About Condo - Georges Condominas
From: JAMMES Jérémy
Date: Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 4:04 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
This short email to share the sad news that Georges Condominas or “Condo” died last night at 90 years old.
Dr Jérémy Jammes
Directeur adjoint / Deputy Director
IRASEC (USR CNRS 3142 - UMIFRE 22)
c/o French Embassy
29 Sathorn Tai Road -Bangkok 10120, Thailand
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From: Oscar Salemink
Date: Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 6:15 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear list,
The passing away of Georges Condominas is very sad news for all those who are interested in the study of Vietnamese culture and society. As an anthropologist he was recognized as a giant in the field in France and in Vietnam, but somehow less so in the English speaking world.
‘Condo’ was born in Vietnam in 1921 from a mixed background, went to Lycée in France in the 1930s and came back to Vietnam to study visual arts at the École des Beaux-Arts d’Indochine in Hanoi, but he quickly dropped out and developed an interest for the study of ethnologie. In 1947 he came back to Vietnam for prolonged field research among the Mnong Gar in the village of Sar Luk in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. His research was interrupted by a sudden disease which compelled him to go back to France. The research resulted in a beautiful monograph, Nous avons mangé la forêt de la pierre-génie Gôo (1957), written in the form of an ethnographic diary – or better: a chronicle – of the events in the village for one entire year, with an elaborate set of indexes. It was an ethnographic experiment that foreshadowed the later ‘literary turn’ and ‘postmodern turn’ in anthropology, although he never considered himself a postmodernist and although he never quite received the credits for his pioneering style in the English speaking world. That was different in France and in Vietnam. The 2006 opening of the new Musée du Quai Branly in Paris – successor of the Musée de l’Homme – was celebrated with a temporary exhibition about Condo’s research in Sar Luk. The exhibition travelled to Vietnam (Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi) as well, and the person of Condo is seen by many Vietnamese ethnologists as the embodiment of ‘real’ in-depth anthropology, and thus as one of the major influences in Vietnamese anthropology.
Condo was never shy to speak out on political developments. His stance against French colonial rule in Indochina brought him in conflict with the colonial authorities, and closed colonial Madagascar as field site for him. His shock at the treatment of his erstwhile research subjects during a return visit to Sar Luk in the early 1960s – including confinement, torture and murder at the hands of US Special Forces – made him speak out against the US intervention in Vietnam and against what he considered ethnocide – a now common term that he first invented – in his book L’exotique est quotidien (The exotic is everyday). He accused the US Embassy in Saigon of illegally translating and distributing his first monograph which he felt was used for the ethnocide of the people described in it, and was moreover shocked that it appeared without indexes. In 1972 he delivered an impassioned distinguished lecture at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association about the difficult relationship between anthropology and warfare; later on he told me about his experiences – as amétis – with the racist attitudes in the US during various visiting professorships in the 1960s.
Condo continued to work and publish on a wide variety of topics – mythology, linguistics, slavery, state formation, swidden and fixed agriculture, to name but a few topics – based on research in various countries and territories. He also had literary talent, as was clear from his Foreword to a new edition of Chateaubriand’s 1844 novel La vie de Rancé, which acquired a special meaning for Condo after an extremely traumatic event in his personal life. In spite of tragedy, Condo was someone who enjoyed life to the fullest and to some extent turned his own life into a work of art – loving public attention and recognition for his work and his person.
For me – as for many other anthropologists in France and beyond – Condo was a mentor and a source of inspiration, who was extremely generous to students and younger scholars. I first met him when I came to Paris in 1983, preparing for my studies on – later also in – Vietnam. He invited me to do research at the Centre de Documentation et Recherche sur l’Asie du Sud-Est et Monde Insulindien (CeDRASEMI) which he had set up in Valbonne, just outside Antibes on the French Côte d’Azur, but which – as an experiment in French academic decentralization – was short-lived. After my fieldwork in Vietnam’s Central Highlands he invited me back to Paris in 1992 to give a presentation at his séminaire in Paris, and I had the good fortune that he was willing to be an external examiner for my doctoral dissertation in Amsterdam. When I worked in Vietnam in the second half of the 1990s I hosted him when he participated in a conference on customary law in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. After that, whenever my work brought me to Paris I tried to meet him. The last time I visited him was in March 2009; by that time his health was not so robust anymore.
With Condo another giant whose life spanned various periods in the history of Vietnam’s Central Highlands has gone on – after Jacques Dournes and Gerald Hickey. Georges Condominas was an inspirational and generous scholar, somebody with artistic talent and with political courage. The world will be emptier without him.
He leaves behind his wife Claire Merleau-Ponty and his children; as well as numerous scholars who call themselves Condo’s pupils and students.
Oscar Salemink
Professor in the Anthropology of Asia
Department of Anthropology
Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Copenhagen
Øster Farimagsgade 5
1353 København K.
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From: Michele Thompson
Date: Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 6:41 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Oscar,
I was certainly taught that he was a major figure in the field. I remember the Museum of Ethnology had a wonderful special exhibit on him a couple of years ago. I was lucky enough to happen to be in Ha Noi while it was on.
Thanks for posting this detailed information on him.
Take care
Michele
Michele Thompson
Professor, Dept. of History
Southern Connecticut State University
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From: Vietnam Business Centre in Singapore
Date: Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 6:49 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Professor Oscar Salemink,
Thanks for the info.
Allow us to post to your note as follows:
http://vietnameselanguage.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/a-farewell-to-georges-condominas/
Yours sincerely,
Le Huu Huy, M.A.
Director
-------------------------------------
VIETNAM LANGUAGE CENTRE
101 Upper Cross Street
#05-41 People's Park Centre
Singapore 058357
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam
Date: Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 7:11 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thanks to Oscar for posting this very interesting obituary.
I agree that Condo was both a giant in the field of anthropology and did not receive the recognition he deserved from anglophone anthropologists.
I am minded of the case of Jurgen Habermas 'concept of civil society or Maurice Halwachs' on social memory did not really have an impact on American academia until their works were translated into English a long time after each was published. Condo's own book was eventually translated into English, but by that time, many anthropologists had adopted his approach, so his work was not seen as innovative as it truly was.
I am also struck by Condo's comments about racism in the US. One of my classmates at the Lycee Marie Curie was half French half Meo. She was subjected to merciless bullying by other French girls. "Her mother goes around bare-breasted" was a common taunt deliberately uttered in her hearing. She identified herself as French and not Vietnamese, but the Vietnamese girls also saw her as equally exotic and alien.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Kenneth T. Young Professor
of Sino-Vietnamese History
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From: Kleinen, John
Date: Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 7:29 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear list,
I follow Oscar's appreciation of Condominas' life and work in this regard and being one of his "Paris" students in 1979, Condo and I shared many personal and professional contacts since then in the Netherlands, France, Vietnam and elsewhere. There is one aspect that I would mention as well: his interest in history. We met for the first time at a breeding place of French colonial history, the seminars of the Paris " troika" at Paris-VII, Boudarel-Brocheux-Hemery where Condo sometimes gave acte de presence with his sparkling candor and inspiring anecdotes. As a young PhD student working in the French archives at the Rue Oudinot, he invited me for his CeDRASEMI seminars at every Tuesday followed by a meal at a nearby Chinese or Vietnamese restaurant. Condo was very knowledgeable about the Dutch tradition of Non-Western Sociology and admired its founder Willem Frederic Wertheim, my former teacher, whose work on Indonesia had inspired him very much. When I was invited to deliver a contribution to his seminar on slavery, he was pleased that I had chosen the nearly forgotten work of H.J. Nieboer (1900) who had aroused a discussion in the Netherlands about a pattern of that attracted anthropologists and non-anthrologists as well: the existence and the ending of slavery, based on the possible surplus of production above subsistence, with higher surpluses making slavery more probable.
The book based upon the presentations of this seminar came out nearly 20 years later, but it showed that Condo had kept his promise to publish it.
He appreciated to be part of the "cortege" of my PhD defense in 1988, which he described as a Dutch "Ronde de Nuit" which according to him should serve as a model for the French tradition of severe examinations that could last more than six hours.
When possible, Condominas visited the Euroviet conferences we organized in Europe since 1993 and he appreciated our respect for him as one of the founding fathers of European ethnology regarding Vietnam.
When I met him the last time not so long ago, we had an inspiring conversation at his home in Paris, followed by a meal in one of his favored restaurants "de quartier". With a smile, he handed over a book that he had prepared and edited about his father, Louis Condominas, which he said had forgotten to bring with him when he visited me in Amsterdam, but it should have got a place in my bibliography of my PhD-thesis. I was surprised about his sharp memory after all these years.
For me, Condo's passing away feels as a loss of a close friend, a mentor and an inspiring scholar.
John Kleinen Ph.D
Associate Professor
University of Amsterdam
Department of Anthropology and Sociology
O.Z.Achterburgwal 185
1012 DK Amsterdam
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From: Justin McDaniel
Date: Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 7:44 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear List,
Thank you to Prof. Salemink and others for sending the news. It is a sad day not
just for Vietnam Studies, but for Lao Studies as well. Members of the VSG might
not be aware of the great work Georges Condominas did in Buddhist Studies and
Lao Studies. His work Le Bouddhisme au village was very influential among
Western scholars and Lao scholars (especially when it was translated into Lao
by Saveng Phinith). He also wrote on Lao Art and Archaeology, Buddhist liturgy
and ritual, and Buddhism and Ethnicity in Northeast Thailand and Laos. He was
also one of the only foreign scholars ever to work on Southern Lao history
(most scholars work on Luang Phrabang and Vientiane regional history). I have
included his writing on nearly every general/comprehensive PhD examination list
I have given to students working on SEA Buddhist Studies. He was one of the last
of members of the pre-1954 generation of French scholars working on Laos.
Best,
justin
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Associate Professor
223 Claudia Cohen Hall
249 S. 36th Street
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104
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From: Philippe Peycam
Date: Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 9:04 AM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Dear List,
I would add to what was said about Prof. Condominas's contribution to the fields of Vietnamese and Lao studies his no less influential role in Cambodia and in support of the field of Khmer studies.
Condo inspired a significant number of village-based studies after his work. Among them were Juliette Baccot (on a Cham village), Jean Ellul (on elephant tamers and their rituals), Jacqueline Métra (on the Bru minority), Gabriele Martel (on a Cambodian village, Lovea), Ang Choulean (on popular religious practices), and the American anthropologist Mayko Ebihara (on another Khmer village, Svay).
Though I don't know if he was directly involved in Cambodia’s institutional academic development, his influence in structuring a distinct field of “Cambodian/Khmer Studies” was nonetheless substantial. This impact was especially felt among students and future professors, especially at the Royal University of Fine Arts where some of his former students (Prof. Ang Choulean and Dr. Tan Phong) are still teaching there.
Nouth Narang, who founded the CEDORECK (Centre de Documentation et d’Etudes sur la Culture Khmère) among a number of exiled Cambodian scholars in Paris in the late 1970s, told me how Condo was always an active supporter of these Cambodian initiatives as he saw them contributing to an enlarged field, beyond the one engendered by colonial orientalism and in the perspective of rebuilding the higher education system after the tragedy of the 70-80s.
Today, a number of researchers working on Cambodia remain strongly inspired by his work. I can think of Dr. Jonathan Padwe, now at Hawaii University, who works in Ratana Kiri on the Jarais. I can also think of Prof. Sylvain Vogel’s ethnolinguistic work on the Phnoms in Mondulkiri.
During my time at the Center for Khmer Studies, I had the privilege of meeting him on three occasions, in Paris, and once in Siem Reap where he visited the Center. He was an enthusiast and generous supporter of CKS, and had a number of past CEDRASEMI’s publications sent to the Wat Damnak’s library.
Philippe Peycam
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From: Oscar Salemink
Date: Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 11:29 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Condo was himself to “blame” for the late publication of his first monograph in English. He told me that after the realization what ethnographic knowledge could be used for in conditions of warfare, he refused to have it published during the Vietnam / American War. In the new preface to the English edition (1977) he explains the circumstances and his considerations for this decision.
One anecdote that I remember Condo telling me about racism in the US was that he had been invited for a dinner party as guest of honor, but when arriving at the front door was referred to the back door apparently intended for servants and caterers. But I suppose that racism was then very wide-spread around the globe – as it is now.
As my contribution was intended for a Vietnam studies list I emphasized Condo’s contributions to Vietnam studies. While noting that he published widely “based on research in various countries and territories”, I did not find it necessary to offer more detail but I am happy to see that his work has been equally influential in a number of other ‘country studies’ as well, and I am grateful to those who pointed that out.
http://antropologi.ku.dk/english
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam
Date: Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 11:40 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I was not so much wondering about Condo's experience of American racism both within the US and in Vietnam as about his own experience in Vietnam as a metis. From my own experience, the girl whose mother was Meo was treated very differently from girls who had one kinh parent.
Did he specifically mention Gerald Hickey's own experience as a factor in delaying publication of his work?
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From: Oscar Salemink
Date: Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 11:51 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I don't recall that Condo told me about any influence of Gerry Hickey's experience regarding his decision to delay publication. In a way it would not have made much sense, as the English language edition of 'We Have Eaten the Forest" appeared in 1977 (NY: Hill and Wang), while Hickey's two-volume Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central Highlands was published in 1982 only. To what extent other influences might have played a role I don't know.
http://antropologi.ku.dk/english
'Condo' was born in Vietnam in 1921 from a mixed background, went to Lycée in France in the 1930s and came back to Vietnam to study visual arts at the École des Beaux-Arts d'Indochine in Hanoi, but he quickly dropped out and developed an interest for the study of ethnologie. In 1947 he came back to Vietnam for prolonged field research among the Mnong Gar in the village of Sar Luk in Vietnam's Central Highlands. His research was interrupted by a sudden disease which compelled him to go back to France. The research resulted in a beautiful monograph, Nous avons mangé la forêt de la pierre-génie Gôo (1957), written in the form of an ethnographic diary - or better: a chronicle - of the events in the village for one entire year, with an elaborate set of indexes. It was an ethnographic experiment that foreshadowed the later 'literary turn' and 'postmodern turn' in anthropology, although he never considered himself a postmodernist and although he never quite received the credits for his pioneering style in the English speaking world. That was different in France and in Vietnam. The 2006 opening of the new Musée du Quai Branly in Paris - successor of the Musée de l'Homme - was celebrated with a temporary exhibition about Condo's research in Sar Luk. The exhibition travelled to Vietnam (Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi) as well, and the person of Condo is seen by many Vietnamese ethnologists as the embodiment of 'real' in-depth anthropology, and thus as one of the major influences in Vietnamese anthropology.
Condo was never shy to speak out on political developments. His stance against French colonial rule in Indochina brought him in conflict with the colonial authorities, and closed colonial Madagascar as field site for him. His shock at the treatment of his erstwhile research subjects during a return visit to Sar Luk in the early 1960s - including confinement, torture and murder at the hands of US Special Forces - made him speak out against the US intervention in Vietnam and against what he considered ethnocide - a now common term that he first invented - in his book L'exotique est quotidien (The exotic is everyday). He accused the US Embassy in Saigon of illegally translating and distributing his first monograph which he felt was used for the ethnocide of the people described in it, and was moreover shocked that it appeared without indexes. In 1972 he delivered an impassioned distinguished lecture at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association about the difficult relationship between anthropology and warfare; later on he told me about his experiences - as a métis - with the racist attitudes in the US during various visiting professorships in the 1960s.
Condo continued to work and publish on a wide variety of topics - mythology, linguistics, slavery, state formation, swidden and fixed agriculture, to name but a few topics - based on research in various countries and territories. He also had literary talent, as was clear from his Foreword to a new edition of Chateaubriand's 1844 novel La vie de Rancé, which acquired a special meaning for Condo after an extremely traumatic event in his personal life. In spite of tragedy, Condo was someone who enjoyed life to the fullest and to some extent turned his own life into a work of art - loving public attention and recognition for his work and his person.
For me - as for many other anthropologists in France and beyond - Condo was a mentor and a source of inspiration, who was extremely generous to students and younger scholars. I first met him when I came to Paris in 1983, preparing for my studies on - later also in - Vietnam. He invited me to do research at the Centre de Documentation et Recherche sur l'Asie du Sud-Est et Monde Insulindien (CeDRASEMI) which he had set up in Valbonne, just outside Antibes on the French Côte d'Azur, but which - as an experiment in French academic decentralization - was short-lived. After my fieldwork in Vietnam's Central Highlands he invited me back to Paris in 1992 to give a presentation at his séminaire in Paris, and I had the good fortune that he was willing to be an external examiner for my doctoral dissertation in Amsterdam. When I worked in Vietnam in the second half of the 1990s I hosted him when he participated in a conference on customary law in Vietnam's Central Highlands. After that, whenever my work brought me to Paris I tried to meet him. The last time I visited him was in March 2009; by that time his health was not so robust anymore.
With Condo another giant whose life spanned various periods in the history of Vietnam's Central Highlands has gone on - after Jacques Dournes and Gerald Hickey. Georges Condominas was an inspirational and generous scholar, somebody with artistic talent and with political courage. The world will be emptier without him.
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam
Date: Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 12:05 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thanks, Oscar. It seems Hickey began his fieldwork just one year before the French edition of Nous Avons Mange La Foret came out. I should have checked!
By the way, I am impressed that Wikipedia had an up-to-the-minute entry on Condo!
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From: Charles Keyes
Date: Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 12:08 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>, rels-tlc@groups.sas.upenn.edu
Cc: "O.J.H.M. Salemink" <o.j.h.m.salemink@vu.nl>
Although I could never have been a student of Condo, our paths intertwined many times -- in France, in Thailand, in Laos, in Vietnam, although never in the U.S. I always found out interactions to be highly stimulating. While Oscar and others can offer in depth appreciations of Condo's scholarship, I would like to add a few more anecdotes.
Philippe's note about his influence on Khmer studies reminded of the deep admiration May Ebihara and Condo held for each other. I witnessed this firsthand at a meeting in Paris between French and American Southeast Asianists in the late 1980s. At a subsequent meeting with Condo I reminded him of this meeting and he said that May was one of the most admirable women he had ever known. May, when I told her this, actually blushed.
Condo and I were both invited to a conference in Bangkok in the mid 1990s on the study of Tai outside of Thailand. Both of us were informed on our arrival that we would be expected to give our talks in standard Thai. While I was able, with the assistance of one of my former students, in putting together in 3 days a barely adequate version of my talk in Thai, Condo told the organizer he could not speak in Thai but might be able to do so in Lao. The organizer allowed him to speak in French with one of his Thai students doing the translation into Thai. After I gave my talk, the organizer said I had spoken Thai with a Lao accent, probably referring to the fact that I had spent many years working in northeastern Thailand. Both comments were revealing about Thai views of Lao even at a conference in which Lao were prominently discussed.
My last encounter with Condo was at the first Vietnamese studies conference in Hanoi. I arranged a dinner for a number of young Vietnamese anthropologists with Condo. What deeply impressed me was that these young scholars not only were familiar with at least some of his work, but that they saw him as an exemplary scholar. After the dinner I told Condo I could only wish when I reached his age for such respect by a new generation of scholars that he clearly had received. His work was subsequently given prominent attention in an exhibition at the National Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi.
Charles Biff Keyes
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and International Studies
University of Washington
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From: Nhu Miller
Date: Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 3:28 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
In the fall of 1971, Jacques Dournes* wrote me while I was in graduate school
at Berkeley. "Le grand mandarin est dans ton coin," and advised me to get in
touch with Condo who had an appointment at a think tank at Stanford. Condo
told me to drive down to Palo Alto that evening. It took me quite a while to get
from Berkeley to Palo Alto -- a vast wasteland of automobile dealerships -- and
when I got to where Condo was staying, he was smoking a big cigar. The
combination of getting lost for hours and the smelly cigar promptly made
me puke.
After that inauspicious beginning, Condo and I became lifelong friends. I
had a weekly tutorial during which time we discussed everything from his
childhood, ecocide in Viet Nam because of the terrible on going war,
beloved Laos, Madagascar etc. I arranged for him to come to Berkeley
for a memorable standing room only talk at the Center for Southeast Asian
Studies when he commiserated with the anti-war movement with great
eloquence while condemning the US recklessness and cruelty.
About 20 years later, I met Condo by chance on the causeway at Angkhor
Wat. He was accompanying Mitterand on a tour of the former colonies
and thought it rather hilarious, his beady eyes rolling at the idea of being
in Mitterand's party.
The last time I saw Condo was in Ha noi in 2007 after he attended the
tribute by the Museum of Ethology. Although he was 87 and his legs
were failing, he was invigorated by the honors. He admired
the photos of his younger self -- especially of the one in loin cloth. It
was particularly moving at that point in his life to be in Viet Nam
again and he was making plans to come back the next year to do some
follow up work.
It was privilege to have known Condo, Gerry Hickey, and Dournes during
a pivotal time of my life. Great anthropologists and great friends.
*Dournes, by the way, was an amazing scholar/autodidact who
was rescued by Condo on several occasions. He was kicked out
of the Missions Etrangeres after 30 years because he hadn't made a single
convert. Instead, he devoted his time to ethnology, zoology, botany
the Jarai. When he got back to France in 1970, he was alone and broke.
His brother had inherited everything. Condo sponsored him through
his 3e degre in Ethnology and got him an research appointment at
CNRS. Later when Dournes was forced to retire, Condo assembled
funds for him to live in the Cevennes and continue writing until he death
in 1993.
T.T. Nhu
Berkeley, California
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From: Dien Nguyen
Date: 2011/7/19
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Obituary in Di?n Ðàn, Paris:
Georges CONDOMINAS (1921-2011)
by Di?n Ðàn — C?p nh?t : 18/07/2011 22:04
Nhà dân t?c h?c tác gi? Chúng tôi an r?ng và K? l? m?i ngày... dã t?
th? ngày 17.7.2011 t?i Paris.
http://www.diendan.org/nhung-con-nguoi/georges-condominas-1921-2011/
Nguy?n Ði?n
Independent Researcher
Canberra
--
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From: JAMMES Jérémy
Date: Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 8:07 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear all,
I'd like to share few words about the exhibition on the ethnographic work of Condo and bout the "Georges Condominas' visual fund" in Paris.
As it was mentioned already, the exhibition we set up in the musée du quai Branly with Christine Hemmet and Yves Goudineau ("Nous avons mangé la forêt…" : Georges Condominas au Vietnam (23 June - 17 December 2006) was transferred to Hanoi one year later to the National Museum of Ethnology (“"Chung tôi an r?ng…" – Georges Condominas ? Sar Luk”, December 2007-March 2008). Nguy?n Van Huy and Võ Th? Thu?ng were curators of this 2nd exhibition which was covered by many mass-media. For the launching day, a Mnong music band came from Tây Nguyên to perform according a very contemporary style (which let Condo stunned actually). For this exhibition, we have been working on a translation into Vietnamese of 3 film-documentaries on the ethnographic work of Condo in Mnong Gar:
- Georges Condominas and Alain Bedos. Sar Luk: les travaux et les jours d’un village mnong gar du Vietnam central [Sar Luk: toils and days of a mnong gar village in Central Vietnam], series of pictures with oral literature “sung” or read by Condo (texts from 1948 and 1950 fieldtrips, music recorded in 1958), Paris, CNRS-CeDRASEMI Edition, 1984.
- Jean Lallier. L'exotique est quotidien: Retour à Sar Luk, Paris : ADAV/Europe images - Les Films d'ici, France 2, CNRS AV, Ecouter-Voir, Setraco, 52 minutes, 1996 (http://videotheque.cnrs.fr/doc=798).
- Georges Condominas and Jean Lallier, Nous avons mangé la forêt..., VHS, 80 minutes, coproduction Le Vidéographe, Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail/Les Films d’ici, 1999.
The National Museum of Ethnology should have copies I suppose.
Taking pictures was a substantial and systematic part of the work of Condo. In 2008, I spent 6 months in the musée du quai Branly to open the dozens of cigars boxes and suites cases that Condo let to this museum with a visual material treasure inside, classifying this recent Visual Fund with the help of Condo himself. More than 20,000 "visual materials" (pictures, drawings…) provided a visual and very comprehensive panorama of all the fieldtrips he conducted for his researches (Vietnam, Madagascar, Laos), but also precious materials on Voodoo in Togo (Condo was initiated in 1953 : for a picture of Condo in Togo:http://www.quaibranly.fr//cc/pod/recherche.aspx?b=2&t=1: to enter “personne/institution” and “Condominas”; see also his only one article on this fieldtrip financed by the Office de la recherche scientifique et technique outre-mer (ORSTOM, moved to IRD): “Danses du vodou de la foudre dans le bas-Togo” published in Science et Nature, 1954, pages 19-24), on the Northeast of Cambodia in the 1960-70s, as well on Taiwan, Indonesia, Ifugao (with Conklin), etc. This funds reserves many beautiful surprises… it is an original way to enter into the world of Condo or to rediscover his work and the man.
Jeremy Jammes
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From: Paul Sorrentino
Date: Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 7:26 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear list,
Readers of the French language will appreciate this tribute to Condo by Richard Pottier (his first supervised student) here :
http://www.reseau-asie.com/media3/informations-diverses/condominas-deces-hommage/
Paul Sorrentino
PhD candidate
Université Paris Descartes
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam
Date: Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 7:41 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thanks to Paul Sorrentino for posting this excellent piece by Richard Pottier. I would hope tht it gets translted into Vietnamese or that perhaps Nguyen Cong Thao can include its gist in the article he is writing about Condo.