Abstract
Between 1961 and 1971 millions of tonnes of chemical defoliant code name Agent Orange were sprayed onto the forests and cultivable land in both Central and Southern Viet Nam in the focal points of resistance against the occupying US forces. The policy was to remove the dense forest coverage which hid the members of the People’s Army of Viet Nam and destroy the land and crops feeding the Viet Nam population. The devastation which ensued involved severely damaging not only the land on which the population depended but also the capacity of men and women to reproduce the next generation. Here we consider Shiva’s arguments with respect to the bifurcation of the control of human beings and their physical and biological reproduction. This chapter will focus principally on the experience of women of the resistance in attempting to avoid chemical contamination and its impact on their lives and those of their family and community in the post war period.
All information and data in this chapter come from primary sources arising from research undertaken in Viet Nam 2016–2018 unless otherwise stated. All quotes are from interviews with female respondents—women of the resistance.
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Notes
- 1.
Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability and Peace, p. 33, Zed Books: London.
- 2.
- 3.
See chapters in this volume by Romm and Lethole and McIntyre-Mills on Systemic Ethics for an in-depth consideration of ethnic cultural links, influences, and practices of the exercise of a duty of care to the biophysical world.
- 4.
- 5.
This term was first used by Professor Arthur W. Galston at a Conference on War and National Responsibility where he proposed the development of an international agreement for the prohibition of ‘ecocide’ (Weisberg, 1970).
- 6.
This included the North Vietnamese Army or (NVA) and the Liberation Army of South Viet Nam (LASV). The latter frequently referred to as the Viet Cong by the American Army.
- 7.
Interview Da Nang, July 2018.
- 8.
Not all spraying was undertaken by planes but also on the ground where soldiers would hand spray small areas from backpacks or trucks around base perimeters or roads.
- 9.
Interview, Hue, July 2016.
- 10.
Interview, Mekong Delta, January 2016.
- 11.
Interview, Hue, July 2016.
- 12.
Interview, Hanoi, July 2018.
- 13.
Interview, Hue, July 2017.
- 14.
Interview, Hanoi, July 2016.
- 15.
Interview, Hanoi, July 2017.
- 16.
Shiva successfully sued Monsanto in 1999.
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Corcoran-Nantes, Y. (2021). Agent Orange, Women of the Resistance and Reproductive Rights: A Tale of Deliberate Human and Environmental Devastation in Vietnam. In: McIntyre-Mills, J.J., Corcoran-Nantes, Y. (eds) From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships. Contemporary Systems Thinking. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6884-2_23
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