Meanings of the Word "dân tộc"
From: Thomas HOANG
Date: 2009/8/6
Hi VSGers,
Does anyone know how to understand the term « dân tộc » in Vietnamese context? Does it mean “nation” or “race” or “ethnic group” or “people”? “Chủ nghĩa dân tộc” could be translated by “nationalism”? How about “tình yêu dân tộc”? In a Vietnamese point of view, “race” = “people” = “nation”?
Thomas
PhD Student
Sorbonne Paris IV
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From: Minh Tran
Date: Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 1:23 PM
I have seen "dân tộc" used in various context. Such as "dân tộc của
minh" as "our people." Or "dân tộc thiểu số" as "minority people." A
nice little article on dân tộc can be found on Wikipedia tiếng Việt.
However, can it be generalized as being "race," that would base on the
context of how the writer put it into words.
Minh
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From: Minh Tran
Date: Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 1:29 PM
Some useful ones include
dân tộc Việt Nam -the Vietnamese race
một nước có nhiều dân tộc- A country with many nationalities
chủ nghĩa dân tộc- Nationalism
dân tộc thiểu số- An ethnic minority
Minh
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From: therese guyot
Date: Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 7:46 PM
dân tộc Việt Nam -translate as the Vietnamese people will be more appropriate than "race", in an ethnological point of view, when the Vietnamese race term refers in most cases to Kinh people.
Thérèse Guyot
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris-Sorbonne
Hà-Nội - Việt-Nam
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From: Liam C Kelley
Date: Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 9:31 PM
This simple question gets to one of the most difficult and frustrating issues to come to terms with. Minzoku/minzu/dan toc is a term the Japanese coined in the late nineteenth century to translate "nation" when that term had two main meanings, with one emphasizing a people (similar to "nationality") and the other a territory (similar to "country"). In English at least, that first sense has fallen out of use since that time, so if people talk about the "Vietnamese nation" today, they are referring to the government, territory and people, or something like that. In Vietnamese and Chinese (and maybe Japanese and Korean too?) that first sense is still there. However, it has probably changed over time as well. As such, it is still not clear to me what exactly Vietnamese and Chinese today envision when they use these terms. This makes talking about "nationalism" very difficult, because the terminology overlaps but is not the same.
Liam Kelley
University of Hawaii
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From: will pore
Date: Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 9:51 PM
In Korean, the sense of nationality (minjok, i.e. minzu, dan toc, minzoku) is definately still there. But, then for Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and, while not really a fact, for Chinese, nationality really means one is part of a single "race." "We are one people, with one country and one language" [sound familiar?] used to be quite commonly heard in Korea.
Will Pore
--
William F. Pore, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Global Studies Program
Pusan National University
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From: Dinh Lu Giang
Date: Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 10:07 PM
In my opinion, "mot nuoc co nhieu dan toc" should be a country with
many ethnicities.
In some case, "dan toc" briefly can refer to "ethnic" (adjective) or
"ethnic group", just in "chinh sach dan toc"
Also, "dan toc thieu so" with "thieu so" is now avoided, as it conveys
a negative meaning. We would say "toc nguoi" instead.
--
Dinh Lu Giang,
PhD student on Viet - Khmer bilingualism and bilingual education
Dept. of Vietnamese Studies,
University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National
University - HCMC - Vietnam
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From: David Brown
Date: Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 11:53 PM
I think its fairly simple, actually. Vietnam has 54 dan toc (dân tộc), the Kinh (Kính) and 53 dan toc thieu so (minorities); they are all members of one dan chung (dân chúng), the people of [the country of] Vietnam. Cheers, all, David
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From: Oscar Salemink
Date: Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 12:40 AM
Well, I don't think it is that simple. There is a rich etymology, history, political discourse and practice, and several other connotations attached to that word dân tộc, which is of course part and parcel of a series of projects of vernacular, scientific and political classifications. And, as might be expected, bookshelves have been written about this topic by scholars like (in arbitrary order) Patricia Pelley, Frank Proschan, Jean Michaud, Priscilla Koh, Philip Taylor, Dang Nghiem Van, Khong Dien (mind the tones), Phan Ngoc Chien, and myself -- this is a non-exhaustive list, obviously: the JVS recently had quite a few articles on ethnic groups in Vietnam, and there is quite a lively debate on ethnicity and classification, both in Vietnam and beyond. A good place to start is with Charles Keyes' AAS Presidential address: "The peoples of Asia" - science and politics in the classification of ethnic groups in Thailand, China, and Vietnam, in the Journal of Asian Studies 61(4), 2002 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3096439.
Oscar Salemink
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From: Hai Le
Date: Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 1:48 AM
I'm doing research on national identity in Vietnam, and dân tộc is a quite difficult term to translate. It can also be Nation - Các dân tộc trên thế giới, as well as Ethnic group - as in 54 dân tộc anh em. When you talk about dân tộc, ordinary Vietnamese often understand as 'ethnic' đồng bào dân tộc, but many intellectuals will understand as nation - cuộc cách mạng giải phóng dân tộc, chủ nghĩa dân tộc.
Ren = dân = people, tộc = lineage.
There is another term popular in the South for nation = quốc gia. Nationalism = both chủ nghĩa dân tộc or chủ nghĩa quốc gia, sometime it should be translated as tư tưởng dân tộc to avoid the negative meaning of neo-Nazi. Hochiminh's nationalism = tư tưởng dân tộc của Hồ Chí Minh. Ngô Đình Diệm's nationalism = chủ nghĩa quốc gia của Ngô Đình Diệm (?)
There is almost no study on nationalism in Vietnam, and ethnology is often translated dân tộc học, and ethnography = dân tộc ký. Race is sometime translated as sắc tộc or chủng tộc.
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From: Hieu Phung Minh
Date: Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 2:43 AM
Dear everyone,
Here is my answer for the question that "what (exactly!) Vietnamese (...) today envision when they use these terms."
As a Vietnamese speaking native, what come to my mind when the word "dân tộc" brings its bells are those in two different usages: 1st, "các dân tộc thiểu số" (many, kind of plural noun); and 2nd, "dân tộc Việt Nam" (one, kind of single noun).
I can said that it is very popular of the first usage of the word "dan toc" in recent Vietnamese contexts, even more popular than I thought. I searched the keyword "dân tộc Việt Nam" (the 2nd usage =one, kind of single noun) via google with an assumption that I will get some example sentences in which this phrase was used with the 2nd rather than the 1st meaning. However, what I found is that "dân tộc Việt Nam" is more often used to say something like "các dân tộc Việt Nam", and "các dân tộc Việt Nam" should be interpreted "các dân tộc" in the country (nation) of Vietnam (= many, kind of plural noun.) Nowadays, we can hear a great deal people in Vietnam talk about such things as "lễ hội dân tộc," "ngày truyền thống các dân tộc." "đại đoàn kết dân tộc"... and all stuff is in the 2nd usage. [I avoid to translate the term "dan toc" here in English because I still doubt that the Vietnamese term "dân tộc" could be exactly equivalent to the English counterpart!]
A good example for the 2nd is "Nước Việt Nam là một, dân tộc Việt Nam là một." In this case, I think that Vietnamese-speaking people do not distinguish "nước" and "dân tộc." So "dân tộc Việt Nam" means there is a "dân tộc" by name Việt Nam, and this is probably the same as your saying that there is a nation by name Vietnam.
So I agree that such terms as nation, ethnic group, race in English and dân tộc, quốc gia, nhà nước, tộc người, chủng tộc... in Vietnamese "overlaps but is not the same." The same could be talked about Chinese usage of these terms, I suppose! Here my point is that though such a term as "nation" in English and in Vietnamese can be deduced in two different meanings but the border of these two meanings of either English or Vietnamese term differs from one to another. This makes problems when people try to translate word-by-word with those terms. For the purpose of communicating, it seems that we have no choice to translate the terms to its equivalent in other languages, but who knows, people will use the knowledge they have in their mind of the concept to consider that the term is (or should be) also understood equivalently in other languages.
Some corresponding terms that Vietnamese often use to translate into "equivalent" English are:
quốc gia = state, nation, country
dân tộc = nation, people, ethic group
tộc người = ethnic group
chủng tộc = race
Phung M Hieu
Hanoi
Vietnam
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From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Date: Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 4:03 AM
I'm glad that Liam beat me to it with his reminder of the etymology of minzoku/minzu/dan toc.
The late 19th century was indeed a time for discussing the meaning of "nation", the most famous instance of which was Ernest Renan's 1882 address "Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?" Another important factor in the evolution of the meaning of "dan toc" is Stalin's minorities policies about which Yuri Zletskin has written quite a bit. As we know, Vietnamese ethnology was very influenced by Soviet ethnology the tendency of Soviet scholarship more generally to emphasize classification.
The term "dan toc" is used in different ways as in "Dan toc ta rat anh hung" and "dan toc thieu so." One has to assume that in the first example, "dan toc" is inclusive of all ethnicities; in the second example, it is clear that "dan toc" has a much narrower meaning.
Nguyen van Huy once joked to me about the tendency of Vietnamese to say "nguoi dan toc" as a short-hand for "nguoi dan toc thieu so."
I'm putting in a plug for a book that will appear next year in the series I co-edit at UC Press: it's by Tom Mullaney of Stanford and it is about the history of ethnic classification in China. It's wonderful and will be of interest to those of us interested in the subject of ethnic classification and the development of ethnology in Vietnam.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
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From: Frank
Date: Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 8:28 AM
I agree it is not at all simple. "Dân tộc", "minzu", "minzuko", etc. (along with English terms such as "nation", "ethnic group", "race") are all what Wallerstein calls "peoplehood constructs, all inventions of pastness, all contemporary political phenomena" (1991). The semantic space of "dân tộc" in Vietnam is pretty clear from about 1955 onward - not to say that it hasn't shifted during that time, but that the documentary record is rich and there is a huge body of primary and secondary literature analyzing what it means and how. Oscar's list of scholars below is a good place to begin (especially for the secondary sources), and one can easily find - between Party documents, Tap chi Dan toc hoc, and the pages of Nhan dan - ample primary evidence. Oscar forgets Vinh Sinh's essential work on the introduction of western concepts to Vietnamese political and social discourse by way of Japanese language - here, of course, dân tộc is an example par excellence.
What is more interesting - and remains to be done, to my knowledge - is to trace the shifting semantic space of "dân tộc" and neighbouring terms in Party discourse in the period between 1930 and about 1955, before the meanings tended to stabilize (again, stability being a relative thing since they also evolved over time). In the early years, we see a grappling to try to glom onto a coherent vocabulary - one that was internally coherent, coherent with Stalinist theories of ethnicity, and also applicable to the Vietnamese ethnoscape. Add to this the fact that a number of key early documents may exist only in French or Russian texts, and some may in fact first have been written in those languages, and the problem becomes very interesting. Walker Connor, notoriously, finds terminological confusion (in English translations !!! of Party documents) and (mis)takes that for evidence of theoretical confusion and/or dishonesty. Holding Party theorists responsible for the linguistic choices of CIA translators, as Connor does, is clearly silly, but it would be wonderful to have someone dig deep into the documents of the 1930s and 1940s (in Vietnamese, French and Russian) to understand how a coherent discourse emerged from a less coherent one. With the treasure trove of Party documents now online in well-edited (unexpurgated) editions, the task is begging to be done.
Best,
Frank Proschan
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From: Tine Gammeltoft
Date: 2009/8/10
Another - related - translation question: how would you translate the term giống nòi? And what would be the difference between giống nòi and the term chủng tộc mentioned by Hai Le? The term giống nòi was used, for instance, in Ho Chi Minh's 1945 independence speech on Ba Dinh square and is also sometimes used in current population policy discourse in discussions of the need to enhance population quality. I have often seen giống nòi translated as 'race', but I doubt the appropriateness of that translation (due to the eugenic overtones of the term race) and am searching for a better term (ancestral line? people?).
Tine Gammeltoft
University of Copenhagen