Query on claim of reduction of the number of ethnic groups
Diane Fox dnfox70 at gmail.com
Thu Feb 4 12:04:32 PST 2016
Hi —
I hope someone can straighten this out. A woman who had worked with orphans in Saigon during the war recently told me that before the war there had been 100-something ethnic groups that had been reduced (by the communists, was her implication ) to three or four. When I told her my understanding was that there were 53 or 54 still today, she was at first incredulous, and then said that maybe she had the figures wrong, but there had been a great reduction, anyway.
Now, this was not an academic exchange, but a matter of anguish for her, and I’d like to be sure a) I have my facts straight, and b) wonder if any of you have heard similar claims, and if so, who is making them, on what basis?
with thanks for any clues,
Diane
Diane Fox
Independent Scholar
Dan Duffy vietnamlit at gmail.com
Thu Feb 4 12:25:23 PST 2016
Diane, I hope this reply is not too abstract to help her out. I don't have
the specifics at my figure tips.
Perhaps she has mistaken changes in administrative views for ethnic
cleansing. It's a seeing like a state thing to be sure but not that bad yet.
The whole number of ethnic groups thing is a Stalinist idea, one of his
good ones, about national minorities. Bureaucratized by Beijing and adopted
by Ha Noi.
Saigon had their own office dealing with the issue. At each step numbers
get juggled.
Without minimizing the violence of lowland-highland relations in mainland
SE Asia, there never has been a reduction of groups from the several dozen
down to single-digits on the ground by violence or starvation.
Now, China and the Soviet Union, something like that did happen. But not so
drastic even in those places.
I am sure many here have the details.
Cheers,
Dan
Merle Ratner merle_ratner at hotmail.com
Thu Feb 4 12:28:56 PST 2016
Dear Diane and all,
This claim is demonstrably untrue. The Vietnamese government's Committee on Ethnic Minority Affairs recognizes 54 ethnic groups (including the largest, the Kinh). See:
Vietnam has invested heavily in preserving and advancing national minority languages and culture, helping some minorities that didn't have written languages to develop them, etc. Vietnam has also put serious funding into development in national minority areas, including building stilt houses with modern materials to meet the demands of people in the central highlands for traditional housing. Vietnam is very proud of its national minorities and it is a feature of each major national anniversary celebration that cultural programs include each of the minority groups participation.
I leave it to Nhan to talk about the policy of the former south Vietnamese government towards national minorities before 1975...
Merle Ratner
Independent researcher
NYC
Dutton, George dutton at humnet.ucla.edu
Thu Feb 4 12:49:29 PST 2016
Dear VSG,
While Merle’s comment is true about the number, and some of the elements of minority policy, I think it worth bearing in mind a couple of things. First, that the 54 number is incredibly arbitrary, and that the process of identifying ethnic groups is a complex and highly politicized one in Vietnam, as it was/is in China and other parts of Asia. Second, while VN may be proud of its minorities, and happy to trot them out for national celebrations, and has done some significant development work, we cannot overlook the fact that minorities have paid very heavy prices for modernization policies. This ranges from dislocation because of dam projects, threats from only loosely monitored bauxite mining, or ongoing police actions against those in the central highlands involved with house churches and Protestantism more generally. Also, numerous studies have examined the consequences of the coffee production explosion in the 1990s and 2000s, which heavily impacted many central highlanders in negative ways. In short, while there has been some progress, it is equally clear that “ethnic minorities” in Vietnam remain politically and economically marginalized, frequently mistrusted, and too often commodified. This is, perhaps, the price to be paid for living in what is seen as the last frontier for resource exploitation, land development, electricity production, etc, a pattern all too common across the upland regions of Southeast Asia/Southwest China (aka “Zomia”).
George Dutton
_______________________________________________
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Dan Tsang dtsang at uci.edu
Thu Feb 4 12:50:16 PST 2016
The claim might be focusing in part on the Hoa (ethnic Chinese) population. This is from the Wikipedia entry on Hoa:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoa_people#Population
Population
The official census from 2009 accounted the Hoa population at some 823,000 individuals and ranked 6th in terms of its population size. 70% of the Hoa live in cities and towns, mostly in Ho Chi Minh city while the remainder live in the countryside in the southern provinces.[1] The Hoa had constituted the largest ethnic minority group in the mid 20th century and its population had previously peaked at 1.2 million, or about 2.6% of Vietnam's population in 1976 a year following the end of the Vietnam War. Just 3 years later, the Hoa population dropped to 935,000 as large swathes of Hoa left Vietnam. The 1989 census indicated the Hoa population had appreciated to 960,000 individuals, but their proportion had dropped to 1.5% by then.[100] In 1999, the Hoa population at some 860,000 individuals,[101] or approximately 1.1% of the country's population and by then, were ranked Vietnam's 4th largest ethnic group.[102] The Hoa population are mainly concentrated in Cochinchina, and a 1943 census indicated that they made up the bulk (89%) of the Hoa population of Vietnam, or about 7% of Cochinchina's population.[103]
dan
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Frank Proschan frank.proschan at yahoo.com
Thu Feb 4 14:53:38 PST 2016
Diane et al,
The "state of the art" for ethnic classification in the Republic of Vietnam before 1975 is found in the psywar manual, "Minority Groups in the Republic of Vietnam", written by Joann L. Schrock, William Stockton, Jr., Elaine M. Murphy and Marilou Fromme, on behalf of the Cultural Information Analysis Center, Center for Research in Social Systems, American University, operating under contract with the Office of the Chief of Research and Development, Department of the Army. It was published in 1966 as Department of the Army Pamphlet No. 550-105. It lists 18 so-called "tribal groups", 5 "ethnic minority groups", 2 "politico-religious sects" and 1 "quasi-political group". Notably, it does not include the populations of those originally from the North who resettled in RVN after 1954.
The post-1975 list of 54 slices up the cake slightly different in certain cases (e.g. Halang are considered a local group of Sedang), but there are more groups recognized in the former territory of RVN than are listed in the Schrock et al. volume.
Best,
Frank Proschan
Washington, DC
Ted Osius tosius at hotmail.com
Thu Feb 4 15:36:28 PST 2016
The museum of ethnology in Vietnam documents the ongoing existence of 54 ethnic groups in Vietnam, including the Kinh (majority).
Ted Osius
Vern Weitzel vern.weitzel at gmail.com
Thu Feb 4 16:12:00 PST 2016
You will need to check French colonial records, and also pay attention to itinerant groups throughout Indochina. Of course, I'm stating the obvious.
Vern Weitzel
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Bui, Kim Dinh kim-dinh.bui at sowi.uni-goettingen.de
Thu Feb 4 16:12:06 PST 2016
Hi all,
this is official statistics of ethnics in Vietnam from the website of General Statistics Office of Vietnam
http://www.gso.gov.vn/default.aspx?tabid=405&idmid=5&ItemID=1851
According to the Decree Nr. 121-TCTK/PPCĐ issued on March 2nd 1979 there are 55 ethnics in Vietnam. The 55th ethnic is 'Foreigner'. Sound very funny but I have met once those so-called 'foreigner' like that in Saigon. They are Vietnamese but have another nationalities (mainly French) and stay back in Vietnam after 1975. And they are grouped into the 55th ethnic. So 'culturally' there are 54 ethnics shown in museums and official websites for foreigners, but politically there are 55 ethnics as you can see in the link above.
Beside, when I studied ethnology in Vietnam, I was told that there were some ethnic groups with so small number of people, therefore they were grouped into one ethnic to make it easier for administrative management.
That is so far I understood about your Diane's concern.
Best,
Dinh
Bùi Kim Đĩnh
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Pam McElwee pdmcelwee at gmail.com
Thu Feb 4 17:38:35 PST 2016
All -
George is absolutely correct in that this 54 ethnic groups number is arbitrary and random (well, not totally random - it’s one less than China - coincidence? Probably not) and that ethnic minority policy is hardly wine and roses given land disputes, political protests, suppression of religious activities, years of complaints about the lack of truly bilingual education for minorities in their mother tongues, etc etc. But the original question was about if the number of officially recognized ethnic minorities had been reduced since the VN War era. And the answer to that is yes, in different ways.
On the nonofficial side, Diane’s interlocutor might have been familiar with the works of various missionaries and other NGOs working with minorities during the RVN era, and while as far as I know there is no official tally of what these groups might have considered to be the total number of ethnic minorities, Ethnologue, which is run by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (which was active during the war), at one point had more than 100 languages listed for Vietnam (mind of course that languages don’t map exactly onto ethnic groups, but I’m trying to envision what someone might have heard 40 years ago).
Then on the official side, North Vietnam undertook a ethnic classification project for the first time in 1968 when the Institute of Ethnology was founded. The first official list was 63 ethnic groups. Then this was reduced to 59 in 1973. Then it was reduced to the 54 (Kinh plus 53 others) in 1979. The Institute went through various exercises in the 2000s to potentially revise the list back upwards, although this was never taken up as it was considered politically tricky. But the overall trend in terms of classification of number of groups has been downward over time. Not obviously to three or four as Diane’s informant stated, but downward nonetheless. I don’t believe we have as good of a handle on the ethnic classification projects of the RVN as we do the DRV though, so the above applies to what we know about the DR and then SRV primarily.
The best references on the ethnic classification projects are: Dang Nghiem Van (1998) Ethnological and Religious Problems in Vietnam. Hanoi: Social Sciences Publishing House; Pelley, P. M. 1998. “‘Barbarians' and ‘Younger Brothers’: the Remaking of Race in Postcolonial Vietnam.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 29:374–91; Keyes, C. F. (2002) “Presidential Address:‘ the Peoples of Asia’-Science and Politics in the Classification of Ethnic Groups in Thailand, China, and Vietnam.” The Journal of Asian Studies 61(4):1163–1203; and Masako Ito’s recent book, Politics of Ethnic Classification in Vietnam (Kyoto Area Studies on Asia, 2013). Ito’s book goes into some depth about how some groups that might have been considered distinct ethnic groups by many people’s standards (like the Cao Lan or Nguon) were subsumed into other groups or not recognized at all. It is also important to note that even though 54 is the official number, provinces will often ‘count’ ethnic minorities under the names they wish to be counted under, not what is ‘officially’ recognized. For example, Quang Tri province regularly discusses the Pa Co and Pa Hy in their reports on minority groups, neither of which are an officially recognized ‘ethnic group’ (they are considered part of the Ta Oi in the national classification system). So there are in practice a great deal more than 54 groups and everyone knows this, but yet the official classification stands.
And for a more accurate understanding of life in minority communities in Vietnam than the official line of ethnic harmony, I’d recommend Philip Taylor’s recent works on the Khmer, Jean Michaud and Sarah Turner’s works on the Hmong, Tam Ngo on the Hmong and religious conversion, Nga Dao on resettlement of minorities caused by dam development, I’ve written on the Katu/Van Kieu/Pa Co, and there are many others that could be listed.
Pam McElwee
Dr. Pamela McElwee
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School of Environmental and Biological Sciences
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Jean Michaud michaudjean at yahoo.com
Fri Feb 5 00:48:52 PST 2016
Adding to Pam'sexcellent summary, let’s not forget that thesituation in Communist countries tells an interesting story: China has 56 minzu for a national population of 1.3billion, Vietnam has 54 dân tộc for its 90 millioncitizens, and Laos recognizes 49 sonphaoamong its 6 million. This strange arithmetic points to the fact that theforemost concern here has not so much been precision as ideology, reiterating ahierarchy among the Red Brotherhood (to quote the late Grant Evans).
I also paste here excerpts form the entry "Highland minorities inthe Socialist Republic of Vietnam" in the second edition of my"Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif"(Scarecrow Press) due out in 2016: Of the54 "nationalities" (các dân tộc)officially catalogued in the country’s Constitution, 53 are considered"minority nationalities" (cácdân tộc thiểu số). The 54th, the Kinh, forms the ethnic majority with apopulation of 73,594,427 in 2009. However, as four of these groups are chieflyoverspills from lowland majorities in neighboring countries, they can beomitted in this Dictionary; these are the Hoa (Han Chinese), Khơ Me (Khmer fromCambodia), Lào (Laos), and Chăm (remnants of a former lowland power). Theofficial total of minority nationality groups living in the highlands ofVietnam thus comes down to 49 with a total population in the 2009 nationalcensus of 9,992,202, or 11.6 percent of the national demography. Of these 49 highland groups, the sixlargest numerically in the 2009 national census were the Tày (1,626,392), the Thái(1,550,423), the Mường (1,268,963), the Hmông (1,068,189), the Nùng (968,800),and the Dao (751,067). Together, these six groups form 73 percent of all thecountry's highland minority population. […In the 1950s] In a new country where thecollective project had to be popular, national and scientific, little room wasleft for the ways of the past. Communist rhetoric had it that highlanders inVietnam stood at the lowest stage of economic development and were in dire needof assistance, while the Kinh enlightened majority was entering Socialism, thehighest possible stage. The least "Socialist Man" could do for"Traditional Man," in the words of Vietnamese ethnologists of thetime, was to help him relinquish his simplicity and reach as quickly aspossible the superior levels of civilization of the lowlands. Vigorous plansfor sedentarization, collectivization, and industrialization were implementedagainst an ideological background prioritizing the indivisible unity of countryand nation with active promotion of Kinh culture. Concurrently, ethnologicalstudies of the minority nationalities gravitated almost obsessively around theissue of classification. A first exhaustive list of dân tộc in the DRVN was proposed in 1959 and included 64 ethnicgroups. A second one followed in 1973, with 59. By 1979, the official total wasfinally established. All the efforts of the Institute of Ethnology of Vietnam,founded in 1968, had culminated in Decree 121 which set the authoritativenumber of "nationalities" at 54 for all of reunified Vietnam,including the Kinh nationality. Much as is the case in China and for comparablereasons, that figure has not changed since despite the fact thatdissatisfaction about it has been voiced internally as well as from outside thecountry. Jean Michaud,professorAnthropologyUniversitéLaval, Canada
Joe Berry joetracyberry at gmail.com
Fri Feb 5 01:07:38 PST 2016
As someone who is currently in an ethnic minority area in VN (visiting) I am trying to figure out what I am looking at. One thing for sure that I do know, as someone trained as a US historian, is that what Prof Dutton has listed could be well said about the treatment of native and other minority peoples in much of the world, certainly not excluding the US and the previous colonizers in N America. I look forward to following the continuing discussion on this topic on this list and would also appreciate any references of good things to read in English.
Joe Berry
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Hoang t. Dieu-Hien dieuhien at uw.edu
Fri Feb 5 01:13:26 PST 2016
I am not an anthropologist. I figure this woman was not either. As Diane
mentioned, this was not an academic discussion with the woman. I have a
non-academic thought.
I wonder if her figure of 100 or so may have come from the (popular?)
interpretation of the Âu Cơ and Lạc Long Quân story with their 100
children. It was said that the 50 who stayed in the mountain with their
mother signified the highland peoples and the 50 who followed their father
to the shores symbolized the lowland groups. This got conflated with 100
ethnic groups and, perhaps, with the name Bách Việt.
Oscar Salemink o.salemink at anthro.ku.dk
Fri Feb 5 01:33:19 PST 2016
Interesting thread.
In addition to Pam and Jean, there have been various other analyses of ethnic classification, like Priscilla Koh’s 2004 online article Persistent ambiguities (downloadable herehttp://hl-128-171-57-22.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/2312) which claims that “based on the research findings of a recent investigation in several minority regions, it is likely that the figure is much higher than the present 54. The researchers noted that a significant number of minority groups wanted to be reclassified as a separate or different ethnic group”. That resonates with Nguyen Van Thang’s analysis of the local Mieu group who do not want to be classified as Hmong by study of the Mieu (Nguyen Van Thang, Ambiguity of Identity: The Mieu in North Vietnam (Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books, 2007).
In some of my own work I analyzed the various iterations of scientific and state classifications of ethnic groups in the Central highlands, with each regime claiming that its own classification was better (more scientific, or better conforming self-identification) than that of the previous regime; I sketch the changing historical contexts and the effects in detail in my 2003 books on the Central Highlanders of Vietnam. In a later publication I argue – on the basis of conversation with Vietnamese ethnologists – that the number of 54 is indeed not accidental, as it would be politically inconvenient if it would be higher than the number of ethnic groups in China. Problem is that I don’t remember in which paper I wrote that ☺.
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Charles Keyes keyes at u.washington.edu
Fri Feb 5 09:06:48 PST 2016
I would like to call attention to my Association for Asian Studies presidential address, "The Peoples of Asia’: Science and Politics in Ethnic Classification in Thailand, China and Vietnam,” Journal of Asian Studies, 61.4: 1163-1203, November, 2002. I concluded this article with the following observation:
"The byproduct of the undertaking of a scientific classification of diversity of peoples within the boundaries of states has been a clear distinction between the nation and the peoples or ethnic groups that are taken as belonging to this nation. This again has another unintended consequence. What is Chinese-ness or Vietnamese-ness or Thai-ness if it is accepted that some who make claims to these identities are not citizens of China, Vietnam or Thailand? The existence of communities of peoples who assert identities as Chinese but who are citizens of Thailand or Vietnam, as Vietnamese but who are citizens of the United States or France, of communities of peoples who are recognized by people in Thailand as being Tai but not Thai, renders problematic the official national ideologies of each of these countries."
Charles Keyes
Frank Proschan frank.proschan at yahoo.com
Fri Feb 5 09:19:58 PST 2016
Diane et al,
The "state of the art" for ethnic classification in the Republic of Vietnam before 1975 is found in the psywar manual, "Minority Groups in the Republic of Vietnam", written by Joann L. Schrock, William Stockton, Jr., Elaine M. Murphy and Marilou Fromme, on behalf of the Cultural Information Analysis Center, Center for Research in Social Systems, American University, operating under contract with the Office of the Chief of Research and Development, Department of the Army. It was published in 1966 as Department of the Army Pamphlet No. 550-105. It lists 18 so-called "tribal groups", 5 "ethnic minority groups", 2 "politico-religious sects" and 1 "quasi-political group". Notably, it does not include the populations of those originally from the North who resettled in RVN after 1954.
The post-1975 list of 54 slices up the cake slightly different in certain cases (e.g. Halang are considered a local group of Sedang), but there are more groups recognized in the former territory of RVN than are listed in the Schrock et al. volume.
Best,
Frank Proschan
Washington, DC
Dutton, George dutton at humnet.ucla.edu
Fri Feb 5 09:44:33 PST 2016
I’d also like to draw people’s attention to a recent book by Thomas Mullaney, Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China (UC Press, 2010). While it deals with the Chinese case, it is an excellent examination of the process by which ethnic classification projects are undertaken by modern states, and the types of logic that are at work. Mullaney looks at one manifestation of the project in the 1950s in Yunnan and shows how an initially bewildering survey in which respondents self-reported their “minzu” that yielded more than 800 ethnic groups (many with a single member!), was replaced by a state-guided effort to consolidate this number by amalgamating groups in a variety of creative ways. The political imperative to reduce the numbers was driven by the CCP’s promises to ethnic groups of representation in the upcoming People’s Assembly meeting, and the 800 representatives would have dwarfed the Han presence. In any case, a compelling book that illustrates one which in which this process worked itself out.
George Dutton
_______________________________________________
George Dutton
Director, UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies
Professor, UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
290 Royce Hall
Box 951540
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1540
tel: (310) 825-0523
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David G. Sox chesahbinu at comcast.net
Fri Feb 5 11:07:18 PST 2016
Discussion of ethnic group identification is always interesting. We know
that most classifications of ethnic groups are constructs of outsiders
defining communities of others by criteria of their own making, not of the
minority communities themselves. This particular situation may just refer
to some organization or person classifying the very many so-called ethnic
groups into just a few, say four or five, based on language criteria.
David Griffiths Sox
Independent Champa Researcher
Fairfield, California, USA