabilitated in the 1990s. Peter Zinoman joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss Vũ Trọng Phụng’s life and oeuvre, why he is best characterized as a Vietnamese colonial republican, and how a reappraisal of his political interests and commitments through this category opens up opportunities for a more nuanced account of Vietnamese political history beyond the usual binaries of pro-French versus anti-French; collaborators versus nationalists; and capitalists versus communists. Listeners of this episode might also be interested in: * Eric Jennings, Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina * Ken Maclean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the course of the 1930s, Vietnamese author Vũ Trọng Phụng published eight novels, hundreds of works of narrative nonfiction, stories, plays, essays and articles. He was a best-selling writer in his own day who sharpened his acute literary talents, Peter Zinoman observes in the opening pages of Vietnamese Colonial Republican: The Political Vision of Vu Trong Phung (University of California Press, 2014), “as a lower-class, untraveled, half-educated, opium addicted, colonized subject from a remote outpost of France’s second-rate empire”. He died in 1939, aged just 28. Today he is remembered as a literary giant, for Zinoman, comparable to Orwell in the English-reading world. Like Orwell, he was a complex and defiant figure whose work crossed genres and drew deeply on his rich life experiences as well as his wide reading in literature, politics, and psychology. His views on a range of topics attracted heated debate in his own lifetime, in which he engaged vigorously. He had a persistent interest in sexuality and sexual promiscuity, and for this some critics labeled his work obscene. After his death, he was for a quarter century denounced and banned by the ruling communist party, before being rehabilitated in the 1990s. Peter Zinoman joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss Vũ Trọng Phụng’s life and oeuvre, why he is best characterized as a Vietnamese colonial republican, and how a reappraisal of his political interests and commitments through this category opens up opportunities for a more nuanced account of Vietnamese political history beyond the usual binaries of pro-French versus anti-French; collaborators versus nationalists; and capitalists versus communists. Listeners of this episode might also be interested in: * Eric Jennings, Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina * Ken Maclean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the course of the 1930s, Vietnamese author Vũ Trọng Phụng published eight novels, hundreds of works of narrative nonfiction, stories, plays, essays and articles. He was a best-selling writer in his own day who sharpened his acute literary talents, Peter Zinoman observes in the opening pages of Vietnamese Colonial Republican: The Political Vision of Vu Trong Phung (University of California Press, 2014), “as a lower-class, untraveled, half-educated, opium addicted, colonized subject from a remote outpost of France’s second-rate empire”. He died in 1939, aged just 28. Today he is remembered as a literary giant, for Zinoman, comparable to Orwell in the English-reading world. Like Orwell, he was a complex and defiant figure whose work crossed genres and drew deeply on his rich life experiences as well as his wide reading in literature, politics, and psychology. His views on a range of topics attracted heated debate in his own lifetime, in which he engaged vigorously. He had a persistent interest in sexuality and sexual promiscuity, and for this some critics labeled his work obscene. After his death, he was for a quarter century denounced and banned by the ruling communist party, before being rehabilitated in the 1990s. Peter Zinoman joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss Vũ Trọng Phụng’s life and oeuvre, why he is best characterized as a Vietnamese colonial republican, and how a reappraisal of his political interests and commitments through this category opens up opportunities for a more nuanced account of Vietnamese political history beyond the usual binaries of pro-French versus anti-French; collaborators versus nationalists; and capitalists versus communists. Listeners of this episode might also be interested in: * Eric Jennings, Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina * Ken Maclean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam Nick Cheesman is a fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He can be reached at nick.cheesman@anu.edu.au Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When a revolutionary party aims to take administrative control of the countryside, what kinds of devices, training and documents does it use? And what are their consequences? In The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), Ken MacLean explains that confounded by its inability to get a clear reading of its own practices, let alone those of the rural population, the party/state in Vietnam has since the late 1920s layered varied and oftentimes conflicting approaches to the management of information one on top of the other. Although the approaches have differed, all have been premised on a lack of trust: of villagers, of cadres, and of the integrity of the processes of data collection and interpretation themselves. The government of mistrust both produces and is reproduced by the forms of documentation on which it relies. Ken MacLean joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss the functions of “legibility devices” in state practice, the periodization of Vietnam’s modern history, the categories “exemplary” and “deviant”, the debate over reform from above and reform from below, and how the government of mistrust persists despite remaining partially illegible to itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When a revolutionary party aims to take administrative control of the countryside, what kinds of devices, training and documents does it use? And what are their consequences? In The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), Ken MacLean explains that confounded by its inability to get a clear reading of its own practices, let alone those of the rural population, the party/state in Vietnam has since the late 1920s layered varied and oftentimes conflicting approaches to the management of information one on top of the other. Although the approaches have differed, all have been premised on a lack of trust: of villagers, of cadres, and of the integrity of the processes of data collection and interpretation themselves. The government of mistrust both produces and is reproduced by the forms of documentation on which it relies. Ken MacLean joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss the functions of “legibility devices” in state practice, the periodization of Vietnam’s modern history, the categories “exemplary” and “deviant”, the debate over reform from above and reform from below, and how the government of mistrust persists despite remaining partially illegible to itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When a revolutionary party aims to take administrative control of the countryside, what kinds of devices, training and documents does it use? And what are their consequences? In The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), Ken MacLean explains that confounded by its inability to get a clear reading of its own practices, let alone those of the rural population, the party/state in Vietnam has since the late 1920s layered varied and oftentimes conflicting approaches to the management of information one on top of the other. Although the approaches have differed, all have been premised on a lack of trust: of villagers, of cadres, and of the integrity of the processes of data collection and interpretation themselves. The government of mistrust both produces and is reproduced by the forms of documentation on which it relies. Ken MacLean joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to discuss the functions of “legibility devices” in state practice, the periodization of Vietnam’s modern history, the categories “exemplary” and “deviant”, the debate over reform from above and reform from below, and how the government of mistrust persists despite remaining partially illegible to itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices