ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the two case studies of the saola and floating rice as a way to explore ideas of domestication. It argues that the discursive worlds between “wild” and “domesticated,” between the new and the familiar, between species and varieties, and between flora and fauna, all have contributed to the unequal attention to the two cases. The discovery of the new species was especially surprising given Vietnam’s recent tragic history of war, strife, and authoritarian high socialism. In the 1990s, several new species of large mammal, previously unknown to science, were discovered in Vietnam. For many decades, the country of Vietnam was associated with the tragedies of war. But in the 1990s, Vietnam suddenly became a site of international environmental interest, thanks to the discovery of the new mammals undescribed by science. The Vu Quang example was perhaps the most extreme case of the failures of biodiversity conservation in Vietnam, but many similar problems seemed to be echoed across the country.
