Development in Spirit: Religious Transformation and Everyday Politics in Vietnam’s Highlands, written by Seb Rumsby

Seb Rumsby has written a brilliant, engaging and provocative contribution to topical debates about religion and development.The book takes large-scale Hmong conversion to Protestant Christianity in the Vietnam highlands as a starting point to reconsider religious entanglements with economic, political and social change.Viewing this conversion as an "alternative route to development" (p.7), Development in Spirit provides a detailed and sophisticated examination of religious transformation.Rumsby's research is shaped by the everyday political economy (EPE) approach, which emphasises the importance of actors and agency in people's engagements with dominant forces such as the state or market.This approach focuses attention on Hmong experiences, rationalities and ambitions.Rather than viewing the Hmong as duped by more powerful actors, Rumsby seeks to show how the Hmong have actively navigated their own paths to development.Rumsby draws on James Scott to frame religion as laden with potential for everyday acts of political mobilisation and resistance.The EPE approach requires a detailed understanding of everyday economic and political practices.The argument in this book builds on extensive qualitative research among Hmong communities.Rumsby's narration of the context of Hmong conversion is informative, including analysis of complex historical and political dynamics.Rumsby does not see conversion to Christianity as imposed by outside actors nor as a mode of colonisation.Importantly, the Hmong in Vietnam did not convert as a direct consequence of missionary involvement.Instead, the catalyst for conversion was the Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC), which began its radio broadcasts in the Hmong language in the 1960s.Rumsby argues that these radio broadcasts found a fertile and eager audience due to a range of interconnected factors, including a pervasive Hmong sense of backwardness in relation to the ethnic Kinh majority, Vietnamese state projects of territorialisation and development, and widely circulating enthusiasm for the "will to improve" (a term borrowed from Tania Murray Li).Rumsby argues that the Hmong have not traditionally distinguished secular and religious matters, and it is therefore not surprising that conversion to Christianity similarly blurs any attempt at imposing a secularist dividing line.While development is part of the story that leads to Hmong conversion, Development in Spirit is primarily dedicated to exploring the development effects that emerge from this religious transformation.Over consecutive