Montagnard Debate
The Great Montagnard Debate
PART 1
From proschan@indiana.edu Sat Oct 16 16:20:21 1999
Date: 01:08 PM 10/14/99 +0700
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: On "montagnard"
At 01:08 PM 10/14/99 +0700, you wrote:
Let us hope that Professor Hall's students are not being encouraged to persist in using the term "montagnard" with all of its accumulated racist,colonialist, and pejorative associations.
-----Original Message-----
From: VSG-owner@u.washington.edu [mailto:VSG-owner@u.washington.edu]On
Behalf Of Edwin Moise
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 1999 11:32 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group
Subject: RE: Request for Reference on Montagnards [sic]
Frank, could you explain a little further? I can see nothing wrong with the word. It simply means people who live in the mountains. I am unawareof any racist or pejorative associations, and while it was invented by the former colonial power, I don't think that constitutes a reason not to use it.
* Ed Moise
From proschan@indiana.edu Sat Oct 16 16:20:21 1999
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 09:13:32 +0700
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: On "montagnard"
Edwin and other VSGers,
Perhaps my grouchiness was a bit too much, but I react viscerally to terms like "montagnard" or worse "hill-tribe" when there are perfectly good non pejorative words like "highlander" or "minority" or "ethnicity" to referto the people in question. To me, using "montagnard" in 1999 implies ananachronistic mindset and invokes a whole set of very unpleasant associations with the colonial and neo-colonial manipulations of peoples who were considered (in various complicated ways) as inferior to those who were so labeling them.
If one is writing (as for example Oscar Salemink often does) about French colonial policies and practices of a specific historicalera, "montagnard" is a suitable term in its historical context and when used "entre guillemets"--but I worry about students today coming to see the termas a neutral or scholarly term. Would one accept today a course unit about the battle of Little Big Horn that talked about the redskins, or a course unit about slavery in the southern United States that talked about niggers?Of course in presenting primary documents of the era, such words were used and cannot be censored, but should they show up outside quotes in a syllabus or course assignment? Etymologically, "redskin" or "nigger" "simply means"people with red or black skin, respectively--but can one possibly separate their "simple" meanings from their complex accumulations of historical associations?
Frank Proschan
--
Research Associate
Indiana University
Mail: Folklore Institute, 504 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN 47408-3890 USA
Office (no mail): 271 Aydelotte (Ashton Center)
Email: proschan@indiana.edu tel: 1-812-855-9073 fax: 1-812-855-4008
From kleinen@pscw.uva.nl Sat Oct 16 16:21:40 1999
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 20:49:36 +0200
From: John Kleinen <kleinen@pscw.uva.nl>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: "Montagnards"
I am glad that Ed Moise showed his surprise about the 1000 % political correctedness Frank Proschan was displaying about the term "montagnard". As a European not suffering from debates about/within "black studies" or about "black Athena's" I am not aware of any anachronistic mindset or even worse,an unpleasant association which implies the French connotation (Barthes would add denotation) of the term "Montagnard". Remembering Ortners' advice about "romancing communities" or "exoticing the Other" , I would take issue also with terms like "Highlander" (it reminds me of a Scottish movie with a lot of rethoric or an American remake of it) "minority" or "ethnicity". We anthropologists should be more concerned about our intention to categorize people. If Proschan wants to solve the issue, he should have asked about the puzzled fact that "highland versus lowland" relationships are constructed entities and that seen from state formation process highlanders were former lowlanders, a theme Jim Scott recently introduced and which I regard as more fruitfull than the sensitivities Frank displayed.
My best regards,
John KLeinen
X Dr. John Kleinen. X
X University of Amsterdam X
X Dept. of Anthropology-Sociology X
ASSR
O.Z. Achterburgwal 185 1012 DK Amsterdam
Tel.:+31 205252742/2504;Fax.:+31 205253010/2446;
Fax/Tel (Home): +31 206760852
From Hue Tam Ho Tai
At 03:11 PM 10/15/99 -0400, you wrote:
To all:
One reason for not using "montagnard" in English is that most students don't understand what it means. I agree with John, however, that the term need not carry any pejorative connotation. But, despite the fact that French happens to be my first language, I don't like the American academic practice of using French when there are perfectly adequate English words that mean the same thing. I do use the term highlander--which unfortunately does have Scottish associations--but at least my students understand the term (even when they have to cope with my French accent).
Best,
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
From sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu Sat Oct 16 16:22:14 1999
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:59:34 -0700 (PDT)
From: Stephen R Denney <sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: montagnards
If "montagnard" is indeed a pejorative term, as Frank believes, then I wonder what term should be used in French academic publications.
- Steve Denney
From giebel@u.washington.edu Sat Oct 16 16:22:27 1999
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 15:15:10 -0700
From: Christoph Giebel <giebel@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: On "montagnard" -- howzabout "Viet Cong"
Colleagues,
Aside from the debatable issue of whether or not "montagnard" is pejorative, I think that Frank has a valid and not-so-easily dismissible point in addressing the (neo) colonial connotations of the term.Here's my pet peeve -- "Viet Cong." In this case, the pejorative meaning("commie") and blanket denunciatory use of the term, dating back to Diemist terror campaigns, is, I think, beyond doubt. Contrast that with "VietMinh," by the way. For many thousands, "Viet Cong" / "VC" / "Charlie" led to arrest, torture, broken lives, death. I never stop being astonished byhow many authors use the term, even in scholarly writings -- and how many editors let them get away with it.
This is not p.c., but s.c.; scholarly correctness. "VC" served (still serves?) to obscure the variety of ideological commitments and post-war visions within the southern resistance, neatly feeding into the myth of the 'communist north attacking the non-communist south'. Sadly, in war times enemies get labelled, denounced, stereotyped. But who in his/her right mind would write histories using "Japs," "Krauts," "Redskins" as supposedly neutral terms? Why the insistence on "Viet Cong"? Oh, and to boot, but perhaps I am being "oversensitive": What about "Vietnam" vs. "Viet Nam," "Hanoi" vs. "Ha Noi," etc.? Isn't this also an issue of (neo-)colonial power relations? Burkinafaso? Srilanka? Unitedstatesofamerica?So I think that Frank's point about "montagnard" should lead to some fruitful, more general rethinking of terms that have become suspect after decades of organized violence.With good cheers, nevertheless,from your Kraut in Wa Shing Ton
*********************************************
Christoph Giebel
Asst. Prof. of History & Int'l. Studies
Jackson School of International Studies
University of Washington, Box 35 36 50
Seattle, WA 98195 - 3650 (U.S.A.)
tel. 1-206-543-6885; fax 1-206-685-0668
*********************************************
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 15:42:35 -0700
From: Christoph Giebel <giebel@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: On "montagnard" -- posting by Leif Jonsson
Colleagues, b/c of technical difficulties, Leif's posting via me -- C.G.
************************************************************************
There is no reason to perpetuate the colonial term "montagnard" in English language references to the highland ethnic minorities of Vietnam. Frank Proschan is accused of extreme political correctness for asking that people move away from this colonial and racist term. The argument for continued use, that the term "simply means people who live in the mountains" can be equally in support of Bergstammen, that is right up there with Naturvölken. In French, "montagnard" has a persistent connotation of "hick". In English,the use of this French term is maybe a case of avoidance behavior, like the use of Latin for public references to particular body-parts and -functions.
Hjorleifur Jonsson
Assistant Professor
Anthropology Department
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-2402
tel: 480-965-7837
fax: 480-965-7671
email:hjonsson@asu.edu
From dduffy@email.unc.edu Sat Oct 16 16:22:52 1999
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 19:16:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: Daniel Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: On "montagnard"
If two people as smart and well-informed as Frank and Ed disagree about something, there isn't likely a resolution by appeal to reason or to the facts. It's a matter of feelings, surely. If Franks thinks it is likely that someone's feelings will be hurt if use I "montagnards," that seems like a good reason to avoid using it. By the way, in my family the Sicilians dont like to hear "mafia" used in a general way, the Jews are appalled to hear Yiddish obscenity used casually in mixed company, and hearing "white trash" from someone's lips tells us more about the speaker than he wants us to know.Scholarship is another matter. Nearly everything I have to say about Viet Nam will necessarily hurt someone's feelings. Even the line of reasoning that John suggests, following Leach through Scott to point out the social process that makes highlanders, will itself hurt feelings. People often want to objectify themselves, though they prefer to choose the name used. In speaking about people of any kind, I try to use the names they are using, when I have to use a noun or an adjective. When I can, I just use verbs.
Dan Duffy
Graduate student
Department of Anthropology
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC
27599 USA
919-932-2624
<dduffy@email.unc.edu>
From proschan@indiana.edu Sat Oct 16 16:23:10 1999
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 10:04:38 +0700
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: "Montagnards"
It seems from the comments of some others that my sensitivities to the term are not purely idiosyncratic, but let me simply question John Kleinen's claim that "highlanders were former lowlanders" when recent historical linguistic evidence strongly supports the argument that in the case of the Viet, the process is exactly opposite and today's lowland Viet/Kinh are yesterday's highlanders (see James R. Chamberlain, The origin of the Sek:implications for Tai and Vietnamese history, __Journal of the SiamSociety__, 86(1998), 27-48). Similarly, botanical genetic information recently coming to light (published in a French-language collection on agriculture I picked up on my last visit to Hanoi) clearly indicates that the first domestication of rice took place in the highlands of the borderland between NW Vietnam and Yunnan--not in the deltas as national mythologies would have it. Sorry I don't have the complete citation...Yes indeed these are historically constructed categories or entities--for me the historical associations of "montagnard" when used today in English are irreducibly offensive and anachronistic. For someone writing in French the problem is different, but for English it seems to be one with a simple solution.
(I'm only a little bothered by the term "upland agriculture" rather than"highland agriculture" when used in contrast with "lowland agriculture"--would one say "downland agriculture"?--so perhaps we can leave that aside until we settle this one. Offered in good fun.)
Frank Proschan
--
Research Associate
Indiana University
Mail: Folklore Institute, 504 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN 47408-3890 USA
Office (no mail): 271 Aydelotte (Ashton Center)
Email: proschan@indiana.edu tel: 1-812-855-9073 fax: 1-812-855-4008
From proschan@indiana.edu Sat Oct 16 16:23:36 1999
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 11:37:53 +0700
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: On "montagnard"
Ed Moise writes:
> If just once, in all the books and articles I have read using the word
> "montagnard" (probably a hundred or so), I could recall having seen the
> word used in a pejorative fashion, I might see some justification for the
> parallel with "niggers."
Do you not find psyops guides such as: Mole, Robert L. 1970. The Montagnards of South Vietnam; a study of nine tribes. Rutland, Vt: C. E. Tuttle Co. or: U.S. Military. 1970. Psyops policy: The Montagnards. San Francisco: United States Military Assistance Command. to include instances of pejorative uses of the term and offensive attitudes toward the people designated as "montagnards"? And what about all the war fiction about the 'yards as noble savages? I could also dig up a nice pejorative quote or two from Lansdale if I were home with my file cabinets...
Of course simply substituting a more neutral term doesn't guarantee more enlightened attitudes (viz. the expanded psyops manuals on "minority groups in the Republic of Vietnam" and "minority groups in North Vietnam"), or the 1973 psyops study of "DRV ethnic minorities" (cited in the previous biblio.). But holding on to a term with established pejorative content seems to be more likely to maintain those unenlightened ones.
Best,
Frank Proschan
From O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG Sat Oct 16 16:23:54 1999
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 22:29:34 -0700
From: Oscar Salemink <O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: On "montagnard"
I think Frank is correct (scholarly, not just politically) that the term"Montagnard" is not neutral. It began to be employed by the French in both scholarly and administrative documents from the late 1930s onward, when their colonial domination of Indochina was increasingly challenged and they looked for potential allies against emerging nationalist movements: ethnic groups residing in strategic areas. A continued use of pejorative labels like "moi", "man", "kha" or "phnong" was not conducive to achieving a desired "rapprochement" between French rulers and ethnic minority groups in the highlands in what can be interpreted as a classic colonial divide-and-rule policy. In the 1940s and early 1950s, other labels were attempted (Pemsien - of Pays Montagnard du Sud-Indochinois - and Proto-indochinois) and rejected. For more info on this period, I would like to refer to my "Primitive Partisans: French Strategy and the Construction of a Montagnard Ethnic Identity in Indochina" in Hans Antlov and SteinTonnesson (eds.), "Imperial Policy and South East Asian Nationalism" (1995,Curzon Press); "The Return of the Python God: Multiple Interpretations of a Millenarian Movement in Colonial Vietnam" (sorry about the spelling,Chris...) in the journal "History and Anthropology" vol. 8, 1994; and my forthcoming co-publication with Peter Pels, Colonial Subjects (Un. of Michigan press).
After "independence" in 1954, the label Montagnard was temporarily embraced by some leaders of these groups themselves who were disenchanted with Diem's denial of any autonomy and instead nurtured some degree of colonial nostalgia associated with cultural autonomy in their own "domaine" (de lacouronne). Many American advisors - some of whom desired to re-do US history with its indigenous populations - posed as protectors of minorities for a complex variety of reasons, some cynically strategic, other affective (in the near future I intend to publish on this issue), and appropriated the term "Montagnard" as an ethnic label. Special Forces working with the"Montagnards" (and resenting the term "Moi" still in common use in South Vietnam) then coined the label "Yard" - leaving off the "montan" - which was supposed to be affective, as in: "I don't care whether you're Jarai orBahnar, you're my Yard" (overheard during a Montagnard-SF veteran party in North Carolina). Others like Hickey preferred the less charged "Highlanders" which in these days indeed conjures up images of Mel Gibson in kilt (courtesy Kleinen). Present-day "Montagnards" residing in the US have rejected that label and adopted the vernacular neologism "Dega" - which is not in use and therefore meaningless in S.R. of Viet Nam (OK, Chris?) itself because of the political connotations. Interestingly, the present-day government and contemporary Vietnamese scholars have no generic term for the ethnic groups (now indeed minorities as they are vastly outnumbered by in-migrants) residing in the Tay Nguyen("Western Highlands") and Truong Son regions.
This in contrast with the former South-Vietnamese regime which used the term "dong bao thuong" or "highland compatriots" which automatically applied to the compatriots" in the southern half of Viet Nam before 1975.In the absence of any label without political and/or offensive connotations,the issue remains inconclusive for the time being. Cautiously using any of the existing labels with a footnote may be the most acceptable solution for scholarly purposes.
Oscar Salemink
From stein.tonnesson@sum.uio.no Sat Oct 16 16:24:12 1999
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 14:18:34 +0200
From: "Stein [iso-8859-1] Tønnesson" <stein.tonnesson@sum.uio.no>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: montagnards in French
Dear list members,
Steve Denney asks: "If "montagnard" is indeed a pejorative term, as Frank believes, then I wonder what term should be used in French academic publications."
I just took a look at an article by Georges Condominas from 1989, and find the following note: "Les voyageurs et géographes européens ayant adopté les termes péjoratifs utilisés par les populations des plaines pour désigner les montagnards de la chaîne annamitique, selon les pays où ils se trouvaient : Moï au Viet Nam, Nha au Laos et Pnong au Cambodge..."
We see here that Condominas uses 'montagnard' as his own term while speaking of 'Moï', 'Nha' and 'Pnong' as pejorative terms. He also uses 'montagnard' elsewhere in his article. I suppose the term 'montagnard' may be used neutrally in French while becoming pejorative once adopted in an English text, where 'highlander' would be the neutral term, but we must also not forget that terms have different connotations in different texts. This depends on the context. In certain contexts a term may have pejorative connotations while being neutral in another context. And connotations change over time.
Stein Tønnesson
Ref: Georges Condominas, 'Ethnologie' in Alain Ruscio (ed.) _Viet Nam. L'histoire, la terre, les hommes_ (Paris: l'Harmattan, 1989), note 3, p. 42.
From keyes@u.washington.edu Sat Oct 16 16:24:21 1999
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 10:37:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: Charles Keyes <keyes@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: montagnards
Dear List members:
I have followed the discussion about the use of 'montagnard' with considerable interest. It seems there is a clear difference (John K. being the exception) between the anthropologists and the historians on this matter.
'Montagnard' is a term that has, as Oscar has detailed, a distinct history, first in French and then for some, but not all, who have written about the peoples of the central highlands (but only rarely about those of the northern highlands) in English. So long as the term is situated in its historical context, then it does not necessarily have pejorative connotations.
It is not, however, an acceptable term (certainly not in English, and I would also question its use in French) to use for discussing the peoples of the uplands of Vietnam today. I am here speaking not political correctness but from the perspective of an anthropologist engaged in the study of peoples to whom the term might be applied not only in Vietnam but also related peoples in neighboring countries. There are several points to be made in this regard.
As Oscar notes, there is no word equivalent to 'montagnard' or highlander' being used in Vietnamese today. Those who would fit under the old rubric of 'montagnard' as well as others who would not are classified as dan toc thieu so, 'minority ethnic groups.' A more precise characterization can be made by adding a term that indicates where the groups in question actually live -- the central highlands, the northern highlands, or elsewhere (for example, the Cham and Khmer who would never be considered as montagnards).
Secondly, as is clearly shown in many studies, many peoples whose ancestors would have been classified as montagnards no longer live in the upland areas of either the north nor the south and, vice versa, many Kinh now live in the uplands. Migration and adoption of new occupations has resulted in the resettlement not only of Kinh in upland areas, but also of minority peoples in lowland areas, including cities.
Finally, anthropologists as well as activists seeking to promote attention to the problems besetting such people as those living in the highlands of Vietnam today have chosen to use terms that have a quite different meaning than 'montagnard' or 'highlander.' The preferred term today among most such people is indigenous minority' in order to emphasize that while a particular people has been constituted a minority in the context of particular nation-states, this people has a legitimate and deep historical claim to the land in which they live. If one wishes to distinguish between say, Hmong living in upland communities in Ha Giang and Khmer living in lowland Mekong delta villages, then one can speak of 'upland-dwelling indigenous minorities' as distinct from 'lowland-dwelling indigenous minorities'.
I would agree with others that it is critical that we use terms that allow us to take account of the dynamics of social and cultural change in upland areas in Vietnam today. While the model that posits a fundamental contrast ecologically and socioculturally between lowland peoples associated with dominant states and upland peoples in non-state societies still has some salience for talking about the precolonial world (even this salience is limited when, for example, we take account of such
peoples as the Black and White Thai), it is wholly inadequate for understanding the world of highland Vietnam after the advent of colonialism.
Biff (Charles) Keyes
From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Sat Oct 16 16:24:43 1999
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 15:04:31 -0400
From: Hue Tam H. Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: montagnards
Dear all:
Biff Keyes makes some very good points about the limitations of the words upland or highland minorities, but I am uneasy about using "indigenous minorities" to refer to to those the French called "montagnards". What are we to call people of Khmer or Cham origins if not indigenous? Historically, they are more indigenous to central and southern Vietnam than kinh Vietnamese. As for lumping them all together, this is a common problem (as in thinking of Asia as a single unit of analysis, or Asian-Americans as a unified group whether for political or scholarly purposes. Is talking about transplanted kinh or for that matter highlanders any different than talking about Californians in Massachusetts? In other words, are we talking about current location or origins?
Incidentally, I have organized a panel for the AAS called "minority perspectives on Vietnamese history" in which Keith Taylor, John Whitmore, Nguyen Quoc Vinh and Maureen Feeney will discuss the role of non-kinh people in Vietnamese history. It is my attempt to (partially) de-Vietnamize Vietnamese history. Everyone is welcome to weigh in.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
From hartingh@hn.vnn.vn Mon Oct 18 15:22:27 1999
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 12:35:50 +0700
From: Bertrand de Hartingh <hartingh@hn.vnn.vn>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Montagnards
Montagnards is certainly not pejorative in French, and was in fact often used as a way to differentiate Hmong, Ede and others from the Kinh with a positive connotation (or denotation to follow John's Barthes quotation). However French academics do not use that word no more, "ethnies minoritaires" being now used as more convenient term, except when speaking about specific historical periods (as Oscar does when he is dealing with the colonial era).
From eemoise@clemson.edu Mon Oct 18 15:30:39 1999
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 13:05:50 -0400
From: Edwin Moise <eemoise@clemson.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: On "montagnard"
At 11:37 AM 10/16/99 +0700, you wrote:
I don't have easy access to either work, so I have no way to tell whether they use the term in a pejorative sense. But I think the word is widely enough used that if it were often used in a pejorative sense, someone involved in this discussion would be able to find an actual quote somewhere.
Ed Moise
From eemoise@clemson.edu Mon Oct 18 15:32:07 1999
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 13:21:59 -0400
From: Edwin Moise <eemoise@clemson.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Montagnards
Again, I would like someone to provide an actual specific example in which the term has been used in such a sense. The two contexts in which I have encountered the term in French have been a) the one we are now discussing (highland minorities in Southeast Asia) and b) in the history of the French Revolution. The Montagnards were the radical political faction that began to become important in 1792, the faction to which Robespierre belonged. The leaders of the Montagnards tended to be Paris lawyers. It seems to me unlikely that "Montagnards" would have come to be the standard historical term for this faction, if in general French usage it had a persistent connotation of "hick."
Edwin Moise
History Department
Clemson University
eemoise@clemson.edu
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:32:30 -0700
From: Oscar Salemink <O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Request for References on "Montagnards" (fwd)
Here is a reference in response to Prof. Hall's request: Thion, Serge (1988), Remodeling Broken Images: Manipulation of Identities Towards and Beyond the Nation, an Asian Perspective, in: Remo Guidieri, F.Pellizzi & S. Tambiah (Eds.), Ethnicities and Nations: Processes of Interethnic Relations in Latin-America, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Austin: University of Texas Press/Rothko Capel Book.
From Frank Prochan:
In addition to the chapter Oscar recommended from Serge Thion, there are several articles that discuss ethnonyms in Vietnam and mainland SE Asia--most focusing not on the general categories of "montagnard" or "hill-tribe" or "highlander" but on much more specific terms. The attached bibliography lists several articles that deal with ethnonyms in SE Asia, followed by some works that discuss ethnonyms elsewhere in the world. There are a number of other works that discuss ethnic classification (including two unpublished papers by Charles Keyes and Grant Evans on Lao ethnic classification) and ethnogenesis, but these focus on naming and labeling.
Frank Proschan
From Steve Denny:
I noticed in our files here there is a "Montagnard Foundation" based in South Carolina, which I would guess is composed of ethnic minority people from the higlands of Vietnam. Regarding the term "Dega", is the political connotation you refer to something along the lines of FULRO?
- Steve Denney
Indochina Center, U.C. Berkeley
From: Oscar Salemink <O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: On "montagnard"
One caveat: This is based in contacts during the early nineties. Montagnard/Dega Association Inc. (Devoted to the advancement of the Montagnards from South Vietnam)
Pierre K'Briuh, President
P.O. Box 13147
Greensboro, NC 27415
Phone (919)855-0390; after 5pm: (919)632-0359
Oscar Salemink
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 17:14:32 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: On "montagnard"
Y'all might like to fire up your PCs and take a peek at: <http://www.gate.net/~cbell/gcma2.html>; it's your basic "Dega" web-page. Happy hunting.......
Ed Moise wrote:
This was taken from the web page of The Montagnard Foundation, the web address of which Steve posted. The above seems to carry an implication that the Dega are
Malayo-Polynesian, but the implication is not strong and clear. I would like to know, if there is anyone reading this who does know, whether members of highland groups that are not generally considered Malayo-Polynesian (such as the Sedang and Bru) refer to themselves as Dega, or whether it is only Malayo-Polynesian groups that use this term.
Edwin Moise
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 12:59:04 -0400
From: hue-tam ho tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: "montagnards"
To all:
By chance, there is an article by Mark W. McLeod (University of Delaware) in the Journal of World History, vol. 10:2 (Fall 1999):353-389, "Indigenous Peoples and the Vietnamese Revolution, 1930-1945" . In the article he uses "highlanders" to refer to residents of the uplands (he also discusses Chams and Khmers).
It may be helpful to all those who have been involved in the ongoing debate about appropriate terminology.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
From: Pensinger <autopoy@brandx.net>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re; "montagnards"
Dear all,
Chung Hoang Chuong's sensitive suggestion is quite welcome. Yes, why don't we call the minorities of Viet Nam by the names they have chosen to call themselves, instead of referring to them by a general term laden with prejudices concocted by outsiders?
As for the term "highlanders", I wonder if it is not a direct translation of the Vietnamese term "nguoi thuong" (ngu+o+`i thu+o+.ng) commonly used to refer to residents of the uplands, as opposed to "nguoi Kinh" or lowlanders.
Cong Huyen Ton Nu Nha Trang
Steve Denny wrote:
Addressing people by the particular ethnic group to which they belong is appropriate, but it may be that some people within these groups would like a term by which they could identify their common heritage, as for example, the term "Native American" is used here in the U.S. Some ethnic minority people from Vietnam who live in the U.S. (perhaps France too?) choose to use the term "montagnard" for this purpose. But perhaps there is a better term, such as ethnic minority highlanders, or indigenous people of Vietnam.
- Steve Denney
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 17:39:20 -0700
From: Pensinger <autopoy@brandx.net>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: "montagnards"
Dear all,
Upon second thought, sensibility may suggest that one address the minorities by their own chosen names face to face. But it may not be practical in scholarly discourses and writings to list all 54 names when we discuss some common issue related to them all. I would think the term "highlanders" is rather neutral. I have seen the term "indigenous peoples" also -- Is there some thing wrong with this one?
Cong Huyen Ton Nu Nha Trang
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 13:22:56 -0400
From: hue-tam ho tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: reference
This is the reference which Maureen Feeney provided but got dropped from my earlier forwarded message. Thanks, Maureen.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Slezkine, Yuri. "The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularlism," in Geoff Eley and Ronald Suny, eds.,
Becoming National. New York: Oxford, 1996.
PART 2
Great Montagnard Debate II
From O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG
Mon Oct 25 19:46:06 1999
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 08:16:13 -0700
From: Oscar Salemink <O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: On " montagnard "
Stephen,
Re Dega , you are correct. Are you sure it is " Montagnard Foundation"? I know about a " Montagnard-Dega Foundation" in North Carolina . Largely dependent on Special Forces veterans, Protestant pastors and other people sympathetic to the " Montagnard " cause, it would not make much PR sense to simply call their foundation " Dega Foundation". There is also a General Cooperative Montagnard Association in NC, which deliberately adopted the same acronym as the Groupes de Commandos Mixtes Aeroportees : GCMA. The GCMA were the French predecessors of the Special Forces, that set up the " maquis montagnards " behind "enemy" lines. The NC-based GCMA is another organization that has been set up by former Special Forces veterans to facilitate the integration of Vietnamese Highland refugees in the US , fraternize with their former comrades in arms, and celebrate their myth of origin in Vietnam .
This is not to say that the term Montagnard is never used by those who have been labeled that way. You must remember that the group in North Carolina is there now to some extent because it identified itself with the French and US presence, or at least saw the French and US presence as support for their autonomy aspirations. I have met many former CIDG veterans in the Central Highlands who worked with the Special Forces, were armed and paid by the US, and consequently saw themselves as American soldiers. The question really is whether that politicized label (which goes for both French and English) is an appropriate ethnic category in scholarly discourse in the present day and age. I would say "no" for the present-day period, and "yes with a footnote" when using the (neo )colonial era labels in historical analysis of that period.
Oscar Salemink
From soh@hawaii.edu Mon Oct 25 19:51:40 1999
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 17:21:04 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: On " montagnard "
More on the same. For the post-modernist post-colonialists among the audience, history, as viewed from the ' Dega ' standpoint:
=================================================================
"DEGA PEOPLE'S ORIGIN
The Dega people of South Indochina (PMSIEN) of the Malayo-Polynesian were the first who ever reached and occupied the central of Vietnam , in the first century B.C. When our ancestors first arrived in the central of Vietnam , they set up their country along the coastal area.
Centuries later, Champa people whom our ancestors called " Prum ", came from southern India and settled their kingdom along the Red River in North Viet nam .
The Vietnamese people came from the southern part of China and fought with Champa people. After their kingdom was destroyed by the Vietnamese in 1697, the Champa people fled south along the coastal areas and asked to stay with our ancestors peacefully. When they gained more power, the Champa people forced our ancestors to move to the mountainous areas and took over our coastal plains. Since then, our people spread out in small groups and lived in the Central Highlands of Indochina until these days.
Early in the 19th century the Vietnamese wanted to expand their land because their population was growing. The only way to do that was to chase the Champa people all the way to Cambodia . Since then, the Vietnamese have illegally occupied our coastal region."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From cchung@ccsf.cc.ca.us Mon Oct 25 19:52:26 1999
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 12:32:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: Chuong Chung < cchung@ccsf.cc.ca.us >
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: " montagnards "
Dear all,
Last year at the opening of the new ethnology museum there were several publications on the minorities of Vietnam and talks presented by the head of the new museum in Ha noi . Each group represented was addressed according to their ethnic and the name they so choose. Nguoi Tay , nguoi Thai, Nguoi Dzao , Nguoi E De, nguoi Jarai , Roglai , etc... Why can we address as them as such (the name they select to be best representative of their tradition, history, and culture) Again I am cautious of this majority/minority relation as in Vietnam , predominantly, lowlanders or nguoi Kinh are doing studies on Nguoi dan toc (minorities). Are they sensitive to this issue as well?
I think they ( nguoi Kinh ) have made some positive moves as the rector of the University of Bac Thai province is himself a minority and the head of the Vietnamese National Assembly is of minority background. I agree with Frank on this " montagnard " thing as i have seen and read repeatedly " montagnard ' = backwardness = savage ( moi ) = colonial other etc... Why do we have to use the French term to identify a group of people? They have their own way of indentifying themselves and their own history. It's just like I am being called an Indochinese.
The discussion goes on... I guess
Chung Hoang Chuong
From soh@hawaii.edu Mon Oct 25 19:55:37 1999
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 16:07:30 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: " montagnards "
see below
On Fri, 22 Oct 1999 , Stephen R Denney wrote:
> Addressing people by the particular ethnic group to which they belong is
> appropriate , but it may be that some people within these groups would like a
> term by which they could identify their common heritage, as for example, the
> term "Native American" is used here in the U.S. Some ethnic minority people
> from Vietnam who live in the U.S. (perhaps France too?) choose to use the
> term " montagnard " for this purpose. But perhaps there is a better term, such
> as ethnic minority highlanders, or indigenous people of Vietnam .
> - Steve Denney
Well, this IS a fine can of worms and, mirabile dictu , the Vietnamese (" kinh ") think THEY are "indigenous people of Vietnam," so in what way would such a term serve to distinguish the ethnic minorities from the " kinh ?"
The gentlefolk who put up the highly creative historical introduction on the Dega website (see http://www.montagnards.org/STMP-DegaHistory.html) base it on a fuller statement from a Dega political group, (see http://www.halcyon.com/pub/FWDP/Eurasia/dega.txt) which they preface with the following proviso:
"We, the Montagnard , Dega people, the true owner of the Central Highlands of Vietnam , just like other people in the world, have our historical and cultural background which has been perpetuated through generations."
So this would, then, appear chiefly to be about real estate. But I can't help thinking the whole issue for academics is somewhat factitious, not to say trendy. I am sure my views will affront somebody, not that this has ever stopped me before, but the very fact of concern with ethnicity, at least this level of concern, seems to me to be an artifact of our age. And isn't it passing strange that such arguments seem to surface with greatest regularity where land tenure is involved? Each group looks for justifications based upon some "academic research" that establishes their claim with historical impunity; cf. statements from the Gush Emunim .
In my own work on the 15th century, I have more than once in the last twenty years come across the question, posed in all seriousness, of whether Le Loi was " kinh " or actually a " muong ," given his home area in the back woods of Thanh Hoa and the fact that early documents refer to him as " phu dao ." ( actually more of a "Thai" looking term than a Muong one).
Questions of this ilk, on the face of them, are anachronistic, like asking about typically Belgian troglodytes or (heard at a recent lecture in Honolulu on the Hoxne hoard): "what about Roman Wales?" The answer the lady from the British Museum gave to the latter was: "When Rome existed, there was no Wales ." I am not sure if the questioner considered himself to be Welsh, but I am sure he considered himself to be offended.
Concerning minority and other ethnic labels in the little corner of Viet Nam Studies in which I feel moderately comfortable, in the case of Le Loi , my own take is that the distinction between " Muong " and " Kinh " does not seem to have existed in the 15th century but that, rather, distinctions of town and country did exist. What ethnic construction a modern anthropologist (who could fly backwards in a time-machine and be allowed to do field work in the 15th century) would put on the folks s/he found in the countryside or in the town in what was to become Viet Nam is not easy to encompass.
And, in a related case, I am fairly sure that Nguyen Trai thought of himself as having more in common with "properly educated" Chinese than with hoi polloi, and that his beef with the Chinese was not in terms of ethnicity, but in terms of bailiwick. Thus, he referred to politically, by analogy to the "Chinese" classics, as "Wu" ("Ngo"), so he thereupon could adopt the stance of those who overcame the "Ngo" politically, i.e., the " Yueh " ["Viet"]. And Trai , the "townie," picked as his paladin a rough-hewn "hick," a provincial patron with a battle-hardened set of clients. Le Loi may have been a rude son-of-a-bitch, but he was Nguyen Trais rude son-of-a-bitch and he served Nguyen Trai's purposes admirably; Le Loi ascended the throne and his ethnicity per se was never at issue.
In pre-modern times, did folks on the territory of what has now become Viet Nam actually go around worrying about these questions? Or were such "issues" really at first artifacts of debates about power and political control at some point in the more recent past and are they now artifacts about who "owns" that past or who "owns" the land that a proper constuction of the past confers? Here in the United States, there is an ongoing debate in Hawaii , "who is Hawaiian, who has the right to define?" frequently posed in rather ad hominem terms, and a hot one, if only because exclusive access to millions of dollars worth of land is now contested.
Needless to say (as the fellow always says when he's about to tell you something anyway, whether you want to hear it or not), academics are not without crypto-megalomaniacal tendencies (fancy word! one which, of course, does not apply to any of us). These discussions of the issues should not be mistaken for the issues themselves, and our powers to define and affect the outcome should not be overestimated. Alas, whatever we say, it is the Vietnamese political establishment who will decide what people will be called in Viet Nam, and the really big connected question of who gets the land, and the Vietnamese political establishment doesn't really give a damn what we think, now does it?
Steve O'Harrow
From O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG Mon Oct 25 19:55:58 1999
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 10:57:44 -0700
From: Oscar Salemink <O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: On " montagnard "
Ed,
As I wrote earlier, Dega is a neologism, created by the refugees in North Carolina formerly associated with FULRO and the attempt to carve out a separate, autonomous territory in Vietnam (first delineated by the French - hence PMSIEN). This movement was indeed dominated by Austronesian (which is the correct linguistic term) groups, Ede/Rhade and Jarai in particular. In contrast, in the 1960s Sihanouk coined the term " Austriens " (merging the linguistic terms Austro-Asiatic [Mon-Khmer] and Austronesian [Malayo-Polynesian]) to forge an imagined bond between Cambodians and ethnic Khmer and other minorities in Vietnam and thus make a rhetorical claim to parts of Vietnam 's territory. Later in the 1960s and early 1970s, these claims were underscored by Cambodia 's attempt to appropriate FULRO by capturing its leadership (who were executed in 1975 by the Khmer Rouge). In present-day Vietnam I have never encountered the word Dega , neither among Kinh nor minorities.
Oscar Salemink
From O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG Mon Oct 25 19:56:13 1999
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 10:57:46 -0700
From: Oscar Salemink <O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Re; " montagnards "
Recently, the Director of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, Prof. Nguyen Van Huy (the son of Nguyen Van Huyen ) presented an excellent paper at a conference in Yunnan about how he conceives of the Museum's mission, in terms of giving voice to the groups and communities that are represented in its exhibits, and its outreach programs. In this sense, things are definitely changing.
In terms of the ethnonyms , these are not always the names that people give - or traditionally gave - to themselves. Historically, each change in political regime in Vietnam has brought about a new effort at ethnographic or ethnolinguistic classification which so far in all cases was imposed from above. My view is that this has resulted in twin processes of tribalization and ethnicization , as I have argued in other fora . After 1975, 54 ethnic groups were "officially"/"scientifically" classified (significantly, two less then China 's 56 "nationalities") and now each and every Vietnamese has an official ethnic identity which is indicated on one's identity card, effectively excluding hybrid or shifting identities. There have been many instances that people have protested their imposed identity - one such case has been described by a Vietnamese PhD candidate studying with Biff Keyes. In other instances people used "unofficial" labels, creating considerable confusion for census enumerators.
The use of " nguoi thuong " or "highlander" has become problematic if it is an attempt to distinguish ethnic Kinh people from highland minorities. One reason is that " nguoi thuong " was in use in the former South Vietnam and its use has now been abandoned. Another reason is the ongoing in-migration into the Highlands which has led to a situation where in certain upland areas the "indigenous" ethnic groups are outnumbered by Kinh in-migrants (and in the Central Highlands increasingly by Hmong , Dao and Nung communities coming down from the North). In other words, does the word "highlander" with its geographic rather than ethnic content exclude Kinh people living in the Highlands ?
So what terms are used to distinguished the Kinh majority from ethnic minorities in Vietnam today? With varied connotations and in differing contexts of (in )formality , some of the following terms are in common use: dan toc thieu so; dong bao dan toc ; nguoi dan toc ; ba con dan toc .... Though residence in upland areas is often implied in the context of their use, it is important to note that there is no reference to geographic location, either in terms of lowland-upland (what about the midlands?) or in terms of North-South. Currently, there is no equivalent in use in Vietnam for the generic label " Montagnards " (a French colonial construct that to some extent was the cause rather than the result of any sense of pre-colonial ethnic identity), which has rather obvious political implications of the sort as described by Stephen O'Harrow (aloha there!). A recent EWC special report "The Development Crisis in Vietnam's Mountains" co-authored by Neil Jamieson, Le Trong Cuc and Terry Rambo respectively speaks about "upland population", "upland communities", "upland minorities", "mountain communities", "ethnic groups", "ethnic minorities", " Uplanders " and "Highlanders" in contrast to "Lowlanders" or " Kinh " - implying that they have no use for a simplistic, generic label for these very diverse groups.
Oscar Salemink
From proschan@indiana.edu Mon Oct 25 19:57:19 1999
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 11:10:04 +0700
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: On " montagnard " and " Dega ", and PMSIEN
Further on Oscar's note (below) about the neologism " Dega " and Ed's preceding question (also below).
The "de-" part of the name is the same syllable as in E De/ Ede (the term used in contemporary Vietnam ) or Rhade (the term use in U.S. wartime publications, and earlier French publications). I believe that the "- ga " part also has some meaning but I don't have the information at hand. (I seem to recall something like "de-" means person, human and "- ga " means mountain, in the Ede/Rhade language, but my memory is fuzzy.) The Ede and Jarai , two key elements of the group, are as Oscar notes, both of Austronesian (formerly, Malayo-Polynesian) linguistic affiliation. The name " Dega " does represent a continuing attempt by an Ede leadership elite to assert its hegemony over non- Ede highlanders, some of whom are included within the North Carolina community. When I visited NC in around 1990 and asked some Koho and Ma (non- Austronesians , thus not invested in the origin myth recounted on the Dega webpage's fanciful migration histories) how they liked being called " Dega ," they replied that if it was okay with their leaders it was okay with them (replying with about as much freedom or enthusiasm as one would have encountered if posing a similar question to a villager in the highlands of Vietnam in the same time period).
It should be made clear that the community in North Carolina includes at least a sizable proportion who were the active allies of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the period between 1979 (perhaps earlier) and their "escape" or "surrender" (depending on one's perspective) in the late 1980s to UN authorities. A pervasive disinformation campaign led by FEER's Nate Thayer succeeded in portraying them in the international media as people who had been valiantly fighting the Vietnamese commies since the 1960s, and the evil Khmer Rouge after that, living in total isolation in their mountain fastnesses, unaware of changing world events and the late 1980s death in a Phnom Penh hospital of their former leader (whose name escapes me). In fact they were armed by and allied with the Khmer Rouge--well-provisioned in fact, and listening on their shortwaves to BBC and VOA as well as the Voice of Democratic Kampuchea (if my memory serves me on the name of the KR radio). That they reached an accomodation of opportunity with the KR—who had in fact, as Oscar notes, executed their first generation of leaders in 1975--is one of history's many ironies. When I visited the mostly-male community in NC, they told me that looked for marriage partners within the local Cambodian-American community, since most were fluent in Khmer, but had to be careful to hide the photos (displayed in more than one living room I visited) in which they were posed in KR-supplied black pajamas holding Chinese machine guns. Thayer's disinformation version was that they were "prisoners" of the Khmer Rouge, but that is not what they told me face-to-face. It succeeded in getting them recognized as refugees, then admitted to the U.S. , however, where they've been adopted by the retired
Special Forces personnel in NC who stoke their nostalgia for an imagined past. While we're dealing with neologisms, "PMSIEN" (or, in the form I have more often seen it, " Pemsien ") is also a neologism, that refers to the shortlived French attempt to establish a 6th and 7th colony in Indochina after 1945, the Pays Montagnards du Sud and the Pays Montagnards du Nord . Pemsiens were the inhabitants ("- ien ") of the PMS, thus Pemsien . I do not recall ever seeing the counterpart " Pemnien " but perhaps it was also used--the PMN (whose last vestiges were defeated along with the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954) was far less successful in capturing any hold on the popular imagination than PMS was. See Chabant , Edmond . 1951. Notes sur l'histoire des Haut-Pays du Nord-Ouest Vietnam . Lai Chau : self published, for the
charter documents establishing the PMN.
Best,
Frank Proschan
--
Research Associate
Indiana University
Temporary telephone in Hanoi, until 27 October 1999 - 826-5328 rm. 9, or fax
to 84-4-836-0351
Mail: Folklore Institute, 504 N. Fess , Bloomington, IN 47408-3890 USA
Office (no mail): 271 Aydelotte (Ashton Center)
Email: proschan@indiana.edu tel : 1-812-855-9073 fax: 1-812-855-4008
From sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu Mon Oct 25 19:57:43 1999
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 14:01:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Stephen R Denney <sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Re; " montagnards "
At 10:57 AM 10/23/99 -0700, you wrote:
>Recently, the Director of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, Prof. Nguyen Van
> Huy (the son of Nguyen Van Huyen ) presented an excellent paper at a
>conference in Yunnan about how he conceives of the Museum's mission, in
>terms of giving voice to the groups and communities that are represented in
>its exhibits, and its outreach programs. In this sense, things are
>definitely changing.
Thank you for the informative comments. Do you sense much dissatisfaction among ethnic minorities in Vietnam over the policy of having their ethnic identity listed on their ID cards? Does this policy lead to ethnic discrimination? Also, would you mind elaborating on your point that this policy effectively excludes "hybrid or shifting identities"?
- Steve Denney
From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Mon Oct 25 19:58:01 1999
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 18:07:22 -0400
From: Hue Tam H. Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I've found the discussion on " montagnards " fascinating as well as informative. It's eerie how it parallels what is happening in the US . ( see for example the discussion about how to categorize children of mixed marriages). It would be interesting to find out what other countries insist on pigeonholing people into fixed ethnic categories. My half- French niece (born and raised in France ) was utterly bewildered when she spent one year at our local high school and for the first time in her life had to choose an ethnic identity for herself (Caucasian? Asian?), something that had never been asked of her before. For those of you who are interested, Yuri
Sletzkin who teaches Russian history at Berkeley wrote a piece in Slavic Review on Stalin's nationality policy which makes for hilarious reading. Unfortunately, I forget exactly when it came out. thanks to all for the bibliographic references as well as the wealth of information. I'll try to incorporate it into my teaching.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
From soh@hawaii.edu
Mon Oct 25 19:58:32 1999
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 16:44:28 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Ah, Tam, yes
Interestingly, those of us who live in Hawaii, where ethnic identity used to be "no beeg ting," are also seeing the rise of the need to "identify oneself" (most people here used to use the ethnic category of "chop suey " when asked, but now they're being encouraged to "get serious") -- from my strictly unscientific and arguably xenophobic viewpoint, I see this as the pernicious influence of Mainland politics a la a few years back (since everything seems to get here late -- we're in the trough of the wave when the Mainland is at the crest and vice-versa). As in Viet Nam , pushing this kind of activity appears designed mostly to benefit people who wish to ascend to the positions of leadership in group X. Remember the Viennese paperhanger with the cookie-duster mustache? He rose pretty quick . In the Western world at least (witness Kosovo), group identity issues seem mostly to have revolved around historic grievences for which, while real enough in themselves and often egregious ab initio , the solutions can often be as horrendous as the original insults.
The general etiology of operation goes like this:
1) I have a book (legend, record, oral tradition) here that says the people with whom I (currently) identify are the true keepers/ rightful inheritors/past sovereigns of this piece of real estate on which we are both standing;
2) You goddam well better not raise any questions about my book (legend, record, oral tradition), or I will be offended, proclaim you to be a racist/sue your ass/all of the above.
3) So what if you (and your ilk) haven't lived anyplace else for at least a generation (and sometmes centuries), my ever-so-great grandparents were screwed by your ever-so-great grandparents (just like it says in this book [legend, record, oral tradition]) -- the only acceptable solution is, if there are more of your guys than of us, for you to pay me big bucks/get the hell out of here/go down in flames inside your church/temple/mosque/747, and if there are more of us than of you guys, chew on a dose of good old ethnic cleansing/enjoy a pogrom/burn down your business/take your pick, bubbuluh .
One has to be so careful in American academe, lest one's theories cut too close to the bone and obviously refer to Left Bank Palestinians or WASP suburbanites or Northern Irish whatevers or Appalachian pig-farmers, but I frankly am sick of it and, as the father of three "identity challenged" children, I am most sympathetic with Tam's niece who just wishes to be taken on her own terms as a person (classification "homo sapiens sapiens ," full stop). And come to think of it, I am just as tired of pseudo-romantic Irish fund-raisers in Boston for the building of bombs they'll never have to see because they blow up four thousand miles away, as I am tired of the
U.S.-financed Gush Emunim , and of Johnny-Come-Lately apologists for the Khmer Rouge who say that everything that ever happened bad in Cambodia was caused by the Vietnamese (and on, and on, and on).
I believe that some of my colleauges , who see ethnicity as golden a horse to be ridden to new career heights (and some who use the very real insights of post-modernism and post-colonialism to excuse laziness and incompetence), must bear a portion of the blame for lending respectability to this kind of crypto-fascism.
My views,
Steve O'Harrow
From dduffy@email.unc.edu Mon Oct 25 19:59:17 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 00:07:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: Daniel Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Montagnards
I'm glad this thread is starting to use evidence from the writer's own involvement in the process of naming and being named, and watching people do those things nearby. Steve's basic position is that of the mainstream of US anthropology. One of the attractions of the profession to me is that we actually preach anti-racialism, usually as one or more lectures in the basic introductory undergraduate course.
Not everyone agrees, though. Many Native American intellectuals, who have a lot of dirt on anthropologists, are committed racialists. A good old phrase for this position, from African-American life, is to be a "race man." DuBois , for instance, was a race man in his younger days. Racialism as an academic view is relevant to Vietnamese studies because, for instance, one of the really committed, vibrant scholars running a consistent, productive program of educational exchange with Viet Nam is the distinguished Native American scholar at Eugene, whose name just flew right out of my brain, who has an argued and principled commitment to the idea that there are indigenous peoples and that they have certain insights and certain rights that are distinct from Kantian rights and reason. He gave a presentation to my SEASSI class in 98, about how he conducts his affairs with Vietnamese counterparts, and through them with minority groups in Viet Nam . Everything he talked about--host/guest relations, reciprocity, patience --was exemplary. His practice resembles greatly that of Lady Borton , whose relations with the Women's Union have been fundamental in enabling so much US scholarship in Viet Nam , particualry on women. His practice also resembles that of the Joiner Center , whose relations with the
Writer's Union have had so many good consequences for literature. My cavil with his project, and Lady's, and Joiner's, is that I would prefer not to hold a conversation with a category: native, woman, or writer.
I'm with Steve, or maybe I shouldn't drag him into this. So I'll say I'm with Ralph Ellison, who was not a "race man" in the sense I am speaking of. I think we're all human beings, each of us about as modern and alienated as anyone else. This is the line of my party, as I said. The line has a flip side, to be sure, in all the other lectures we give in the intro course, about the diversity of peoples, but postings from my colleagues have brought out that part already.
Dan Duffy
Graduate student
Department of Anthropology
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill , NC
27599 USA
919-932-2624
<dduffy@email.unc.edu>
From O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG Mon Oct 25 19:59:31 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 01:54:22 -0700
From: Oscar Salemink <O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Re; " montagnards "
RE hybridity , what happens if one's father is Kinh and one's mother is, say, Ede ? What happens if a Tay family moves to Hanoi , and the children do not identify as Tay anymore even though it is listed in their ID? Historically, there have been many instances where people moved to a different place and adopted a different ethnic identity in this part of the world. Just read (Sir) Edmund Leachs classic "Political Systems of Highland Burma ". Vietnam is not famous for its open and frank discussions about issues of ethnic identity, or about ethnic discrimination, so let's talk about *positive* discrimination in terms of education etc. I find a recent newspaper article instructive which wrote about a man in Hue who posted as an ethnic minority person to gain access to university which has special (lower) admission criteria and special scholarships for ethnic minorities.
The man was unmasked NOT minority, and was expelled from the university. One note on my part: In the long run, is lowering standards for minorities positive or negative discrimination?
Oscar
From nina@easynet.fr Mon Oct 25 19:59:46 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 02:44:35 -0700
From: Nina McPherson <nina@easynet.fr>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: In Praise of Ambiguity
Dear VSG:
As a literary translator of contemporary Vietnamese literature based in Paris , I have followed the debate over the use of the montagnard with considerable interest. Just fyi , in French translations of Vietnamese literature here by established translators like Phan Huy Duong, Kim Lefevre et al, the word " montagnard " is often used to translate " nguoi mien nuoi ". This is, by the way, the translation of " nguoi mien nui " offered in the Viet- Phap Dictionary by the Vien Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi Viet Nam (NXB Khoa Hop Xa Hoi, Hanoi 1994). The word " nguoi mien nui " can be found in the fiction of contemporary Vietnamese writers as disparate as Duong Thu Huong (a dissident ) and Tran Vu (Chinese-origin, "boat person", overseas French-Vietnamese), who are decidedly NOT representative of the current political establishment!
While I do not wish to be pilloried as the defender of montagnard - and I agree that as a French term it should be avoided in English irrespective of whatever neo-colonial tones it may or may not have - it at least has the virtue of being ethnically and anthropologically ambiguous without sounding like social- sciencese or academic-speak. (As a French-speaker and resident here for almost 10 years, I can say that montagnard is definitely not pejorative in French; I think some are confusing it with " campagnard " which very definitely can mean "hick".)
Unfortunately, none of the terms the VSG has proposed as alternatives to montagnard - ethnic minorities, highlanders, indigenous peoples, etc – solve my practical problem as a literary translator when faced with the more ambiguous - and I think more ethnically neutral albeit more anthropologically debatable - " nguoi mien nui ". Since I am neither an anthropologist nor a historian, I have no particular stake in the politics of this debate. As a translator, however, I find the terms "highlanders" and " ethnic minorities" unsatisfactory and hard on the literary ear. Both terms seem to beg a footnote and I do not like to read novels that are footnoted. Moreover, my editor, Will Schwalbe - who founded the imprint of Asian literature in translation at Hyperion East and who publishes Pramoedya Ananta Toer , Duong Thu Huong , Tran Vu, Wang Shuo , and others - has flatly rejected "highlanders" as sounding too Scottish and "ethnic minorities" as too much like a social science textbook. This leaves me with something like "mountain peoples", which is, as many of you have pointed out, controversial as it opens up the highland-lowland debate. It is totally impractical, however, to use specific ethnic terms ( Ede , etc) when the writers I translate merely say " nguoi mien nui ". So I am, with all due respect, still in limbo.
I have no answer to the fundamental questions of race and ethnicity raised by the montagnard terminology debate. However, from my identity-challenged perch as an expatriate American translator in France , I totally agree with Stephen O'Harrow that the American mania for ethnic-identification and political correctness is just that: very American. Do we really want to continue to impose our factitious tendancies on the Vietnamese and the Vietnamese language? On a purely esthetic, literary level, one of the qualities of the Vietnamese language I love is its ambiguity. And it is this ambiguity, that is so difficult to render in English, with its exasperating
demand for precision. So as the search continues for the politically-correct replacement term for montagnard , I would hope that we won't lose sight of the ambiguity of the Vietnamese language as a literary quality. Preserving this ambiguity in translation is not merely an esthetic consideration: When Vietnamese ( kinh ) writers, like Duong Thu Huong write about how the " nguoi mien nui " prepare tea or sticky rice, I think the ambiguity of that term in Vietnamese makes possible a subtle, cultural identification that defies, or blurs the boundaries of ethnic identity.
These are my thoughts, for what they are worth. I'm eager to hear if anyone has come up with a literary solution.
Best regards,
Nina McPherson
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 18:05:11 +0700
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Ah, Tam, yes - is it always about turf?
Steve O'Harrow makes a forceful case (below) for the thesis that ethnicity always comes down to real estate, beginning and ending in violent and mutually incompatible claims to territory based on precedence or indigeneity . He suggests that it is characteristic of ethnic origin myths that they assert such claims. In a draft paper in progress, I examine the ethnic origin myths of the Kmhmu ( Khmu , Kammu , Kho Mu , etc.) and show the contrary, that for the Kmhmu (to shamelessly quote myself): "The Kmhmu origin myth...expresses a well-developed and remarkably stable conception of ethnicity--indeed, a conception of a multiethnic world in which diverse ethnic groups are distinguishable by their phenotypes and by the relative chronology of their arrival in the highlands of Southeast Asia and in the particular locale of a given narrator. The crucial importance of this primal multiculturalism cannot be overemphasized: the overwhelming tendency among ethnic-origin myths elsewhere in the world is to presuppose uniformity among the tellers and listeners, in a mono-ethnic milieu (see, for example, the many flood myths and studies collected in Dundes [1988], or earlier by Frazer [1918]). As Smith notes about ethnic-origin myths, "A myth of descent attempts to provide an answer to questions of similarity and belonging: why are we all alike? Why are we one community? Because we came from the same place, at a definite period of time and are descended from the self-same ancestor, we necessarily belong together and share the same feelings and tastes" (Smith 1986:24). The Kmhmu myth--like most of the myths from other ethnicities in highland Southeast Asia analyzed by Dang Nghiem Van (1993)--instead centers on the questions "Why are we all not alike? Why are we many communities, despite coming from the self-same ancestors?" It is indeed the "fatal diversity" (to borrow Benedict Anderson's term) of humankind that constitutes the narrative focus of the Kmhmu myth, rather than any claim on cultural unity, homogeneity, or uniqueness." Further on, I continue: "Crucially, the vision of interethnic relations embodied within these tales is not a grim inventory of past exploitation or catalogue of past insults, recounted to provoke ethnic chauvinism or inspire people to seek redress or retribution. Nor is it the fatalistic, hopeless vision ascribed to the Kmhmu by some analysts, in which social inequalities are immutable and eternal. Rather, the overriding tone of the myths is that of amusement, with narrators and listeners alike finding humor in the recounted events and their consequences. This is not to say that in other contexts, those same people might not discuss those same social inequalities and exploitative relations with anger, bitterness, or even hatred (again, compare the history of Kmhmu ethnic rebellions in the region and the myths that serve as a charter for rebellion [ Proschan 1998]). But in the flood myths, and on the occasions when they are told, the dominant mood is that of humor, as Kmhmu take ironic responsibility for their own place in local ethnically-determined socioeconomic hierarchies. Like the humor of African American slaves and their descendants, much of which also involves seemingly self-deprecatory acceptance of pejorative stereotypes, the good-humored origin myths of the Kmhmu "indicates that they understood with great precision the intricacies and perversions of the system in which they lived" (Levine 1977:338)."
For the time being, you'll just have to trust me that the evidence supports the conclusions (the paper is too long, and the fonts too problematic, to attach), but if indeed they do, then at least some people in precisely the neighborhood we've been discussing have settled the matter in ways that aren't encompassed in Steve's somewhat pessimistic view of humankind. (The paper also offers a counter-argument to the suggestion of Steve and several others that ethnicity and identity are a peculiarly U.S. mainlander preoccupation of recent times, showing that ethnicities in highland SE Asia have been telling ethnically pluralistic but ethnically self-conscious myths for quite a long time.)
Best,
Frank Proschan
From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Mon Oct 25 20:00:15 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:48:58 -0400
From: Hue Tam H. Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: " montagnards "
to all:
I would not mind using "mountain people" instead of highlanders which smacks of Scottish glens and burns. As for Oscar's anecdote, this reminds me of the whole system of positive discrimination (which, of course means negative discrimination for those not favored) for university entrance (how high one needed to score on the university entrance exam for admission) with the highest score required for high school graduates from Hanoi, and the lowest score for minority people and nationals of friendly countries (Cambodia and Laos). At least, this is how this was explained to me by a disgruntled Hanoi resident. I am also reminded of the literary prize awarded to Ma van Khang under the mistaken impression that he was a minority person!
FYI, today, the Boston Globe carried an article re: the College Board's decision to drop Asian-Americans from its list of minorities on the ground that Asian-Americans are high achievers, and the dismayed reaction of Cambodians in the Lowell area who stand to lose very needed school funding if they are no longer to be considered minorities (e.g. in need of assistance).
Best to all,
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Mon Oct 25 20:00:38 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 09:15:09 -0400
From: Hue Tam H. Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: " montagnards '
All this discussion is making me think that a set of papers could be collected together for use in teaching. In other words, besides the more comprehensive bibiliography (useful for research) which began this debate, would some of you suggest 5 or 6 papers (including by yourselves) that could be put into a coursepack for college students interested in Vietnam, Southeast Asia and ethnicity more generally?
Thanks in advance.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
From eemoise@clemson.edu Mon Oct 25 20:01:13 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 10:28:08 -0400
From: Edwin Moise <eemoise@clemson.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: In Praise of Ambiguity
At 02:44 AM 10/25/99 -0700, you wrote:
>While I do not wish to be pilloried as the defender of montagnard - and I
>agree that as a French term it should be avoided in English irrespective of
>whatever neo-colonial tones it may or may not have . . .
If we are going to rule out of English all the words that have been borrowed from other languages, this is going to shrink our dictionaries quite a bit.
Ed Moise
From nina@easynet.fr Mon Oct 25 20:01:22 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:20:42 -0700
From: Nina McPherson <nina@easynet.fr>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: In Praise of Ambiguity
Dear Ed:
Au contraire, I intend to continue to use montagnard or "mountain peoples" until the VSG comes up with something better! Interestingly enough, according to my Longman Dictionary of the English Language (a British-English dictionary though it is part of the Merriam-Webster Group) which defines defined as follows: montagnard n, often cap 1) (a member of) any of several N American Indian peoples living in the rocky mountains of Canada 2 (a member of) a people inhabiting the highland region in southern Vietnam bordering on Cambodia (Fr, lit.,mountaineer , fr montagne mountain, montagnard , adj , often cap)
Best,
Nina
From O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG Mon Oct 25 20:01:55 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 09:46:01 -0700
From: Oscar Salemink <O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: In Praise of Ambiguity
Nina,
In plain English " nguoi mien nui " would mean mountain people, which to me does not seem overly academic for literary translations into English. About montagnard , one can distinguish between the WORD " montagnard " which can be translated as "mountain dweller" or "mountain dwelling" ((as adjective) and Montagnard (with capital M) which became an ETHNIC LABEL in the Vietnamese context. The two have very different connotations, and any attempt to make it seem now as though the second meaning is neutral because the first is (in French that is) is rooted in the tendency in most formerly colonizing countries to have conveniently short historical memories. This goes for my own country ( Holland ) too where colonial and war crimes in Indonesia were buried for forty years. Montagnard was introduced by the
French in Vietnam in the 1940s as a more respectful label than Moi , Man, sauvages , etc. in an attempt to enlist the support of these groups against Vietnamese nationalist movements - a policy described in French archival records as a " politique d'apprivoisement " or policy of domestication. Montagnard may therefore be OK in a French national context but given the context of its uses in (neo)colonial Vietnam it is NOT neutral nor respectful in present-day Vietnam .
Small wonder then that the term " montagnard " doesn't go well with many Vietnamese I encounter. This morning when giving a lecture at Hanoi Agricultural University #1 about ethnic policies in the Central Highlands I never once mentioned the word " montagnard " - the majority of my audience (of university lecturers) would not understand the term. In general, I find Vietnamese to be a perfectly viable language to convey my thoughts, including about ethnic labels. But now for my simplistic litmus test: This afternoon when printing out the stuff that we commonly produced in VSG I tried to explain to my VN assistant about the nature of our rather voluminous debate. My mention of the word " montagnard " as a label for people living in Vietnam provoked laughter.
Oscar Salemink
From Nora.Taylor@asu.edu Mon Oct 25 20:02:05 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:52:18 -0700
From: Nora Taylor <Nora.Taylor@asu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: nguoi mien nui
While I think that Nina made some interesting points about the problems of translating both French and Vietnamese terms into English (and I would agree that Vietnamese IS difficult to translate when terms are ambiguous - so is French) I think we musn't think of this " montagnard " problem as solely a case of translation gone bad.
First of all there is a historical problem. Remember the term " Moi ?" The French replaced that "pejorative term" with " Montagnard " but they still refered to the " Montagnard " as "savages." THAT is where the problem lies. I think the earlier solution of using Vietnamese terms is the most sensible such as " Nguoi Tay , Nguoi Dao, or even Tay Nguyen." I have a book on " Tay Nguyen" Art which never once mentions the people in the book as " Nguoi mien nui ." That term to me seems to be a Vietnamese translation of " Montagnard ." Highlander and Uplander are terms used commonly by anthropologists for many types of people. Not just the scots by the way.
From eemoise@clemson.edu Mon Oct 25 20:02:28 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 13:07:24 -0400
From: Edwin Moise <eemoise@clemson.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: nguoi mien nui
At 08:52 AM 10/25/99 -0700, you wrote:
>First of all there is a historical problem. Remember the term " Moi ?" The
>French replaced that "pejorative term" with " Montagnard " but they still
> refered to the " Montagnard " as "savages." THAT is where the problem lies.
At the cost of repeating myself (I have asked repeatedly for examples of actual cases in which the term " Montagnard " has been used in a pejorative sense, and none of the people who have said the term has a pejorative connotation have supplied an actual example): Could you cite an actual example, a passage in which some French man or woman has referred to the Montagnards as "savages"? And if you saw this in French, what was the French term that is being translated here as "savages"?
Ed Moise
From proschan@indiana.edu Mon Oct 25 20:02:40 1999
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 00:27:14 +0700
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: nguoi mien nui and " sauvages "
Ed,
A far from exhaustive list, of titles only. One has only to open almost any French work of the 19th or early 20th century about highlanders in Indochina to see the word " sauvages " (often in close proximity to " montagnards ").
Cupet , Pierre Paul. 1900. Voyages au Laos et chez les sauvages du Sud-Est de l'Indo -Chine. Paris : Ernest Leroux . de Chavannes . 1895. Voyage au pays des Kas ( sauvages du Laos ). T'oung Pao 6: 268-95.
Fraisse , Andre. 1949. Les sauvages de la Nam - om . Bulletin de la Société des Études Indochinoises 24: 27-36.
Harmand , Jules. 1879. Le Laos et les populations sauvages de l'Indo -Chine. Tour du Monde 38, no. 2: 1-48.
Maspero , Henri. 1929. Moeurs et coutumes des populations sauvages . In L'Indochine : un empire colonial français . Georges Maspero , 233-55. Vol. 1.Paris: G. Van Oest .
Pinabel , Le Pere . 1884. Notes sur quelques peuplades sauvages dependant du Tong-king. Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris : 417-33.
Zaborowski , M. 1895. Les sauvages de l'Indochine - caracteres et origines . Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris : 198-213.
Frank Proschan
--
Research Associate
Indiana University
Temporary telephone in Hanoi , until 27 October 1999 - 826-5328 rm. 9, or fax
to 84-4-836-0351
Mail: Folklore Institute, 504 N. Fess , Bloomington , IN 47408-3890 USA
Office (no mail): 271 Aydelotte ( Ashton Center )
Email: proschan@indiana.edu tel : 1-812-855-9073 fax: 1-812-855-4008
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 13:03:56 -0400
From: C. Michele Thompson <thompson_mc@scsu.ctstateu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: nguoi mien nui and " sauvages "
Dear All,
I sort of hesitate to point this out, but the reviled/and defended term Montagnard does not appear in any of these titles, unless part of the title was left out. May I assume that it does appear, in close proximity to the term sauvages , in the text?
cheers
Michele
From nina@easynet.fr Mon Oct 25 20:03:46 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 10:46:52 -0700
From: Nina McPherson <nina@easynet.fr>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: nguoi mien nui
Regarding Nora's remarks:
In the last few years, I have come across the term nguoi mien nui in numerous contemporary Vietnamese novels and short stories. Most recently, I found it in a passage of the original Vietnamese manuscript of LUU LY, Duong Thu Huong's latest novel, which will be published in my English translation under the title MEMORIES OF A PURE SPRING (Hyperion Press, winter 2000). In this case, you see, I could not use the Vietnamese term as it was not specific to any one ethnic group; Duong Thu Huong used it in her characteristically romantic, fairly sweeping way to evoke the way the nguoi mien nui prepared sticky rice. It was most definitely not a Vietnamese translation of Montagnard (cap) or montagnard (lower case), which is a term I'm fairly sure Chi Huong is unfamiliar with, since her French is rudimentary. As for highlander and uplander , I fully understand the denotation of the term as used by anthropologists and don't contest the literal accuracy of using this term, or even montagnard (lower case) in any translation. I simply don't like it, nor does my editor.
Best,
Nina
From proschan@indiana.edu Mon Oct 25 20:05:57 1999
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 00:52:01 +0700
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: In Praise of Ambiguity
If the polysyllabic parsimony rule is not advised (viz. Christoph's earlier message) I am not sure that I am any more inclined to let literary editors impose their personal ears on our usage. If certain authors of fiction persist in romanticizing an anachronistic and sociologically invalid category of " nguoi mien nui ," effacing the cultural diversity of the highlanders in favor of a stereotyped image of sticky-rice eaters, why not just translate the term as "hillbilly" (to call a spade a spade) or "bold mountaineer " (in the proud tradition of Appalachian romantic nationalists)? Yes, some highlanders eat sticky rice; some eat corn; others eat non-glutinous rice; and far too many have to supplement whatever their staple grain is with taro and wild roots for several months a year. If the choice is between a euphonious stereotype and an accurate, neutral, term (even a polysyllabic one) I'll take the latter every time.
Frank Proschan
From Nora.Taylor@asu.edu Mon Oct 25 20:06:35 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 10:09:50 -0700
From: Nora Taylor <Nora.Taylor@asu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: In Praise of Ambiguity
I am suggesting the phrase, "People who live in the mountains, eat sticky rice." Why turn people who live in the mountains into "mountain people?"
From Nora.Taylor@asu.edu Mon Oct 25 20:07:01 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 10:40:35 -0700
From: Nora Taylor <Nora.Taylor@asu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: nguoi mien nui and " sauvages "
>From Leif Jonsson :
two things regarding the montagnard debate, the first if the term has connotations of "hick" in Europe , the second on the short distance from montagnard to savage in Southeast Asia .
The first is through a quote from Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, vol. 1, p.46 : "The picture, as we see, quickly turns to caricature. The mountain dweller is apt to be the laughing stock of the superior inhabitants of the towns and plains. he is suspected, feared, and mocked ... The lowland peasant had nothing but sarcasm for the rude fellow from the highlands ..." Unless someone asks for it, I see no need to furnish examples from within Southeast Asia .
The second concerns the easy transition from montagnard to savage. The case is from the French language catalogue ( Mosaique Culturelle des Ethnies du Vietnam ) to the new Ethnography Museum in Hanoi , and concerns the Yao ( Zao , Dao, Mien, etc.). It goes like this (p. 51): "Appellation propre : Kim Mien, Kim Mun ( homme sauvage )". That should do it. I work with Mien (who are a kind of Yao ), so I know what the term means. It translates as "forest people," and in its highland context it does not carry the " sauvage " connotations as it has done in the lowlands (the issue here is along the same lines as Frank Proschan's recent commentary about origin myths, we cannot assume that the "origin myth" of people x is only concerned with people x, it can just as well be about the multicultural context of this area. A term like "forest people" is not transparent. This is not confined to Vietnam, in Thai, " Khon pa" is (historically) a pejorative term (like savage), whereas Mla Bri (that translates as exactly the same thing) is not a case of self-loathing among the people known to Thai as Phi Tong Leuang ("Yellow-leaf ghosts", usually rendered as "Spirits of the Yellow Leaves")). I am very amused by the equation between Forest People and Homme Sauvage in the museum catalog. I think it may have to do with the French appropriation of the Chinese term Man (Barbarians of the South), which would mean that the ethnicity-agents of the contemporary Socialist government of Vietnam have authenticated as a minority self-reference the French colonial appropriation of an Imperial Chinese category.
If the term " montagnard " still looks good in English in reference to some of the peoples of Vietnam , it is because it provides a shortcut through a murky terminological terrain. I can understand such sloppiness in relation to UFO sightings, because we presumably have no means to ascertain what "it" was. But in relation to Vietnam , " montagnard " is not a descriptively (or analytically) adequate term.
Hjorleifur Jonsson
Assistant Professor
Anthropology Department
Arizona State University
Tempe , AZ 85287-2402
tel : 480-965-7837
fax : 480-965-7671
email:hjonsson@asu.edu
From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Mon Oct 25 20:08:08 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 15:18:38 -0400
From: hue-tam ho tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: " sauvages "
You may all be interested in the etymology of Viet ( yueh ): it originally meant southern barbarian (see K. Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam, pp. 42-43). As for Nina's concern, a translator has to be faithful to the original, prejudices, misconceptions and all, rather than scholarly accuracy. If Duong Thu Huong thinks every person in the highland eats sticky rice, that is what Nina should convey, not what members of VSG thinks is actually the case.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
From soh@hawaii.edu Mon Oct 25 20:08:40 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 11:22:03 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: " sauvages "
Hi Guys,
What fun! I am supposed to be chained to my computer writing a grant to keep the UH above water (& if the ice melts, we're goners!), and I cannot help myself from reading this stuff -- it's fascinating and proof positive that a good intellectual discussion is still a joy - why else are we academic? To get rich?
On " Yueh /Viet" (for Chinese I am used to the good old Wade-Giles transcription which betrays my ancient SOAS sinological training): well, not exactly "southern barbarian" (that was really the "Man," a term which corresponded to the barbarians of the other three directions, & a concept that seems to draw on notions of popular Taoist cosmology) -- the " Yueh " were indeed a set of peoples (often called the " Pai Yueh /Hundred Yueh ," which really meant "all those various kinds of Yueh down there") to the south of the core Chou dynasty domains (at which time I think the naming of such folk must have taken place) whom folks in the central domains considered "not quite us," but who were recognized as being somewhat higher on the civilization index than, say, the "Man" (or the Hsiung-nu to the north, for that matter, whom the central folks thought of as quite mean and nasty -- the southern Man were not often described as nasty, just benighted; the Yueh people of the state of Yueh , on the other hand, do not seem to have been thought of as either nasty or benighted).
And it just so happens one group of Yueh people did have a state that was recognized as such by the central folks (& its doings were deemed worthy of being recorded - surely more than one can say for the Man). This gave us the "classic" called "The Spring and Autumn of Wu and Yueh ." The Yueh king in this classic was seen as a model of perseverence . Along with Han Kao- tsu (Liu Pang), he serves as the model for Nguyen Trai's portrayal of Le Loi . [ & it was really because Nguyen Trai used this " Yueh " metaphor that the Ming he dubbed "Ngo" (explanations that this refers to the Wu of the 3 Kingdoms period are something of a volksetymologie )].
Thus, I really do think " Yueh " has a somewhat better pedigree in the history of its usage in ' wen -yen' works than "barbarian" -- it is well to remember that "Chinese" writers did sometimes refer to the inhabitants of Chiao-chou/Chiu-chen/Jih-nan as "Man" (see the biography of Shih Hsieh in the history of the Wu), so we can say that there was a conscious effort on their part to distinguish between categories; the problem is to know what those distictions meant.
I believe that the ( Sinitic or largely sinicized ) elite in what has become today's Viet Nam, sometime way back in the " Bac Thuoc " period (traditionally given as 111 BCE to 939 CE), began to think of themselves as the true continuation of the Yueh state of yore (as did Ch'ao T'o/Trieu Da - who never set foot in VN as far as I am concerned, pseudo-histories notwithstanding) and the state of " Yueh " was, after all, a good recognized category among "civilized folks/educated men" (the same thing, in the " mentalite " of the period) and a virtuous state, perhaps a just slightly "hick" kind of place place , and this acceptance of the name Yueh also allowed its wearers to assert their "historic" autonomy. If you'll pardon the analogy, it would be like somebody a hundred years ago saying, "We may be from West Virginia, but at least we're Americans, and we ain't a bunch of Redskins, so you'd better stay the hell out of our back yard!"
You see, names are usually about real estate. The Kmhmu , Frank, are indeed the "odd men out," bless them!
Aloha,
X
Steve O'H., his mark
From thompson_mc@scsu.ctstateu.edu Mon Oct 25 20:09:08 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 14:59:47 -0400
From: C. Michele Thompson <thompson_mc@scsu.ctstateu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: " montagnards "
Dear All,
It would certainly be inappropriate to refer to Chung Hoang Chuong as Indochinese since at this point in time there is so such political entity as Indochina . Nor is Indochina any sort of an agreeded upon geographic term. However sometimes people do belong, even if briefly, to a group that might include people of several nationalities or ethnic groups. Just because I'd like to know people's opinion on this subject how should we refer to, just for example, a group of people (perhaps a commitee or a tour group) that includes Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesians, and perhaps Burmese. Is it ok to say Southeast Asians? Should we list each nationality?
cheers
Michele
From cchung@ccsf.cc.ca.us Mon Oct 25 20:09:17 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 17:40:49 -0700 (PDT)
From: Chuong Chung < cchung@ccsf.cc.ca.us >
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: " montagnards "
Hi Michele,
Southeast Asians would sound a little better don't you think? Indochinese (as William Collins put in his essay) ignores the fact that the region does have a Southeast Asian core before being either indianized or sinicized ( Coedes for example). Yet, Vietnam was never totally sinicized even we borrowed a great deal from China ( i.e writing system, belief system. So, when the term French Indochina was used to identify a sicinized and indianized region being Frenchified ... as I have experienced during the refugee years when these "experts" talk about us suggesting that our language was French and during the workshop on Southeast Asian refugees told the audience to hire French speaking staff to work with us. It was disturbing.
l'Indochine francaise no longer exists and many departments opt for the Southeast Asian Studies, South Asian studies, or Vietnamese studies, Thai studies etc... I still remember when I was in 12eme, I often recite by heart " nos ancetres les Gaulois !" Indeed at one time, we were part of that Francophonie and mere France. Only, a few of us were allowed to become francais . The rest were called "indigenes" and " Annamites " So it does feel better to be called Vietnamese.
Cheers,
Chuong
From soh@hawaii.edu Tue Oct 26 11:38:22 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 19:31:11 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: " montagnards "
Hi,
I have a question that has been bugging me for about 35 years, and I was reminded of it by Anh Choung Chung's story, to wit: he says, and I have often heard Vietnamese friends in France say the same thing, "I still remember when I was in 12eme, I often recite by heart ' nos ancetres les Gaulois !'" What I am wondering is can he, or anybody "listening in" to this show who experienced the " franco-annamite " school system first hand, remember the context in which that stock "our ancesters , the Gauls " phrase occurred? Do you remember the textbook (if any) from which it was taken? In which classes were such things recited? Any concrete evidence? Anything at all I could put my hands on would be highly appreciated.
I will be giving a lecture in Paris in mid-December and I would like to track down the syllabus, textbook, official directive from the ministry, what-have-you, to document this often-heard assertion. The whole question of the nature of colonial education, and the Lamarkian " assimilationism " that it represented, is of great interest to me. This speaks to the "hot topic" of the roots of Vietnamese identity (ethnic, political, or otherwise) upon which I have been working for about, helas , twenty-five years (for the ten years before that I tried to ignore it, but it wouldn't go away quitely ).
For those of you who would get a giggle out of it, here's a little article I wrote on the subject recently (complete with photos taken from catalogues produced by the Indochinese colonial ministry of education for distribution at the 1931 Paris exposition - with Vietnamese students being 'civilized' by taking "life drawing" [anatomy] classes, complete with nude model [male or female? You'll have to read the article of course]):
O'Harrow , Stephen, " Babar and the Mission Civilisatrice : colonialism and the biography of a mythical elephant" in Biography ,vol 22.1. Honolulu, 1999, pp 86-103.
The article has naked elephants, too! How can you go wrong? The journal Biography, which was co-founded by Leon Edel and George Simson (two "biggies" in the field), has been published for some twenty years now by the Center for Biographical Reserach and has long been interested in Asian biography, as well as the theoretical issues in the field, and questions of the nature of identity often seem to play a major role in their considerations, if anyone is interested.
Aloha, Steve O'Harrow
PART 3
The Great Montagnard Debate III
From nina@easynet.fr Fri Oct 29 11:32:20 1999
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 04:43:55 -0700
From: Nina McPherson <nina@easynet.fr>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Scottish sticky-rice
Dear Frank,
Wow. If I had known my well-intentioned query and example would have provoked such an outpouring of contempt and invective against evil literary editors and translators imposing their personal ears on your usage (??!!) and Duong Thu Huong, (who spent much of her youth in the highlands during the last war-which-I-dare not-name) branded as an "anachronistic romantic" who uses "sociologically invalid terms" and stereotypes all mountain people as sticky-rice eaters, I would have "effaced" my own cultural diversity and kept my hillbilly mouth shut. I'd find your comment amusing if it weren't also a bit disturbing. The level of discourse - and bizarre ad-hominem labelling and counter-labelling -bears an unfortunate resemblance to a "certain political establishment" in Vietnam which still insists on confusing literature and history and likes to make writers and translators responsible for what fictional characters say. You can't regulate fiction or word choice or irony unless you are the Communist Party. And even the Communist Party has had a hard time regulating Duong Thu Huong. Before I beat a retreat, a final word of clarification on behalf of Chi Huong, an innocent who I should never have dragged into this, though she would be highly amused: The passage in her novel Luu Ly that I referred to was, in fact, her caustic parody of the way her FICTIONAL drunken male Vietnamese artists (sorry, they usually are all of the former) tend to talk and wax pseudo-philosophical about sex and food and wine and tea and the way nguoi mien nui cook rice. I'm not even sure it was sticky rice, by the way. But maybe we could just "laisse tomber" as the French say and get back to work? Yours, a hybrid-Scottish-Hungarian-highlander-Montagnard(upper case, original French Revolution sense)-sticky-rice eater in Paris,
Nina McPherson (or Mac "son of" Pherson "the Parson")
From wturley@siu.edu Fri Oct 29 11:33:04 1999
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 09:20:05 -0500
From: William S. Turley <wturley@siu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: words 'n stuff
>I'm not even sure it was sticky rice, by the way. But maybe we could just
>"laisse tomber" as the French say and get back to work?
It is heartening to see some detachment and humor return to this discussion in the last couple of days. But before you laissé tomber, let me remind you of the lesson one can draw from the meaning of "Viet Cong" in common parlance among Vietnamese today, including younger members of the Party. Time and events have eroded its original resonances and meaning, even for those whom it originally disparaged. Many of the differences and arguments among you are more properly traced to the same process than to politically incorrect ideas, erroneous interpretations, or evil intent. Such is the fate of words, including the neutral ones you are trying to find or invent in the present.
For those of you who wish to get back to work on the grubby stuff of politics and economy, allow me to note the recent publication of "The Politics and Economics of Transition to an Open Market Economy in Viet Nam," by James Riedel and William S. Turley (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Development Centre, Technical Paper No. 152, September 1999). It is available through the OECD or at http://www.oecd.org/dev/publication/tp1a.htm.
Cheers,
Bill Turley
William S. Turley
Department of Political Science
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, Illinois, USA 62901-4501
phone: (618) 453-3182
fax: (618) 453-3163
From proschan@indiana.edu Fri Oct 29 11:34:12 1999
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 11:41:18 +0700
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Scottish sticky-rice - ambiguities and apologies
Nina,
I'm sorry for making the freshman faux pas of mistaking the author for her character, and imputing the character's words or ideas to the author. Your third message (below), alerting us that the phrase in question occurs in the context of a "caustic parody" of a drunken artist, clears up the confusion. I think my initial imputation of the drunken artist's words to the ironic author was an honest mistake, since you had first told us simply that "writers, like Duong Thu Huong write about how the "nguoi mien nui" prepare tea or sticky rice" and in a second message "Duong Thu Huong used it in her characteristically romantic, fairly sweeping way to evoke the way the nguoi mien nui prepared sticky rice." I think it was a fair (if incorrect) conclusion from that limited information that it was an authorial or at least narrative voice, rather than a character's voice presented by the author in a "caustic parody." So, again, my apologies for imputing ideas to Duong Thu Huong that you now explain she intended to parody. Ironically, this may serve to underscore the point that I made previously (perhaps a little more vehemently than was warranted): if the task is to translate a historical document or a fictional work, one must be faithful to the time and tone. Depending on how caustic Huong intended her parody to be, one might choose from among terms such as hillbilly, mountaineer, montagnard, highlander, etc. - depending on whether the author sees the drunken artist as simply a nostalgiac romantic, a patronizing paternalist, or a respectful elegiast (even if drunk). (Including, of course, some terms that would be unacceptable in contemporary scholarly or public discourse.) That the undifferentiated category of "nguoi mien nui" is an operative one among certain contemporary artists and/or writers is apparent from a stroll through any Hanoi art gallery - it is of course differently nuanced and one might need a repertoire of words to capture those diverse artistic or authorial intentions.
But none of this, it seems to me, suggests that the ear-test is any better than the syllable-count-test in choosing or rejecting a neutral term for academic and public discourse, or for the occasions when a fictionalist is writing in a voice for which she/he is willing to assume authorial "answerability" (Bakhtin) - nor would I want to give up "highlander" because Mel Gibson looks silly in a kilt. So, apologies to any translators, authors, editors, (even drunken painters) I have offended. And Nina, I'll even buy a legal copy of the book before the postcard sellers around Hoan Kiem have come up with a cheap photocopied knock-off.
Frank Proschan
--
Research Associate
Indiana University
Temporary telephone in Hanoi, until 27 October 1999 - 826-5328 rm. 9, or fax
to 84-4-836-0351
Mail: Folklore Institute, 504 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN 47408-3890 USA
Office (no mail): 271 Aydelotte (Ashton Center)
Email: proschan@indiana.edu tel: 1-812-855-9073 fax: 1-812-855-4008
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Fri Oct 29 11:34:49 1999
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 04:56:37 -0600 (MDT)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: The Montagnard Debate and VSG
Dear Fellow Members,
For your information, there is a thorough study by FURUTA Motoo on "the Vietnamese Communist policies toward various ethnic groups in Indochina" from the 1920s to the 1980s.
Furuta's book, based upon his doctoral disseration submitted to the University of Tokyo in 1990 and published by the Otsuki Shoten in Tokyo (1991), is entitled "Betonamu kyosanshugisha no minzoku seisakushi -- Kakumei to esunishiti" (Revolution and Ethinicity: A History of the Vietnamese Communist Search for a New Vietnamese Identity in Connection with Other Ethnic Groups in Indochina). My review of Furuta's monumental work ("Doc sach: Cong trinh nghien cuu cua mot hoc gia Nhat Ban ve chinh sach dan toc o Viet Nam") was published in the Nghien cuu lich su (no. 2, 1992).
VINH Sinh
From soh@hawaii.edu Fri Oct 29 11:37:06 1999
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 10:08:35 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: nguoi mien nui and "sauvages" -- what term to use in VNese?
Friends,
Yes, this thread is going on a bit and it would be good to have things put together as a publication -- I have already downloaded several of your comments and made an unofficial samizdat for my students -- attributed, of course. I maintain that notions of ethnicity as currently constructed are an artifact of our age and, in the case of VN, largely but not 100%, an artifact of Western influence. My reading of older texts is that what we today would call "political considerations" were of greater weight in, say, contracting marriages with Cham princesses or activites of that nature. And, by the way, trying to construct an an ethnographically acceptable "Cham" ethnicity for the pre-modern period is really hairy -- probably even less tenable that trying to come up with a good definition for pre-modern "Kinh" (which term looks suspiciously modern itself). As far as I can detect, there may have been an ethnically classifiable group in the Champa elite, but it is highly quesitonable whether this "Cham" classification could have stood up at any level below the court. I think you were politically a "Cham," if you owed your protection to a Cham lord, but what you were ethnically was anybody's guess. I'll bet this was true elsewhere in what was to become Viet Nam and perhaps elsewhere in SEAsia (or many other places in the world, for that matter). Let's blame it all on the German romantics and their notions of "volk" -- now if we could only figure out who the "Germans" were (are?) ... All this aside, I was thinking, in actual practice, when I am in VN, do I say "montaignards" or "minority peoples" or what?
Actually, when I'm in Viet Nam, this is a topic which does not come up too often, and the expats I deal with usually don't give a damn what terms I use about anything, as long as the beer is cold, and with Vietnamese folks I speak Vietnamese, so the question is "what do *they* say in their own lanugage?" Last June, I was having dinner 'en famille' (at my mother-in- law's house) in deepest Giang Vo district and it was pretty late in the evening and suddenly there appeared at the door the proverbial "little old lady." Much rejoicing, "O quy hoa qua! Lau qua! Vui qua! v.v...." She was not an inch over five feet tall, exceedingly thin, and disarmingly (and. it turns out, deceivingly) frail-looking, dressed in dark trousers, a long-sleeved grey ao ba ba and black turban. Much hugging and laughing. So this was obviously an old friend who had dropped by without warning, as people of the older generation, unused to the availability of telephones and the like, often do in the North. We were introduced in the almost totally uninformative way one is - "This is Hang's husband; here is "'Chi Hai Nho'" or something like that; as usual she was pretty clear who I was, or pretended to be, and I hadn't a clue (what's new?) who she was -- she was my elder and that's all I had a need to know.
Next day, I asked my mother-in-law who that was last night. "Oh, she is one of my oldest friends - we were in the maquis together up north." (MIL was in the Viet Minh from 1946 through 54, out in the styx) "She just came down to Hanoi for a few days and whenever she does she comes to see me -- we never know when she is coming because she doesn't send many letters." "What is her real name?" My mother-in-law gave her name and it struck me as slightly out of the ordinary so I asked "what kind of a name is that?" "Oh, she is a Tho" ("O, nguoi Tho day." "Nguoi Tho a?" "Nguoi dan toc thieu so - thoi khang chien nguoi Tho rat nhieu, con a!")
So, here is an ordinary woman, once upon a time an elementary school principal, in her 70s, native of Hai Duong, long time Hanoi resident, not a Party member but an old Viet Minh member and somebody who is not apt to go against the government line or use terminology that is much different from the "accepted" talk she and her peers use. She seems to call folks by the ethnonym that is commonly attributed to that particular people, but since her generation used "Tho" for a group who I believe currently call themselves something else in Vietnamese ("Day"??? could this simply be a quoc ngu transliteration for a T'ai language family word), that usage on her part must date her -- the inclination to try to use an acceptable (to her friend, I should think) name is the key point. As a conglomerate, she referred to non-Kinh folks as "nguoi dan toc thieu so."
* * * * * * *
By the way, she seemed a little surprised when I asked about her friend; for my mother in law, she's just "Chi Hai Nho," just an old friend from the days when they all suffered together for national independence -- I don't think she thinks of Chi Hai Nho in anything but human individual terms.
When you get old, everybody starts to look alike -- when I was a kid, I thought Konrad Adenhauer was Chinese.
Aloha,
Steve O'Harrow
From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Fri Oct 29 11:37:26 1999
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 19:21:57 -0400
From: Hue Tam H. Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: tho and moi
to Steve et al:
In the South, the term "Tho" (Chinese "t'u") which might very roughly be rendered as "indigenous" tended to be used as a derogatory term for Khmers while "moi" which does mean "savage" was more likely to be used for upland minorities. Dong bao thuong was an attempt by the SVN government to be more respectful (even if only when speaking) toward mountain minorities. In premodern time, there was a bureaucratic position "tho ty" (Chinese t'u ssu) which was reserved for local official in charge of minority affairs.
Wasn't Le Loi a tho ty? So I wonder whether "tho" in the anecdote you relate, Steve, refers to a specific group or to a larger category, and used interchangeably with "dong bao thieu so." It is not unusual for people to use both the common and un-p.c. terminology and the more official, more neutral terminology all in one breath. I believe that the term Cham as opposed to Champa (Chiem Thanh) is of fairly recent coinage. You are right that premodern Vietnamese rulers did not bother much about the ethnicity of their subjects. In that sense, the very concept of minority is a byproduct of the attempt to construct a majority (see your colleague Dru Gladney's edited book, Making Majorities).
Dru Gladney, Jonathan Lipman, Frank Dikotter and others have in fact pointed out the influence of the German concept of the volk on the construction of race and national identity in China. I would suspect that the same thing happened in Vietnam. The year that the Tonkin campaign began, Ernest Renan gave his lecture at the College de France which is much
quoted in American discussions of nations and nationalism, "Qu'est ce qu'une nation?" in which he discussed the respective contribution of Franks and Gauls in the making of France (we come back to your query re: "nos ancetres les Gaulois.")
Best,
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
From soh@hawaii.edu Fri Oct 29 11:37:56 1999
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:47:37 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: tho and moi
Hi,
Fun, fun, fun. Well, my mother-in-law wouldn't know a "PC" term (by our lights) if it bit her on the knee but, in her own way, she tries to be kinda PC. But I think her use of Tho is a bit more specific and was attached to a single group of "T'ai"-speaking people, as was the practice during what some folks called the "Tho Rebellion" of the early forties (on the back of which, the Viet Minh began to build its new military arm). Doubtless the word comes from the earlier Chinese generic. The usage over time has probably become narrowed in the case of the North but may have retained its broader applicaitons elsewherer -- I am far from being very knowledgable.
"Wasn't Le Loi a tho ty?" I'd really like to see your reference. He was called a "Phu Dao" in the Lam Son Thuc Luc, I believe, and as far as I have been able to ascertain, the LSTL (in some no longer extant version???) is the mother of nearly all other indigenous texts referring to LL's career, including the passages in the Dai Viet Su Ky Toan Thu. But I could be wrong (mirabile dictu) and I would love to find something new on the subject.
S. O'H.
From seacom@eyeonline.de Fri Oct 29 11:38:36 1999
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 10:33:41 +0200
From: SEACOM <seacom@eyeonline.de>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: tho and moi
Dear Steve and all,
the term "Tho" is also a designation for an ethnic group in North Vietnam (dan toc Tho) belonging to the Viet-Muong language family (classification according to Dang Nghiem Van/ Chu Thai Son and Luu Hung: Les ethnies minoritaires du Vietnam, Hanoi 1986; also To Ngoc Thanh: Musical instruments of Vietnam`s ethnic minorities, Hanoi 1997) Vietnames scholars in their works mostly make clear which ethnic group or sub-group they mean by using the term dan toc (in german simly "Ethnie", in English maybe "ethnic minority"?, but "dan toc" does not include "minority") and adding the name of the language group or the family (dan toc /name of the group/; for example dan toc Thai den for the Black Thai; or for classification of several groups of one language family they use cac dan toc /name of the language family/ for example cac dan toc Thai-Tay for the Tai-speaking groups, dan toc Mon-Kh`mer etc.) I mean, these designations are neutral enough to be used in academic dispute. The strict usage of these desigantions might be part of the early SRV´s policy to abandon terms with negative connotation, such as "montagnards", for example. Nguoi mien nui or dan toc mien nui is seldom to be found in scholarly works. We have translated several works of Cam Trong on the Black Thai, there the designation dan toc Thai den is used strictly.) Part of this policy also was to have member of the ethnic groups as researchers in the National Institue of Ethnology, in the Museum of Ethnology and in several Universities. Cam Trong, Vi Van An and Hoang Luong for example - well known scholars specilizing in Thai studies - all are members of the dan toc Thai. The same polica one can find in Laos. There, also members of the ethnic groups were involved in research. In Laos, all the ethnic groups are classified as "Lao Loum" (meaning lowland Lao, includes all Tai-Lao speaking peoples), "Lao Theung" (meaning highland Lao, including all Mon-Khmer speaking peoples) and "Lao Soung" (meaning mountain Lao, includes all Hmong-Yao and Tibeto-Burman speaking peoples). there was not longer made a difference between minorities and majorities. This policy - at least officially - constructed an atmosphere of equality between the different ethnic groups. Nevertheless, designations with negative connotations as they were used since centuries ("Meo" for the Hmong, of "Kha" for the Mon-Khmer speaking groups) are used inofficially further on.
Best greetings,
Jana Raendchen (also in the name of Oliver Raendchen)
SEACOM southeast asia communication centre Berlin
From cchung@ccsf.cc.ca.us Fri Oct 29 11:39:41 1999
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:54:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: Chuong Chung <cchung@ccsf.cc.ca.us>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: tho and moi
Dear all,
I remember reading these scholar/beauty and knight errand type of novellas (tieu thuyet) the term" tho" is often connected with the "tho phi" which is a brigand (highway robbers). Then, my folks in refering to the minorities use several terms: Mien or Men (in this case Cao Mien or Cao Men to talk about Cambodian and not Yu-Mien) again they put together these thang Mien, thang Tho (to refer to the darker skin folks and i would think that it does have a pejorative meaning) to talk or to refer to the minorities. Parents to get children to go home or to listen to them threatened "coi chung thang Tho no bat!" (you might get kidnapped by these minorities) I guess to go back to the etymology of the words if "tho" cames from "Tho Ty" then what is the "Nom' or the "Han Viet" character representing it? How do we write "tho phi" in Han Viet? Whethe Tho Ty and Tho ty have the same "Tho" character?
I guess Michele and Nina in asking where you could find the translation of Montagnard as Sauvage, they raised a valid question. I have not found these translations in Baudesson' Primitive People of Indo-China although he refered to the highlanders as "Moi" but then the term "Moi" is not French. It is Vietnamese. The question again whether the Vietnamese coined this term "Moi" or they translated from "sauvages"? Earlier, Steve Denney talked about Nguyen Van Huy and the Museum of Ethnic Vietnam. There all monorities are called "nguoi dan toc" and not " nguoi dan toc thieu so" Should we use "nguoi dan toc" as well?
Cheers,
Chung Hoang Chuong
From proschan@indiana.edu Fri Oct 29 11:40:06 1999
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 07:34:08 +0700
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: nguoi dan toc and nguoi dan toc thieu so
Re Chung's final comment (below), "dan toc" or "cac dan toc" is generally used in both scholarly and political/journalistic usage for "ethnicities" or "ethnic groups" (including both minorities and majorities) and "dan toc thieu so" or in older works "dan toc it nguoi" is used to distinguish "minorities" or "ethnic minorities" from all ethnicities. In common usage, however, there is often a slippage, so that Vietnamese in Hanoi have a common misconception that the "Bao tang Dan toc hoc" -- official English translation "Vietnam Museum of Ethnology" and official French translation "Musee d'Ethnographie du Vietnam" -- is understood to be the "Ethnic Museum" or "Minorities Museum" even though roughly 40% or more of its exhibit space is devoted to the Kinh/Viet. (I've had two or three conversations in the last few days in which Vietnamese friends referred to the museum with an incorrect term, whether in English or Vietnamese.)
In the Museum's labels, texts, and publications, "dan toc" is ALWAYS translated into English as "ethnicities" or "ethnic groups" or "peoples" and NEVER translated as "minorities" unless it is part of the expression "dan toc thieu so." I think that the French translations are equally consistent in following this rule, but wouldn't want to assert an unconditional claim without rechecking. "Dan toc" of course can also mean simply "national" so that "dan toc Viet Nam" means the VNese people altogether and "mon an dan toc" does not mean "ethnic food" or "minority food" but simply "national cuisine" (what in Mexican Spanish would be called "platos tipicos"). Off for a bowl of pho (a typical mon an dan toc, of course imported from China, but nationalized so pervasively that it has become the symbol of Vietnameseness).
Best,
Frank Proschan
--
Research Associate
Indiana University
Temporary telephone in Hanoi, until 27 October 1999 - 826-5328 rm. 9, or fax
to 84-4-836-0351
Mail: Folklore Institute, 504 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN 47408-3890 USA
Office (no mail): 271 Aydelotte (Ashton Center)
Email: proschan@indiana.edu tel: 1-812-855-9073 fax: 1-812-855-4008
From dgm405@coombs.anu.edu.au Fri Oct 29 11:41:26 1999
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 14:43:38 +1000
From: David Marr <dgm405@coombs.anu.edu.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: nguoi dan toc and nguoi dan toc thieu so
I just returned from Alaska to encounter the half-month explosion of VSG messages triggered by a query about the word `montagnard'. Fun to read, and sometimes thought-provoking. But at the end of the day (or will there be more?), I particularly noticed a confusion over three kinds of labeling:
a)How a group labels itself;
b)How those around it label the group; and
c)How those of us who write for a mostly western and/or English-language audience should label.
Now a question. Is there a literature in any discipline on multiple identities and how to relate them to each other? For Vietnam, identification with the nation has dominated most writing (including mine), whereas it should be obvious that, varying by time and space, individuals also identify with family, village, occupation, class, political organization, ethno-linguistic group, gender, religion, sports team and much more. Where are some theoretical and methodological tools to grapple with this human condition? And has anyone written about this in relation to 20th century Vietnam?
Cheers,
David
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Fri Oct 29 11:45:10 1999
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 10:24:53 -0600 (MDT)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Montagnard - Term of Affection (Reply) (fwd)
There is a piece of information concerning the usage of the term "kinh" that might have some relevance to the ongoing debate on "ethnicity" or "ethnic groups", etc. in Vietnam.
In one the of the books I read in the last 6 months (unfortunately I can't recall its title), its author speculates -- in the book the author writes in a more affirmative tone -- that the term "kinh" at the beginning was used by the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam to refer to themself, and only afterward that "kinh" began to be used in the sense that we now understand it.
Though it may be difficult to prove its validity, this interpretation nonetheless seems apropos to the way that I've come to understand the manner in which Chinese culture has been assimilated throughout Vietnamese history. Just like the adoption and adaptation of "pho" (that we read in an interesting e-mail from Hanoi the other day) and so many other things...
VINH Sinh
From: Judith Henchy [SMTP:judithh@u.washington.edu]
Sent: Friday, October 29, 1999 10:25 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group
Subject: Montagnard - Term of Affection (Reply) (fwd)
At the risk of adding additional fuel to this blaze which seems to need no such assistance, I thought that you should be aware that there is a parallel debate being conducted on the H-SEASIA list which has gone in a very different direction.....
jh
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judith Henchy
Head, Southeast Asia Section, Box 352900
University of Washington Libraries
Seattle, WA 98195
Telephone: (206) 543 3986
Fax: (206) 685 8049
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:42:53 +0800
> From: H-SEASIA <cassea@nus.edu.sg>
> Reply-To: H-Net Discussion List on History and Study of Southeast Asia
> <H-SEASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
> To: H-SEASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU
> Subject: Montagnard - Term of Affection (Reply)
>
> From: Charles F. Printz [mailto:cfphrai@bellatlantic.net]
>
> I am also in full agreement with Jan and Clive Christie and Professor Voth
> regarding the use of the term Montagnard (French, "Mountaineers" or
> "Highlanders"). I would venture to suggest, based on my own experiences,
> that Montagnard is used in an affectionate and praiseworthy manner by the
> vast majority of us who lived with and fought with these brave people we
> consider our brothers and sisters, the gentle and caring people many of us
> call "Yards" for short.
>
> It is also true that some academics and self-proclaimed experts on the
> Montagnards, and Indochina's ethnic minorities generally, consider the
> termoffensive. A small minority of these same people, - ("I mean no prejudice
> to any particular person") - however, also have a less than favored
> reputationin cirles busy at rendering help to the "Yards" both in the US and the
> Highlands. While some of the groups have prefered slightly altered
> versions of their group names (i.e. Rhade to Ede, by example) none of the "Yards" I
> work with today have bristled or
> suggested to me that I utilize any other term for them in lieu of Montagnard.
>
> In fact, most of the advocacy groups dominated by Montagnard Boards of
> Directors have Montagnard in their organizational titles: Montagnard
> Foundation, Inc., Montagnard Dega Association, Montagnard Human Rights
> Organization, etc. The one possible exception to the Montagnard reference
> might be the use of the term Dega people/s, but even when this term is
> used you find it matched to the term Montagnard, as can be seen above. The
> French scholar George Condominas certainly
> means no harm, nor does the leading US authority on the "Yards" Gerry
> Hickey by their use of the term Montagnard.
>
> With best regards, and thanks to Professor Voth and to Jan and Clive
> Christie for their well thought out views.
>
> S/ Chuck Printz
>
> Charles F. Printz, Deputy Director
> & Southeast Asian Affairs Specialist,
> Alternate Representative to the United Nations
> Human Rights Advocates International, Inc.
> c/o Law Offices of Philip H. Teplen, P.L.L.C.
> (Empire State Building)
> 350 Fifth Avenue/Suite 5508
> New York, NY 10118-5589
> Home Office - Ph: (908) 352-6032
> Office - Ph:(212) 563-3505; Fax:(212) 564-7387
> E-Mail: cfphrai@bellatlantic.net
>
From O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG Wed Nov 17 12:29:43 1999
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 07:50:24 -0700
From: Oscar Salemink <O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Montagnard - Term of Affection (Reply) (fwd)
Thank you Judith for alerting us to this parallel discussion. This interesting and revealing statement by Chuck Printz is a perfect illustration and vindication of the views put forward by - amongst others - Frank Proschan, Chris Giebel, Nora Taylor, Leif Jonsson and my person regarding the colonial connotations of the labels "Montagnard" and "Yard". For instance, Printz "would venture to suggest, based on [his] own experiences, that Montagnard is used in an affectionate and praiseworthy manner by the vast majority of [those] who lived with and fought with these brave people we consider our brothers and sisters, the gentle and caring people many of us call "Yards" for short." This clearly situates the contemporary use of the term in the US intervention in Vietnam over 25 years ago rather than in contemporary Vietnam itself. "Yards", then, becomes the petname for those brave people who were duped (or to some extent duped themselves) into fighting a neocolonial war for an outside power, but I am sure that the same level of affection is not bestowed upon those "Yards" who chose to "follow the Revolution".
The "Montagnard" organizations mentioned in Printz' statement are based in the US, not in Vietnam, and their particular histories are intertwined with the US intervention in Vietnam. To my knowledge, however, Vietnam is a sovereign country which lies across the Pacific and has successfully resisted western domination in series of wars. Perhaps it would be appropriate if the ethnic labels - if any - should be decided on in Vietnam, first of all by those who are being labeled. Sadly, their voices have been absent from this debate.
Regarding the nature of the "great debate", Biff Keyes has suggested that the fault lines in this debate largely follow disciplinary boundaries; others made different suggestions. All these distinctions have merit, but I would like to venture a more outrageous (for politically explicit) assumption: It seems that "Montagnard" or "Yard" is preferred by those whose perspective on Vietnam is the result of a personal entanglement with the neocolonial (US) intervention, or the French colonial intervention (either pro or contra). The label itself is thus part of a colonial legacy and an expression of colonial nostalgia. On the other hand, "some academics and self-proclaimed experts on the Montagnards " of a younger generation regard these wars as history in a more literal sense, and take a more distant view (which their adversaries then confuse with political correctness). This distinction is, of course, far from absolute, and reveals my own bias as a likely member of a "small minority of these same people [who] have a less than favored reputation in cirles busy at rendering help to the "Yards" both in the US and the Highlands."
As always pleased to live up to my reputation.
Oscar Salemink
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Wed Nov 17 12:31:12 1999
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 14:52:48 -0600 (MDT)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Montagnard - Term of Affection (Reply) (fwd)
Dear Oscar and Other Members
I have tried but am still unable to locate this reference. I only rembember that it is from a book written in Vietnamese by a reliable scholar, and that I came across this information only lately. At the time, this debate/discussion has not taken place yet, but I have a clear recollection of this information because I was also caught by surprise when I read it.
When I began to consider it in a broader perspective, I thought it makes sense. It is congruent with other aspects in the Vietnamese adoption of China's culture, e.g., notions such as "Middle Kingdom" (Vietnam as a "Tie^?u Trung Hoa",Little Middle Kingdom) and "hoa-di" (civilized vs barbarous), etc. Kinh, as you said, means "capital", and like "hoa", also implies "elegant/civilized". By the way, "kinh-hoa", the combination of "kinh" and "hoa", also means "capital". If I happen to come across the information on the origins of the usage of "kinh" in VN again, I will certainly let you know.
Cheers,
VINH Sinh
From michaeld@netnam.org.vn Wed Nov 17 12:31:46 1999
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 10:19:37 +0700
From: Michael Di Gregorio <michaeld@netnam.org.vn>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Kinh
I posed a question about the term "kinh" to Steve Oharrow about 2 weeks ago. Neither one of us knew when or how it came to replace "Viet" as an ethnic term. It is not an organic term, even for "kinh" . That is to say, people do not go around saying "I am kinh, what is your ethnicity?". My sense is that it appeared in its contemporary sense as a replacement for Viet , which identified an ethnic group with the nation. Kinh allows the majority a place within the "family of nations" that make up Vietnam without that association, while at the same time signifying rights to leadership through the term's association with a higher stage of cultural acheivment. In this way, the roots of "kinh" as a term to signify "civilized" culture representitive of "people from the capital" seems to fit. There is no need to link this with Chinese, however. Let's just say that the elite in what is now the Red River delta (and its associated territories) considered themselves part of a larger civilized world, that inculdes present day China, that shared common cultural characteristics. In this way, "kinh" as a historical term is opposed to both "uncivilized" and to the countryside in general.
Steve has pointed out distinctions on the rural-urban border many times, some of which have become linked to ethnic identities and others which have been encorporated into the "kinh" identity. I think a similar process of incorporation and separation has been noted in the Pearl River delta as well. In my own contemporary view, I do not know a single rural person living in Hanoi who is not aware of the stigmas attached to their ruralness. They are afraid, even if they have been in Ha Noi for long periods of time, that they will slip and their ruralness will be revealed. And what does this mean in practice? It means that rural people form their own networks and tend to identify themselves by regional, provincial, district, and village identities. They are "kinh" in the sense that they are not "dan toc". [I agree with Frank: outside of academic circles, "dan toc" on its own generally replaces the more correct terms].
By the way, no need to look to Bac Kinh (Beijing) for a refence to "kinh". Kinh Bac (roughly from the uplands of current Bac Giang province to the Duong river (east of Ha Noi)) was a center of the civlized world roughly 1,000 years ago.
All of this has not answered my original question to Steve. When does "kinh" appear as a term that represents the majority ethnic group of Vietnam? Does it replace terms like "Annamite", which divided the ethnic majority? Does it fill a space among ethnic groups in the "family of nations that Viet could not fil?
Michael DiGregorio
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Wed Nov 17 12:32:07 1999
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 10:47:52 -0700 (MST)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Kinh
Dear Michael,
In your recent letter re. the use of the term "kinh" in VN, you indicated that "there is no need to link it with Chinese culture". My first reaction is that if we are to discuss things related to the Sinified countries located on China's periphery (e.g., Korea, Japan, and Vietnam), we have no choice but to refer to China. Not only about VN. For example, if one is to discuss the Japaneseness in the pre-modern period, one has first to deal with question such as "was there an impact from China?", if there was, then "was there a difference in its adaptation", etc. (In relation to Vietnam, see, for example, Alexander Woodside's Vietnam and the Chinese Model. Comparing the experiences of the Vietnamese and the Japanese, I have written an article entitled "Japanese and Vietnamese Attitudes toward China: A Comparison", Asian and Pacific Quarterly, vol. XXI, no. 2, Autumn 1989).
Your statement "there is no need to link it to Chinese culture" thus appears to me as a way to stay away from issue rather than attempting an anwer to the question. So far as my previous responses to the ongoing discussion on "Montagnards" were concerned, they were not intended to answer your question to Steve (which I was unaware of), but rather to share some historical perspectives which I thought could have made the overall picture a bit clearer.
In short, when I brought in the Chinese dimension, I did not intend to complicate the discussion, but simply tried to share with fellow members the way that I conceive the issue. Please allow me to explain my position a bit clearer. We all know that after a long period of confronting, on the one hand, the threat to independence from China and adapting Chinese culture and civilization, on the other, at least from the 15th century,the Vietnamese had a Chinese-style centralized state, and had developed a self-consciousness vi-a-vis the China (I am of course referring to the Nam Quo^'c, Southern Country, consciousness). In this consciousness, the Vietnamese saw themselves as a "civilized people" sharing the same civilization with China, but differentiated themselves from neighbouring peoples of different cultures. It is in this context that the ethnic Vietnamese refer to themselves as "Nguoi Kinh" (metropolitans), belonging to "a shining metropolis", and saw other peoples as "barbarians". We know that in the East Asian world order in the pre-modern times, countries such as Vietnam, Korea, etc. were tributary states of China -- the Middle Kingdom. To the Chinese emperor, the Vietnamese rulers addressed themselves as "Vuong" (vua), because there was only one emperor (dde^') in all under-Heaven, i.e. the Chinese emperor. However, the Vietnamese rulers would see their country as a "Middle Kingdom" (hence the term "Little Middle Kingdom", Tieu Trung Hoa) in dealing with states such as Thuy? Xa', Hoa? Xa', etc. in the regions that cover present Kontum, Buon Me Thuot, etc.). These states were regarded as tributary states of VN. To the rulers of these tributary states, the Vietnamese would addressed themseves as Hoang-de, i.e. emperor.
In other words, in the South of China, Vietnam created own "Heaven", seeing herself as the centre. The reference that I came across in a book indicates that "Kinh" was a term first used in VN by the ethnic Chinese to refer to themselves. If this interpretation is correct, the next question that we might ask is "when did the Vietnamese begin to adopt this term to refer to themselves?". I do not know, and I am also unable to locate the above reference. In the meantime, I thought this interpretation makes sense, because throughout Vietnamese history, there were figures whom we know for sure were originally ethnic Chinese, but they also spoke on behalf of the interest of the Vietnamese, and of course, in the name of the Vietnamese. A typical example is Phan Thanh Gian, who came from a ethnic Chinese family, but who also wrote a statement in Thap Ba (Nha Trang) to Vietnamize the goddess of this Champa temple. I think I should stop here.
Cheers,
VINH Sinh
From Tana_li@uow.edu.au Wed Nov 17 12:32:51 1999
Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 10:35:10 +0100
From: Tana Li <Tana_li@uow.edu.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re:"kinh"
"Kinh" and "trai"
The term "kinh" to refer to certain group of people perhaps began in the Tran dynasty, when the "kinh trang nguyen" (Number One Scholar, title confered on the one who came first in the highest imperial exam) and "trai trang nguyen" were chosen. The "kinh trang nguyen" was designed for those scholars who came from the Red river delta, especially the capital area, thus "kinh"; and those from Thanh Hoa and Nghe An - "trai", which means, literally, "mountain stronghold". See Dai Viet su ky toan thu, year 1256.
Li Tana
History and Politics
University of Wollongong,
Australia
From Nora.Taylor@asu.edu Wed Nov 17 12:34:18 1999
Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 06:29:20 -0700
From: Nora Taylor <Nora.Taylor@asu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re:"kinh"
Leif Jonsson reports:
There is a similar term in Thailand "Muong" meaning "capital" was used to differentiate the people who came from the "forest" from those who came from the city. The term is still used today to designate Thais who call themselves "Muong." Much like the Vietnamese refer to themselves as "Kinh". But many Vietnamese also say "Nguoi Viet." they are not mutually exclusive.
From soh@hawaii.edu Wed Nov 17 12:35:21 1999
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 10:45:18 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: nguoi dan toc and nguoi dan toc thieu so
Hello,
see below
On Thu, 28 Oct 1999, Frank Proschan wrote:
> STUFF DELETED
>
> "Dan toc" of course can also mean simply "national" so that "dan toc Viet
> Nam" means the VNese people altogether and "mon an dan toc" does not mean
> "ethnic food" or "minority food" but simply "national cuisine" (what in
> Mexican Spanish would be called "platos tipicos"). Off for a bowl of pho (a
> typical mon an dan toc, of course imported from China, but nationalized so
> pervasively that it has become the symbol of Vietnameseness).
Haven't kept up for several days - been on another planet (Texas). I must say, at the risk of sounding normative and quite probably somewhat arrogant, that not all native speakers speak all the languages of which they are native speakers in a "correct" fashion all the time (surprise surprise), even by the lights of their own indigenous, native- speaker-type arbiters of correctness (the Academie francaise et al.). This is, of course, heresy from the "You're-right-if-you-say-you're-right-and- you're-a-native-speaker" school of thought in linguistics, a school into which I was initiated as a lad, but from whose true and shining path I must admit I have occasionally strayed (Forgive me, Lord Boas, for I have sinned!).
Now Frank says '"Dan toc" of course can also mean simply "national"' -- uhh, well, NOT in felicitous usage. If there is some advantage to having and keeping separate meanings for words, in order to have the most tools and the most precise tools available, to use "dan toc" in this way (I note that, strictly speaking, nothing in Vietnamse "means" anything in English) is misleading, even when done by a native-speaker. There are better (more precise and etymologically consistent) terms for conveying the sense that the term "national" conveys in English (note that I did not say "means in English") An unfortunate example, from an etymological standpoint, was the official title of the NLF ("Mat tran Dan toc Giai phong Mien Nam Viet Nam") in which the significance that apparently was intended to be conveyed by "dan toc" would have been better served by "nhan dan." Of course any such commentary implies a standpoint (in this case, somewhat classicist) and languages do change through usage. But politics and hype seem to be the greatest enemies of lucid discourse, in Vietnamese as in English, and the politicos in Viet Nam have done a lot of damage to the language's "carrying capacity," just as Madison Avenue and the soundbite merchants have in America. Acadmeics have to be well-trained, skeptical, and sophisitcated when they deal with how Vietnamese terms are used in official publications of any kind, as I am sure most readres here would agree.
Certainly "dan toc" is the closest, apparently most neutral term to convey the meaning that is conveyed by the term "ethnic group" in English and this has been the history of its usage in Vietnamese scholarly writing for quite some time, which is exactly what can be said about "min tsu," (pardon the outdated transcription) in Chinese. which is the term from which "dan toc" Vietnamese is directly derived.
I guess the main point to be made here is: what concerns many folks in the West is to find the best term for those people who were often referred to in the past as "Montaignards," with all the less-than-flattering overtones that that term implied, to find a term that some would say is "politically correct." This concern, though laudable, is somewhat parochial in that it imputes a paramount importance (in the eyes of folks in Viet Nam) to what Western academics say them. So let us try to separate things. Many people would olike to find a term in English that is sufficiently neutral and yet adequately precise, to be useful when speaking/writing in English (not Vietnamese) about people in Viet Nam who consider themselves to be historically and/or lingusitically and/or religiously and/or ethnically somehwot apart from and/or different from those folks in Viet Nam who nowadays would use the term "Kinh" to describe themselves in Vietnamese.
Let me suggest two things:
1) a single term to do all this work may currently be unavailable in the English academic inventory and perhaps we shall need to coin one upon which we can all agree;
2) what folks say in Vietnamese might help us in determining how we want to go about finding an acceptable English term of art but, then again, it may not, and we must satisfy our own criteria, regardless of what we may think the right term is in Vietnamese or what some interest group in Viet Nam (political party, NGO, academic faction, "ethnic" group,
take your pick) may desire us to say.
Tall order.
Aloha, Steve O'H.
From mchale@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu Wed Nov 17 12:35:44 1999
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 16:39:35 -0500 (EST)
From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Well well. . .
Dear all:
Perhaps this thread on montagnards, dan toc, and so on is going around in circles a bit, but two comments (I awaken from my non-participation so far. . .)
1) Oscar tells us to try using "Montagnard" in Vietnam and see what reaction it gets. I am not sure what (and I am not trying to be sarcastic) this proves. I see no reason, for example, why (mostly) ethnic Vietnamese enthnologists have more right to name highland peoples than highlanders (or ex-highlanders) themselves. If some highlanders want to call themselves "montagnards," then why can't they? By analogy, when I go into an Asian grocery in the US (with the sign on the outside that says "Oriental Grocery"), I don't chastise the owner for using the wrong term.
2) Steve O'Harrow says (in response to Frank Proschan) that "dan toc" would best be translated by "ethnic group," given its derivation etc. . . . and not "nation." Hmmmm. . . . This desire to attach precise meanings to terms can get maddening. It's quite positivist. I do not think that Steve's solution is a solution for two reasons: a) "nation" in English is one of the most maddening terms around, open to multiple framings. . . . so establishing any equivalence of terms in problematic b) the attempt to shift the meaning of "dan toc" over the past 50 years means, I think, that when we translate a term like "chu nghia dan toc," we'd be better off translating it as "ethnonationalist populism" to convey such a variety of meanings.
3) To note: there is a tension in academia and beyond between those who want to reject past terms for their pejorative meanings and those who want to embrace even pejorative terms to transform them. If soneone gay wants to use the term "queer," I'm not about to lecture that person that the term is inappropriate!
Enough.
Shawn McHale
From O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG Wed Nov 17 12:37:31 1999
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 07:30:08 -0800
From: Oscar Salemink <O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Well well. . .
Hello Shawn,
Welcome to this well-rounded debate! It seems like nobody really wants to participate but everybody is drawn into it. Hence, I cannot refrain from responding (and drawing a few more circles in the process, I'm afraid). First, I include the Central Highlands - where I have worked in the past and which I still visit regularly - in the concept of "Vietnam" (one could graphically convey that with a Venn-diagram, if one wanted to draw more circles). It seems to me that the vast majority of people labeled "Montagnard" are still living in Vietnam rather than in North Carolina, and few people in the Highlands are now using that label.
Second, I am not taking issue with people calling themselves Montagnards, either in the US or Vietnam. But I do take issue with serious scholars who adopt colonial labels while disregarding their political (say, colonial) context of emergence/adoption and their connotations. No serious scholar would now dare to use the label "Annamite" for Kinh people living in Vietnam or elsewhere, and rightly so (though there may be excellent Vietnamese restaurants called L'Annamite that one may wish to frequent without complaints). This seems to be quite compatible with your appetite for "oriental groceries" without necessarily wanting to call the owner an "Oriental".
Third, I do think that place matters in this regard: People from Vietnam (not necessarily ethnologists, though) have more right to decide about ethnic labels in Vietnam than do outsiders (even though outsiders, including myself, may be critical of the official ethnic classification which, as Steve O'Harrow points out, is hardly consequential in the real world). The reality of the international academic world, however, makes it much harder for Vietnamese voices to be heard (take this debate, for instance) than for American or European voices (or in my case even big mouths). Simply disregarding what is happening within Vietnam in favor of adopting colonial labels that have little use even for those who once were called that way here, seems to indicate a measure of disrespect for locally used ethnonyms incompatible with the claims and pretensions of serious scholarship these days. .
Finally, Re "dan toc", it is used in both meanings in present-day Vietnam, and its present-day use in Vietnam can be traced via China to Stalin and his "nationalities" policy - as others have pointed out already. For instance, "ban sac dan toc" can mean both national identity and ethnic identity, depending on the context.
Sigh. You are right about these circles. I guess I must pledge now to keep silent ever after. But you drew me into this by calling my name so please don't tempt me again.
From mchale@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu Wed Nov 17 12:38:32 1999
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 16:36:31 -0500 (EST)
From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Sanity?
Frank Proschan's example of a document that uses "Montagnard" in a racist way: If I find a text that states that "Irish" are pathological liars and drunks, does that mean we cannot use the term "Irish"? (for the moment we will assume that such a description of the inhabitants, or ex-inhabitants, of the Emerald Isle is not generally accurate)
Shawn McHale
From soh@hawaii.edu Wed Nov 17 12:38:48 1999
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 11:45:52 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Well well. . .
Hello,
Well, "touche!" I think Shawn is entirely right about the many problems attending to "nation, national" in English usage. Indeed, it is the very ambiguity of the word over the years that has made it so useful for causing political mischief. I think Oscar's point about the Stalinist derivation (via Chinese) of "dan toc" in official usage in DRV/SRV pubs. is also very well taken. All very good stuff.
That this thread has taken up the interest (and time!) of so many in the community of scholars from all over shows us that it is both of some continuing interest and significance. Should we look for a panel at an upcoming AAS? Would a subsequent publication with the VSG's backing or imprimatura on it be in order? I think it is an exciting prospect for this group that we seem to have both an issue and a group of interested academics do deal with it. Not that the VSG has been entirely dormant of late, but it might be a "good thing" (as is the term of art in British history circles) for the vitality of the VSG to come up with a publication in its name. How would we go about it? Do folks even want to do it?
Should VSG try to interest an institution or a SEAsian Studies Center with press connexions to get involved? What's your pleasure, if any?
Aloha, Steve O'H.
From Nora.Taylor@asu.edu Wed Nov 17 12:39:01 1999
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 10:36:08 -0700
From: Nora Taylor <Nora.Taylor@asu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Well well. . .
FYI: Leif Jonsson has been writing about ethnic labelling for some time and talks about the associations made between ethnic groups and the term savage in an upcoming issue of Ethnos. Y2K issue.
But he is interested in this whole debate and will be writing an article about some of these issues in his upcoming book on Nation State/Minority relations.
From judithh@u.washington.edu Wed Nov 17 12:41:20 1999
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 14:32:43 -0800 (PST)
From: Judith Henchy <judithh@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Montagnard - 1961-62 US government document
Yes, Montagnard (Vietnamese people) is the officially sanctioned Library of Congress term. The LCSH books state that the former term was Nguoi Thuong.
The interesting thing about this usage is that the qualification (Vietnamese people) is usually used after a specific ethnic identification. The usage here seems to serve to make a distinction from the French Revolutionary left.
If VSG comes to a consensus that this is not acceptable terminology, I can start the long process of suggesting to LC a revision of this usage.
judith
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judith Henchy
Head, Southeast Asia Section, Box 352900
University of Washington Libraries
Seattle, WA 98195
Telephone: (206) 543 3986
Fax: (206) 685 8049
For information about library and internet resources, view the Section's
home page at http://www.lib.washington.edu/southeastasia/default.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu Wed Nov 17 12:43:04 1999
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 17:24:01 -0800 (PST)
From: Stephen R Denney <sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Montagnard - 1961-62 US government document
At 11:13 AM 11/2/99 -1000, Stephen O'Harrow wrote:
>FYI - the term "Montagnards" still appears to be preferred U.S. government
>usage, as evidenced by the following, found in the U. of Hawaii library
>(note the cataloguing remark "Montagnards (Vietnamese people)" -- I
>believe that the UH cataloguers simply take their citations for US govt.
>pubs. right from the LC or Super. of Docs. info) :
"Montagnards (Vietnamese people)" is a Library of Congress subject heading, and you are probably right that the UH cataloguers took their citation for this book from an LOC or Supt. of Docs. record. In our library here I found 13 LOC sub-category headings under "Montagnards (Vietnamese people)", so people doing research on ethnic minorities in the Vietnam highlands would need to follow this system when locating books. Some ethnic groups (maybe all?) of Vietnam have their own LOC subject heading. For example a book we have by Paul Guilleminet on the Jarai and Sedang (published in France in 1952, but just classified here) has three subject headings: "Sedangs"; "Jarai (Southeast Asian People)"; and "Montagnards (Vietnamese people)".
- Steve Denney
From O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG Wed Nov 17 12:44:10 1999
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 06:10:19 -0800
From: Oscar Salemink <O.SALEMINK@FORDFOUND.ORG>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Montagnard - 1961-62 US government document
Judith,
If you do, you could start telling the LC people that "nguoi thuong" is a 1960s translation of "Montagnard" rather than the other way round, and was an attempt on the part of the Diem regime to be slightly more respectful by substituting the label "Moi" with its connotation of "savage" (in wide-spread use from precolonial days on, later adopted by the French along
with 'sauvage" before they adopted "Montagnard" in the early 1940s) .
Oscar
From cchung@ccsf.cc.ca.us Wed Nov 17 12:44:33 1999
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 08:45:27 -0800 (PST)
From: Chuong Chung <cchung@ccsf.cc.ca.us>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Montagnard - 1961-62 US government document
Dear all,
I agree with Oscar that "nguoi Thuong " is a translation of Montagnard during the French. Montagnard came first before "nguoi Thuong" . Recently, I read To Ngoc Thanh, Dang Nghiem Van and Dinh Gia Khanh. They refer to those that we call Nguoi Thuong as Nguoi Tay Nguyen (or Nguoi dan toc Tay Nguyen). Could it be that during the French, Montagnard refered to those of the Lang Biang, Darlac, Pleiku and Kontum plateau? And therefore, nguoi Thuong only address to those ethnic that Condominas and Hickey talked about and not inclusive of the minorities of the North highland (i.e.Pu Peo, Dzao, Thai, Lo Lo etc...)
Then the adopted "montagnard" term was also used by those who worked with the French (i.e. FULRO) and those who worked with the American Special Forces as well (Yards as so affectionately called). Is there a taxonomy regarding minorities of Vietnam? If so, should we based on geographical characteristics or linguistic characteristics (Miao-Yao, Sino-Tibetan, Viet-Muong)?
I don't mean to drag on this stuff. Just a little note adding to the discussion.
Best,
Chung Hoang Chuong
From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Wed Nov 17 12:44:47 1999
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 13:56:22 -0500
From: hue-tam ho tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: dan toc
Re: Phan Boi Chau and dan toc.
The meaning of words shift over time as well as according to context. Liang Chi Chao actually made use of neologisms coined by the Japanese rather than directly translating himself. Minzu originally carried connotations of the German "volk". Vietnamese Communist thinking about and policies toward minorities ("nationalities") were influenced by Stalin's own. Dan toc thus has different meanings. On the one hand, it can mean "the whole nation" which in the Vietnamese context is often a way of referring to the majority population or kinh. Or it can be a shortened version of "dan toc thieu so" and thus correspond to "ethnic" in American usage, that is short of ethnic minority ( eating hot dogs and hamburger is not considered eating ethnic food, for example, but eating Chinese food is.)
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
From johnev@netspace.net.au Wed Nov 17 12:45:08 1999
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 08:29:24 +1100
From: johnev <johnev@netspace.net.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: More on Dan Toc
I am delighted to see the recent discussion on 'Dan Toc', which has long vexed me. A particular matter that has long vexed me is the proper translation of the title of the magazine 'Cong Giao va Dan Toc'. Which version is to be preferred?
- Catholics and the Nation
- Catholic and National
- Catholics and the People
- Catholics and Ethnicity
('Catholic and Racial/ethnic Group' sounds a little unlikely).
Your thoughts please.
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Wed Nov 17 12:53:54 1999
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 18:14:31 -0700 (MST)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: More on Dan Toc
Dear All,
1) I think the English translation of "Cong giao va dan toc" is "Catholicism and the Nation".
Reason: The title of the journal does not say "Nguoi Cong giao", so "Catholics" does not seem to be appropriate. Dan toc is a term originally coined by the Japanese during the early years of the Meiji period (1868-1911). Minzoku, used in Japanese means "a race, or a nation". Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, and other Chinese later introduced these loanwords from modern Japanese in their writings in Ch'ing-i pao (Thanh nghi bao), Hsin-min ts'ung-pao (Tan dan tung bao), etc.
It has been remarked by a Chinese linguist that in the celebrated article 'On practice' (Thuc-tien-luan; 1937, I have used the Sino-Vietnamese transliterations, rather than the Chinese ones, because I thought the majority of the members of the VSG would understand what I am trying to say better),
Mao Tse-tung used many words borrowed from the Japanese language, such as 'duy vat luan' (materialism), 'lich su' (history), and 'giai cap' (class), etc. I have written an article on this subject, i.e. "Chinese Characters as the Medium for Transmitting the Vocabulary of Modernization from Japan to Vietnam in Early Twentieth Century", in Charles Le Blanc, ed.,
La Societe civile en Asie de L'Est (Montreal: Centre d'etude de l'Asie de l'Est, Universite de Montreal, 1996). I can't type French accents on my computer, so please
kindly forgive me.
2) Phan Boi Chau and dan toc: An English translation (by Vinh Sinh & Nicholas Wickenden) of Phan Boi Chau's autobiography PBC nien bieu, with an introduction and notes, has recently been published by the University of Hawaii Press (1999). Our translation is based on the original text in literary Chinese. We have tried to render the terminologies used by Phan as faithfully as possible. By the way, this autobiography in places reveals Phan's views of the Catholics in Vietnam.
VINH Sinh
From proschan@indiana.edu Wed Nov 17 12:57:45 1999
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 15:48:45 -0500
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: More on Dan Toc, dan, Chinese and Japanese
Thanks to Vinh Sinh for tracing "dan toc" to its cognate terms in Chinese and Japanese. Your expertise leads me to pose some further questions: is the "dan" in "dan toc" the same as the "dan" in De Rhodes' dictionary, where it is defined as meaning "subjects, vassals", and did the Japanese and Chinese roots "min" have the same connotation of "subjects" or "people who were ruled," prior to being reinvested with new meaning in Meiji Japan? In 19th century Vietnamese dictionaries, did "dan" still have the same limited meaning as it had in De Rhodes' time, or had it been generalized? The other term "toc" does not seem to be in De Rhodes (at least not under any form I can recognize), but was it used in other Vietnamese compounds before "dan toc" began to be used? And what did the Japanese root "zoku" mean (or is it "zo"?)?
Thanks,
Frank Proschan
--
Research Associate
Indiana University
Mail: Folklore Institute, 504 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN 47408-3890 USA
Office (no mail): 271 Aydelotte (Ashton Center)
Email: proschan@indiana.edu tel: 1-812-855-9073
NEW fax number: 1-812-855-4008 (do not use 855-5584)
From CGoscha@aol.com Wed Nov 17 12:59:50 1999
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 15:57:11 EST
From: CGoscha@aol.com
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: dan toc
While this is not Stalin in translation, see the following source for an early Vietnamese attempt to work out the "national question" in light of earlier Soviet thinking.
Quoc Thuy, "Van De Dan Toc" [On the National Question], Hanoi, Dai Chung, 1946, but the preface is dated 16 September 1945, pp. 28-32 in particular.
cgoscha
In a message dated 11/4/99 9:36:59 AM, hhtai@fas.harvard.edu writes:
<< Thanks to Michael Di Gregorio for the information. Stalin's own "Marxism and the National and Colonial Question" has been translated and published many times since the 1930s.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 11:15:06 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: "dan toc" & "narod"
Hello,
For what it's worth -- rather quietly, very early on, the Univ. of Hawaii and the East-West Center (not the same thing, but cooperating entities) began exchanging senior academics with the SRV. The first people we received were always folks with mucho political clout (surprise surprise). In the high ranks of "most respected" politico/academics were always those whose "scientific" conclusions could be equated with policy. Early in this program, in about 1981 as I remember, Dr. Dat spent several weeks in residence here. His stated views on "minority" questions could have almost qualified as textbook rehearsals of Stalin's wrtitings on "nationalities" (one has the feeling working in Hanoi nowadays that Prof. Dat represented a bygone era). I say this NOT to cast any particularly negative aura over anyone's use of Stalin or "Stalinist/ism" in the current conversation, but simply for an historical note as a first-hand witness; to say that the kinds of theories that were seminal both in academic work and in policy formation in the DRV/early SRV regarding "dan toc" did, in the words of the very authors of those policies themselves, owe something to Stalin's pronouncements on the subject, whether or not one is inclined to approve of what Uncle Joe had to say about the subject.
Aloha,
Steve O'Harrow
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Wed Nov 17 13:02:29 1999
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 22:04:08 -0700 (MST)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: More on Dan Toc, dan, Chinese and Japanese
Dear Frank and All,
1) Prior to the Meiji period, the Japanese used "min" (this is a Sino-Japanese pronunciation, the Japanese pronunciation for this Chinese character is "tami") with the same meaning as in Chinese. To be a bit precise, the principal meanings used in "old" Chinese and Japanese are: (1) people, common people; (2) those who are ruled/governed by a monarch (kunshu=qua^n-chu?); (3) those who do not occupy official ranks (kan'i=quan-vi.;[as shown in the dichotomy betwen "quan" (mandarins/officials) and "da^n"].
2) With regard to nineteenth-century Vietnamese, I have thus far only consulted Huinh-Tinh Paulus Cu?a's Viet-Nam Quac-Am Tu-vi. Its entry for "da^n" says: "Tieng goi chung nhung nguoi o trong mot nuoc, mot lang. Thuong hieu ve bac nguoi tam thuong" (People who live in the same country or same village; often implying the common/ordinary people".
3) "To^.c": This term was not included in Huinh Tinh Cua's Dictionary either. "Toc" has been used in Vietnamese, however, prior to the introduction of the term "dan toc". Examples: "dong-toc" (of the same clan, or class); "toc-pha/toc-pho" (clan register, or geneological table); "toc-truong" (an elder of a clan), etc.
4) "Toc" in Japanese means: (1) an arrowhead [in this case pronounced "yajiri", irrelevant to our discussion]; (2) a clan [pronounced "yakara"] tribe, a class, a family, relatives; (3) to collect together [pronounced "atsumaru"]. In Japanese, "zoku" also means "to execute the families of a criminal's father, mother, wife, and children" (in Sino- Vietnamese, this punishment is called "toc-chu" ("chu" has no accents).
In relation to compound words of "dan", it is interested to see that the Vietnamese do not use the term "da^n tu.c ho.c" to render "folklore" as in Chinese and Japanese. They prefer to use the term "khoa nghien cuu truyen thong nhan gian/van hoc nhan gian" (I should note that Tran Quoc Vuong prefers not to translate it but calls it "folklore"). Why dan tuc hoc was not adopted to be used in Vietnamese? Was it because "tu.c" has too bad a connotation in Vietnamese (an noi tu.c ti~u/tu.c tan= pull a raw one/use foil language)? I really do not know.
The Vietnamese also recreated/coined some terms that do not exist in Japanese and Chinese for their own use. A typical example is "sa('c to^c" which means ethic groups. In the 1997 Tu dien tieng Viet (compiled by Hoang Phe with the collaboration of those in the Vien Ngon ngu hoc (Institute of Linguistics), however, "sac toc" is explained as follows: "Nhu toc nguoi (thuong ham y miet thi..." (similar to "toc nguoi", often has a pejorative nuance). Is it because "sa('c", apart from its meaning "colour/colourful", also imlies "visible"? This reminds me of the term "visible minority" which is popularly used in Canada, but without any pejorative connotations.
I hope I have answered parts of your queries.
VSinh
From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Wed Nov 17 13:02:54 1999
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 08:47:40 -0500
From: Hue Tam H. Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: dan toc
Dear Vinh Sinh, Frank et al:
A couple of observations: 1. The Institute of Folklore Studies in Vietnamese is called Vien Nghien Cuu Van Hoa Dan Gian (not "nhan gian'"). Indeed, I have encountered "dan gian" (min jian in Chinese) to mean "popular," "folk," rather than "nhan gian (ren jian in Chinese) ; 2. in reference to punishment, it's "tru" not "chu" as in "tru di tam toc" or "tru di cuu toc" (exterminating 3 generations or exterminating 9 generations); In this sense, then, "toc" was used to mean "generation" within a lineage. In the 1927 colonial reform of northern village councils, lineage representatives were to be selected to serve on the councils. They were called "toc bieu." thus, as Vinh Sinh points out, toc meant both generation and lineage (or clan).
A useful little book is Li Yu-ning"The Introduction of Socialism into China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971) which includes a (partial) list of modern Chinese terms of Japanese origins. It includes minzu (minzoku) as well as a huge number of terms that are part of everyday language in Vietnam today. That list draws on Kao Ming-k'ai & Liu
Cheng-tan, Hsien-tai Han-yu wai-lai tz'u yen-chiu (a Study of Terms of Foreign Origin in the Modern Chinese Language (Beijing, 1958).
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
From proschan@indiana.edu Wed Nov 17 13:03:13 1999
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 10:32:56 -0500
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: More on Dan Toc, dan, Chinese and Japanese - "folklore"
Many thanks to Vinh Sinh for his information. There is a compendium of definitions of "folklore" in the 1990 volume, "Quan niem ve folklore" (ed. Ngo Duc Thinh), Hanoi: Nxb Khoa hoc Xa hoi, but it doesn't seem to include discussions specifically of the best Vietnamese terminology (this was, I believe, discussed at length in the folklore journal previously). Authors in the collection use "van hoa dan gian," "van hoc dan gian", and "van nghe dan gian" as glosses for "folklore" (the former now taking precedence, the latter two focusing more on "folk literature"). "Tu.c" has been used in the (recently coined?) term "luat tuc" for customary law, the topic of the coming conference mentioned in other recent messages.
Frank Proschan
--
Research Associate
Indiana University
Mail: Folklore Institute, 504 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN 47408-3890 USA
Office (no mail): 271 Aydelotte (Ashton Center)
Email: proschan@indiana.edu tel: 1-812-855-9073
NEW fax number: 1-812-855-4008 (do not use 855-5584)
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Wed Nov 17 13:03:23 1999
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 08:51:13 -0700 (MST)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: dan toc
Dear Hue-Tam, Frank, and All:
Hue-Tam, thanks for your remarks, of course it must be "dan-gian" and not "nhan-gian", "toc tru" and not "toc chu". I must have had a beautiful dream (or "mo^.ng-du perhaps) while typing last night! Lydia H. Liu's Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity, 1900-1937 (Stanford Univ. Press, 1995) might be some interest
to some of you. The Japanese origin of the Chinese minzu (J: minzoku; S-V: dan toc) is confirmed in this book (see p. 292 in the Appendix B "Sino-Japanese-European
Loanwords in Modern Chinese").
VSinh
From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Wed Nov 17 13:03:39 1999
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 11:33:48 -0500
From: hue-tam ho tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: More on Dan Toc, dan, Chinese and Japanese
To add to the discussion of "dan toc." The entry for toc in Genibrel's 1898 Dictionnaire annamite-francais (which appeared three years after Huynh Tinh Cua), reads:
TOC (chinese character) 1. famille, parente. f. Parents en ligne droite. The---Souche, f. famille. Tong---posterite, lignee, f. descendants, mpl. Than---famille, parente, race. f. ---noi, de la meme race. Truong---, le chef d'une famille. Cuu----les neuf parentes: le trisaieul, the bisaieul, l'aieul, le pere, soi-meme, le fils, le petit-fils, l'arriere petit-fils et le fils de ce dernier. Cuu---do, arbre geneaologique. Tam---les trios familles: celle du pere, du fils et celle du petit-fils. Cong---, la famille royale. Ceux qui descendent d'une souche commune et portent le meme nom de famille. Branche de famille. lu---, gens du meme village. Tru di tam----, faire perir le coupable, son pere et ses fils. e---, (mui ten) pointe d'une fleche.
As can be seen, the primary meaning is lineage and kinship. Interestingly, this dictionary was published the same year as the 100 Day Reforms in China. According to Frank Dikotter (The Discourse of Race in Modern China:1992), who bases his discussion on Pamela Crossley (1990),the Manchus in the 18th Century did have a concept of "identity through racial
descent... By the Qianlong period (1736-1795), the Manchu court was progressively turning toward a rigid taxonomy of culturally-distinct races (zu) within China," (Dikotter: 34). As for the lineage" zu" (Vn: toc), this was introduced during the Song But it was Yan Fu and Liang Qichao who were the main theorizers of racial typology. Yan Fu introduced Darwin
and Herbert Spencer to Chinese audiencees in 1895, along with the idea of "yellow race" Liang Qichao, however, was the main contributor to the discourse on race. It is instructive to re-read his preface to Phan Boi Chau's Viet Nam Vong Quoc Su in light on his own concern about racial extinction. As Dikotter points out, extinction of the lineage (miezu) became extinction of the race (miezhong). Equally interesting, given the discourse on Vietnamese as "people of yellow race" is Dikotter's point that "racial frontiers could easily be reassigned. The Vietnamese and Filipinos... were usually classified as "brown," but during the struggle against the French, the Vietnamese suddenly found themselves described as "real yellows" who would "never allow themselves to become meat on the white man's chopping block." (Dikotter: 84, quoting Liang) As for minzu (dan toc), Liang Qichao first "conceptualized minzu in 1903 in an attempt to dind a political rationale for the state." (Dikotter:97) ""Nation" meant a lineage that shared a territory and an ancestor." "The myth of blood was sealed by elevating the figure of the Yellow Emperor to a national symbol. Liu Shipei [whom Phan Boi Chau encountered in Japan] first published article advocated the introduction of a calendar in which the foundaiton year corresponded to the birth of the Yellow Emperor. While this takes us away from the original starting point ("montagnard") it
does point to issues associated with the myth of genesis (dong giong Lac Hong, con Rong chau Tien, and the Hong Bang dynasty) and the prominence of references to "yellow skin, yellow race" in the Vietnamese nationalist discourse.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
From soh@hawaii.edu Wed Nov 17 13:03:58 1999
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 12:58:03 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: More on Dan Toc, dan, Chinese and Japanese
Hello,
Just two queries:
I.) One is rather curious how the definition of "tam toc" below ("les trois familles: celle du pere, du fils et celle du petit- fils.") fits in with the punishment (such as that meted out to Nguyen Trai et Cie. by the Le Sat faction in 1442 upon the death of Le Loi's son, supposedly at the hands [fangs] of his concubine, Nguyen thi Lo) of the eradication of the "tam toc," which I had always understood to mean the killing of all known members of the "bad guy's" progeny (+wife/wives), his father's family, and his mother's family. (in Nguyen Trai's case, it was said that one of his concubines was pregnant and was, thus, spared - an odd sort of immunity in such a vicious system, wot?)
2.) Am I right in thinking that Liang Ch'i-ch'ao was rather well-read in German (as, I believe, was K'ang Yu-wei)? His views on "tsu" ["toc"] as, indeed, much of the discussion of "nationalities" in Stalin and other Marxists, seems redolent of German romantic notions of "volk." And one presumes Marx was rather well-read in German, naturlich...
Aloha, Steve O'H.
From johnev@netspace.net.au Wed Nov 17 13:04:11 1999
Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 10:08:02 +1100
From: johnev <johnev@netspace.net.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: More on Dan Toc
Steve,
Many thanks for your reply, on a subject we have discussed before. I agree with your characterisation of the two mnagazines. Interestingly, Cong Giap ca Dan Toc published several articles in 187 and 1988 contradicting the government line that the canonisation of the 117 martyrs should not then proceed. It also carried the 1992 communique of the Episcopal Conference calling for greater religious freedom. Sadly, I can't find any holdings of Cong Giao va Dan Toc here in Australia, so I going to try to arrange to have it sent out. For some
reason, the National Library here carries Nguoi Cong Giao only, which I agree is the less interesting magazine.
Regards,
Peter Hansen
From soh@hawaii.edu Wed Nov 17 13:04:32 1999
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 13:43:59 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: terminology about ethnicity in Viet Nam and environs/now & then
Hello,
I have always been uncomfortable with the attempt to connect modern social & political units with the "gloroius past" in SE Asia and everywhere else -- I fear more mischief in it than good.
In the next number of Asian Perspectives, we are doing a small festschrift for Hawaii's Archaeologist Emeritus In Perpetuam, Bill Solheim, and most of the articles are inspired by UH's recent digs at Angkor Borei, a "Fu Nan (???)" site on the Cambodian side of the modern border with Viet Nam, just a stone's throw from (and quite possibly directly linked to) Oc Eo on the Vietnamese side. Obviously, questions of whose ancestors built what (and who "owns" the past) have loomed sadly wraithlike over the enterprise.
In a short introductory article I wrote, I tried to come up with some better way to approach talking about the thorny question of which "ethnic group[s]" were responsible for Angkor Borei. I benefitted greatly from discussing my ideas with Keith Taylor and Tam Tai, but I take all blame for what I wrote. In sum, I think the best thing to do is simply to
eliminate the question by definition. Herewith a brief excerpt:
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I am interested in the explanation of early historical or semihistorical sites and their eventual place in the initial formation of important political entites in later Southeast Asia, some of which either subsist or are said to subsist today (if one can, indeed, detect some kind of linear development fixed by a point of origin).
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To start, I would like to suggest that if we can imagine ourselves travelling through space and time to Angkor Borei, in the third century C.E., we might first wish to ask ourselves how to go about documenting the people we are going to find there. We may or may not find various groups of people which, as modern anthropologists, we would wish to call "ethnicities," but we would nevertheless most likely find many different groups of people. Each of these goups would recognize within themselves some significant commonalities, perhaps kinship and geneology, or mode of dress, or diet, or ritual, or occupation, or language or some combination of these or other factors. Inside these groupings there would exist a sense of "us-ness" and a sense of boundaries, a sense that other groups of people were "outside" or would have a "them-ness" about them. But we would be wisest if we decided NOT to call them "ethnic" groups, lest we superimpose a modern concept that is generated from conditions which might not yet have applied at ancient Angkor Borei.
Another very good reason for wanting to use a new term and to avoid the term "ethnic group" when applied to the ancient world is that we cannot be sure if our modern definition of "ethnicity" would properly describe qualities of human social organization that would be meaningful at such a remote period in time -- of course, "ethnic groups" in the modern sense may well have existed, but to use the term as we do today is to beg the question.1
(1. All the more would we wish to avoid any use, in our discussion of these sites, of the largely discredited term "race." I firmly believe it has no valid place in serious archaeological enquiry (as opposed to questions of predominant tendencies in physiological appearance within a group under scrutiny, discussion of which can, I believe, be considered valid). "Race" is a good example of a construct which can be distorting, destructive and misleading and its earlier mis-use should be cautionary to us here with regard to other terms.)
However, there is a third, even better reason for preferring some other term to "ethnic group." Spokesmen for modern ethnicities around the world, especially those playing leading political roles in modern nation states, are wont to caste back into their own versions of "history" for rhetorical tools to address painful modern concerns. They all too
frequently rely on what they claim are direct linneages to demonstrate identities between their modern ethnic groups and what they believe to have been essentially same ethnic groups in the past. This linneage, real, partial, or imagined, this so-called "ethnic identity," allows particularist politicians to validate exclusive claims to cultural heritages and territory, and to prevent members of other modern ethnic groups from having access to the same.
Unfortunately the words "tradition," "purity," and "blood" often accompany modern excess and, for archaeologists to fuel this fire, as they are often under pressure to do, not only muddies scholarly discourse, but can render a dis-service to the rest of the inhabitants of the modern world.
If we return in our minds from ancient Angkor Borei to the late 20th century and muse upon our discoveries, we see that we will need to coin a general term to designate each of the groups found at Angkor Borei in the third century, groups whose members recognize a commonality among themselves and some difference between themselves and other groups. I should like to suggest the term "hemeterodeme," derived from the Greek "hemetero-" (pertaining to "us," "ours") and "demos" ("people") -- hemeterodeme means "our people," the "us-folks." And I believe that what one could have observed at Angkor Borei, seperate groups that cooperated in important ways, would have constituted a "poly-hemeterodemic" (PH) social unit. But what function did that social unit perform?
Now I think that it is plainly evident that the level of organization of early historical or semi-historical archaeological sites in Mainland Southeast Asia such as Angkor Borei indicates that some arranging intelligence was active during their creation and that they did not spring to life as the spontaneous fruit of accidental social happenstance. There must have been some kind of organizational "polity" at work. I should like to suggest that the polities involved in the creation of these sites recognized the organizationally valid participation of more than one "hemeterodeme" and that we may call them "poly-hemeterodemic polities." (PHPs)
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Stephen O'Harrow
Univ. of Hawaii
From sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca Wed Nov 17 13:04:50 1999
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 22:33:10 -0700 (MST)
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: More on Dan Toc, dan, Chinese and Japanese
1) With respect to Steve's queries, I would agree with Steve's interpretation of "tam toc"; i.e. "tru di tam toc" (tru=execute; di=same Chinese character for "barbarians", but in this case means "all", or "leaving no one left") is to execute a criminal's father family, mother family, and wife family. Genibrel might have mistaken "tam toc" for "tam dda.i" (ba doi=three generations).
2) Liang Ch'i-ch'ao main access to Western intellectual discourses was through Japanese translations (as the late Joseph Levenson has observed), and through the writings by Meiji intellectuals such as Fukuzawa Yukichi, Kato Hiroyuki, Tokutomi Soho, who had gone through the process of "inventing/coining" new terms (i.e. compound words in Chinese characters) in their rendition of Western ideas into the Japanese language. It seems unlikely that Liang was well-read in either German or English, and it this case it was not to Liang's disadvantage, owing to the reason mentioned above. In this sense, Liang was different from Yen Fu, who translated works by Mill, Huxley, and other Western thinkers directly from English.
One might point out that Liang's first translation of a Japanese work into Chinese was Tokai Sanshi's political novel Kajin no kigu; and Phan Chau Trinh's Giai nhan ky ngo dien ca was based on Liang's Chinese translation. (This was the topic of my article "'Elegant Females' Re-encountered: From Tokai Sanshi's Kajin no kigu to Phan Chau Trinh's
Giai nhan ky ngo dien ca" in K. W. Taylor and John K. Whitmore, eds. Essays into Vietnamese Pasts published by the Southeast Asian Program, Cornell, in 1994).
VSinh
From j.michaud@pol-as.hull.ac.uk Wed Nov 17 13:08:30 1999
Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 13:16:45 +0000
From: Jean Michaud <j.michaud@pol-as.hull.ac.uk>
To: judithh@u.washington.edu
Subject: Montagnard debate
Dear All,
I personally consider there is ground for using the word montagnard, certainly in French, and also in English.. Here are my arguments.
1) Peoples living in the South-East Asia Massif have a number of endonyms to call themselves, and a number of exonyms to call their various neighbours. But to my knowledge, there is no global endonym produced by any of them to refer to them altogether.
2) Therefore, as this discussion group indicates, we have to conclude that the urge to have an all-encompassing term stems from an academic need to refer to all these populations as en ensemble, for essentially theoretical/teaching purposes.
3) National terms exist to designate peoples living in the mountainous areas within the national borders of Vietnam, such terms also exist in Laos, Thailand, Burma and China. Several among the more ancient of these terms are prejudiced, while a few more recent ones are perfectly acceptable in their given national context. But the mountain peoples, and I stress this, are for most not nationally based and the transnational nature of their geographical setting should lead us to refrain from using any of these particular country-based terms when talking about them as a whole.
4) To my knowledge, the first ever non-prejudiced term, in any language, used to designate the societies living in the Vietnam sections of the South-East Asia Massif (and maybe in the Massif as a whole, although this still requires verification), was the French language term "montagnard". In a competent major ethnographic effort by the French in Tonkin conducted between 1890 and 1925 (not to be confused with biased travelogues or missionnary accounts from the same period), the term occurs hundreds of times, and not once did I find it to be in any way associable with the prejudiced "sauvage" or "moi". It invariably bears the simple meaning of "mountain peoples". Some of these ethnographies have been published although several are in the form of restricted reports, including:
Abadie, Maurice 1924 Les races du Haut Tonkin de Phong Tho à Lang-Son. Paris: Société d'éditions géographiques, maritimes et coloniales.
Bonifacy, Auguste Louis-M. 1904 Les groupes ethniques de la Rivière Claire, Revue Indochinoise, 30 Juin.
Bonifacy, Auguste Louis-M. 1919 Cours d'ethnographie indochinoise.
Hanoi-Haiphong: Imprimerie d'Extrême Orient.
Diguet, Edouard 1908 Les Montagnards du Tonkin, Paris: Librairie Maritime et Coloniale, Augustin Challamel.
Lefèvre-Pontalis, Pierre 1892 Notes sur quelques populations du nord de
l'Indo-Chine, 1ère série, Journal asiatique, Paris: Ernest Leroux.
Lunet de Lajonquière, Emile 1904 Ethnographie des territoires militaires.Hanoi: F.H. Schneider.
Lunet de Lajonquière, Emile 1906 Ethnographie du Tonkin septentrional. Hanoi and Paris: F.H. Schneider.
Pavie, Auguste 1947 (1891) A la conquête des coeurs. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
5) The drifting and narrowing of that original meaning of the term "montagnard" in English in the later period, essentially due to the American involvement in the Central Highlands, which made it a heavily connotated term in English is sad, unjustified, and needs to be rectified (note that the drifting did not take place in French). I beleive the rectification is possible by giving back the term its original meaning.
6) Terms in English like "highlanders" or "mountain peoples", to my knowledge, came to Vietnam (and Mainland SEA?) after the French term and while being able to convey a competent meaning for the multi-ethnic highlands societies in the Massif, they are still foreign words. I take them as being, at least, as prejudiced or "neo-colonial" in their own way
as the French "montagnard".
7) If we, in academia and for academic purposes, are to chose between several foreign language terms to designate the trans-national highland societies in the SEA Massif, this in the (temporary?) lack of an acceptable endogenous word, my preference goes to the more ancient and more deeply rooted one. A proof of its original appropriateness is that
montagnard is still widely used in French academia and no one there seriously questions this use. In English, I decided to use it myself in my edited book "Turbulent Time and Enduring People. The Mountain Minorities in the South-East Asia Massif", Curzon Press, London, 1999. (needless to say, the publisher had a say in the phrasing of the title).
8) I am certainly not trying to push anyone into using montagnard. I am simply explaining why I use it myself. Maybe also I would like to contribute to stopping its unnecessary and sometimes ill-based straightforward dismissal.
Does this help at all?
Best,
Dr Jean Michaud
Lecturer
Centre for South-East Asian Studies
Department of Politics and Asian Studies
University of Hull, Hull, HU6-7RX, UK
From soh@hawaii.edu Wed Nov 17 13:09:34 1999
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 10:21:48 -1000
From: Stephen O'Harrow <soh@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: 'Montagnard' debate
RE: communcation from Dr. Michaud / U. of Hull / U.K.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
For what it's worth...
There seem to be three issues (in academic English usage) that might be usefully separated here:
-- what is to be the preferred term one uses when referring as a whole to those groups of people, other than those who now call themselves "kinh" in Vietnamese, who now live inside the borders of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam? E.g., "National minorities, non-Vietnamese citizens of Viet Nam"??? -- what are to be the preferred terms one uses when referring to the various groups of people who lived in the historic past inside the territory that has now become the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam? E.g., "Vietnamese and ethnic minorities, urban and rural folks, proto- and non- proto-Vietamese, hemeterodeme X, Y, & Z" ???
-- should there be (do we need) a preferred term to refer to those groups of people, other than those who now call themselves "kinh" in Vietnamese, who have traditionally lived in the uplands of the territory that has now become the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam (many of whom continue to live in that region, but some of whom may now have chosen [or been forced by circumstances beyond their control] to reside elsewhere, including outside the borders of the SRV), people to whom the term "montagnard" has been applied in French, as distinct from people who have traditionally resided primarily on the lowland plains (such as the Cham or the Khmer, or the [primarily, but not exclusively, urban] Chinese)?
E.g., "Montagnards, highland peoples" ???
Perhaps none of these is satisfactory and we could use better suggestions. If this sounds complicated, it is because it's complicated. Sorry.
Aloha, Steve O'H.
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From proschan@indiana.edu Wed Nov 17 13:09:47 1999
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 17:09:05 -0500
From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Dao = "forest people" <> "homme sauvage"
Last month, Leif pointed out (below) a passage from a publication edited by the staff of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, __Mosaique Culturelle des Ethnies du Vietnam__ (1998?, Nxb Giao Duc) in which, on page 51, one finds, in reference to the Dao/Zao/Dzao/Yao: "Appellation propre: Kim Mien, Kim Mun (homme sauvage)" The definition, to which Leif properly takes exception, seems to be a mistake introduced by the French translator, perhaps overrelying on a bad dictionary. In the Vietnamese original of the book, __Buc tranh van hoa cac dan toc Viet Nam__, ed. Nguyen Van Huy et al., Nxb Giao Duc, 1997, one finds the following on page 49: "Ten tu goi: Kim Mien, Kim Mun (nguoi rung)"
As Leif points out, the autonym Kim Mien or Kim Mun translates as "forest people," as the original Vietnamese text properly reads. In other Vietnamese language sources, this is also noted consistently: "Con ten tu nhan cua nguoi Dao la 'Kiem mien': 'Kiem' (kem, kim) co nghia la 'rung' va 'mien' (mun, mun) la 'nguoi'. Nhu vay 'Kiem mien' la 'nguoi o rung'." from Be Viet Dang et al., __Nguoi Dao o Viet Nam__, 1971, Nxb Khoa hoc Xa hoi, p. 16. "Con ten tu nhan cua nguoi Dao la Kiem Mun hay Kim mun deu co nghia la nguoi o rung nui (Kiem, Kem, Kim = rung; mien, man, mun = nguoi)." from __Cac dan toc it nguoi o Viet Nam (cac tinh phia bac)__, Vien Dan toc hoc, 1978, Nxb Khoa hoc Xa hoi, p. 312.
"Mot ten khac cua nguoi Dao la Liem Mien hay Kim Mun deu co nghia la nguoi o rung (Kiem, Kem, Kim co nghia la 'rung', Mien, Man, Mun nghia la 'nguoi'." from Doan Thien Thuat and Mai Ngoc Chu, __Tieng Dao__, 1992, Nxb Khoa hoc Xa hoi, p.18, translated by them as follows: "Two other names for the Zao are 'Kiem Mien' and 'Kim Mun' which both mean 'forest man' ('Kiem', 'Kem', 'Kim' all mean forest and 'Mien', 'Mem', 'Mum' 'man')." from Doan Thien Thuat and Mai Ngoc Chu, __Tieng Dao__, 1992, Nxb Khoa hoc Xa hoi, p. 143-44 (typos in English as in source).
Perhaps somebody who has handy access to some of the standard Tu dien Viet-Phap used in Vietnam could check whether "nguoi rung" is improperly translated in the dictionaries, or whether it was simply the translator's own invention. The French translation was produced on a very short schedule, and the translator was not a specialist in ethnography, and as we know the bilingual dictionaries are full of mistakes that perpetuate themselves over repeated editions and borrowings. The English translation of the __Mosaic__ book (which is not the catalogue of the Museum) is still in progress, and will not include such mistakes.
In any case, it seems that Leif's conclusion, "that the ethnicity-agents of the contemporary Socialist government of Vietnam have authenticated as a minority self-reference the French colonial appropriation of an Imperial Chinese category," can be accounted for as simply a translator's error rather than a decision or intentional act of the scholars at the Museum of
Ethnology. So, "forest people" it is, and always has been, in the Vietnamese sources,
NOT "homme sauvage".
Frank Proschan
--
Research Associate
Indiana University
Mail: Folklore Institute, 504 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN 47408-3890 USA
Office (no mail): 271 Aydelotte (Ashton Center)
Email: proschan@indiana.edu tel: 1-812-855-9073
NEW fax number: 1-812-855-4008 (do not use 855-5584)
From keyes@u.washington.edu Thu Nov 6 15:50:04 2003
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 17:50:44 -0800
From: Charles Keyes <keyes@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: UNHCR Report on the Central Highlands
Dear Colleagues,
A most interesting and very detailed report on the situation in the Central Highlands -- "Vietnam: Indigenous Minority Groups in the Central Highlands" -- has been produced for the UNHCR by "An Independent WriteNet Researcher." To access this report, go to http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rsd, then in the country box type in "Vietnam" (or Viet Nam). When the country reports come up, click on the "Date" and this will list reports in order of when they were produced, the most recent appearing first. The report is the second in the list.
Biff