Book Launch Talk Development in Spirit: Religious Transformation and Everyday Politics among the Hmong in Vietnam’s Highlands

Over the past 35 years, Vietnam’s northern highlands have witnessed remarkable mass Protestant conversions among the 1.6 million Hmong who sit near the bottom of Vietnam’s ethno-religious hierarchy. This religious transformation has intersected (and sometimes conflicted) with state-led development agendas and upland marketisation to rapidly transform Hmong society. This lecture explores the religious, political and economic imperatives for mobility as Hmong Protestants migrate both within and across borders to flee persecution, attend religious activities and escape poverty amidst shifting livelihoods opportunities. Informed by both ethnographic fieldwork and quantitative data analysis, I argue that hundreds of thousands of ordinary ethnic Hmong Protestants subtly resist, evade and/or support religious policies to carve out ‘alternative routes to development’ which have unintended geopolitical consequences, collectively undermine state legitimacy and can be credited with substantial policy changes over time.