Waving the Flag of Dien Bien Phu: State Formation in Modern Vietnam

Christian C. Lentz, Visiting Scholar, Department of Sociology, Duke University.

Dien Bien Phu is most commonly remembered as the site of Vietnam's military victory over the French in 1954. Like monuments in the valley at sunset, this memory casts a long shadow over attempts to uncover an alternative history of Dien Bien as place, as home to people with their own, everyday struggles. This talk will shed light on a small portion of that history by exploring a state effort in 1960 to mobilize its people. Called "Waving the flag of Dien Bien Phu, marching on many fronts," the campaign invoked the battle's memory to advance a variety of revolutionary political and economic goals. How the campaign unfolded was particular to its cultural and ecological setting in the highlands of Southeast Asia. Viewed as a social process, the campaign provides opportunity to explore enduring themes of state-society relations, the construction of memory, and the regulation of space.

Christian C. Lentz is a PhD candidate in the Department of Development Socioloy at Cornell University. He holds a BA in Southeast Asian Studies from Cornell University and a Masters in Environmental Science from Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. His interests include state formation and agrarian change in Vietnam and Indonesia. He currently resides in Durham, NC where he is a visiting scholar in the Department of Sociology at Duke University.

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