New Books In Southeast Asian Studies

In The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization (Oxford UP, 2024), Kevin D. Pham introduces Vietnamese political thought to debates in political theory, showing how Vietnamese thinkers challenge Western conventional wisdom. He traces an intergenerational debate among six influential figures in colonial Vietnam. These figures had competing visions for how the Vietnamese should respond to French colonial domination, what the Vietnamese should do with their traditions given the influx of political and social ideas from the West, and how they should harness feelings of national shame to construct national dignity. Their answers offer surprising lessons for how we in the West can enhance our understanding of decolonization, shame, dignity, and cross-cultural engagement. Kevin D. Pham is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He explores the history of political thought, particularly how thinkers outside "the West" have conceptualized democracy and anticolonia