Hoang Thach, Ph.D._"From Crisis Discipline to Compassionate Care: Negotiating Multispecies Ethnography and Inverse Biopolitics in Primate Reintroductions in Vietnam"

Traditional primate reintroduction programs predominantly operate within the technocratic paradigm of conservation biology, often reducing the process to quantifiable biometric indices and survival rates. Drawing upon compassionate conservation and multispecies ethnography, this paper examines the micro-spaces of wildlife rehabilitation and release at Fairy Island, Cat Tien National Park, Vietnam. Specifically, it analyzes the biotechnical methods used to rewild bodies of the endangered pygmy slow loris (Nycticebus pygmaeus) through targeted behavioral modification, foraging simulation, and nocturnal survival tactics within a semi-wild enclosure. Beyond the biological dimension, this study employs narrative ethnography to explore the experiences of local caretakers who have transitioned from vernacular forest-dependent livelihoods into professional conservationists. We argue that rewilding the traumatized animal body is not an automated biological return to nature, but a co-constituted more-than-human pedagogy. This pedagogical process relies heavily on the interspecies affective labor of local caretakers, who navigate a profound ethical dilemma: cultivating intensive emotional empathy to heal the animals' physical traumas while enforcing strict behavioral detachment to ensure successful rewilding. The narratives reveal an inverse biopolitics, wherein the agency of the recovering lorises actively reshapes the ecological identity and moral universe of their human keepers. By contextualizing these dynamics within post-war ecological recovery landscapes, this study offers critical insights for the Global South and Southeast Asia, advocating for a shift from western-centric "fortress conservation" toward a localized, vernacular ecological ethics that honors frontline affective labor as a rigorous conservation tool.

Hoang Thach recently graduated with a Ph.D. in Geography from Rutgers University and is currently an independent scholar and lecturer. His Ph.D. research used Science and Technology Studies and human ecology approaches to study how the Anthropocene condition in tropical countries like Vietnam ties multiple spaces and concepts of nature conservation together, e.g. biodiversity conservation, conservation biology, new conservation, compassionate conservation, rewilding nature, and restoration ecology. With a focus on species rewilding in Vietnam including both in-situ and ex-situ spaces for conservation, his research investigates values of aesthetics and wilderness, economic values as connected to the production of multiple nature(s), the roles of humans and non-humans in agency making, and multiple ontology-making of conservation goals and practices as produced by Anthropocene conditions. Dr. Thach also holds a masters degree in Anthropology from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he studied the ecology and conservation history of the Tonkin Snub-nosed Monkey in Vietnam. He has published about the development of primatology and primate conservation in Vietnam and on slow loris conservation and wildlife trade in Vietnam through an ethnoprimatology and multispecies ethnography lens. Previously, he developed and taught new courses in Environmental Anthropology and Biological Anthropology as a Lecturer at Vietnam National University in Hanoi. In addition to international publications, he has published papers in Vietnamese journals on the holism of anthropology, the ontology of biological anthropology, and human ecology approaches to biodiversity conservation in Vietnam. Today, he teaches undergraduate courses in human ecology, anthropology, and primatology as an adjunct lecturer at various NY metropolitan area universities including the City University of New York and Rutgers University.