Fragments of the Present

A study of the transformation of southern Vietnam during the post-war period. Philip Taylor's ethnographic reserch in a southern village explored the local view of modernity. Here he shows the differing interpretations of the villagers' view of their own history and the sense of its decline. He presents ideas about colonization, social differentiation, the overlap of society and state, and the dilemmas of a southern village caught in such a culturally and historically huge moment as the attempted imposition of the northern Vietnamese political, economic and social identity after 1975.