Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 1997

Session 17: Print Culture and the Construction of Identity in Japan, China and Vietnam

Organizer: Shawn McHale, Case Western Reserve University

In the last twenty years, the history of the book and of publishing has moved from an often antiquarian pursuit to one that addresses questions of power, economy, discourse, and readership. Quite independently, scholars like Benedict Anderson are reasserting the centrality of print and other media to the rise of nationalism. This panel, taking these twin developments as a starting point, attempts a comparative presentation of issues in the print cultures of China, Japan, and Vietnam, 1871-1940. How did changing perceptions of publisher and reader redefine the role of print in shaping identity? To what degree can we generalize about "print capitalism" in these countries? Finally, how do these studies help us revise previous assessments of print culture in modern historical development?

Scholars of modern Asian history usually assume that the production and circulation of printed materials played a key role in economic and national development. The models supporting this view, however, are derived from studies of Western Europe. Much research on Asian publishing is still lacking. The three papers on this panel address this problem.

Giles Richter investigates how the circulation of unprecedented quantities of published material through the modern Japanese postal system engendered new forms of community. He looks at the emergence of subscription publishing in Meiji Japan, 1871-1900, and shows how it supported the identification of "consumer-readers" and the formation of readers networks in the Meiji era.

Christopher Reed focuses on the production of printed material through the study of the Shanghai entrepreneur Shen Zhifang (1882-1939). Showing that we must not confuse entrepreneurial skill with capitalist acumen, he shows how Shen owed his success more to personal connections and opportunism than to capitalist logic.

Shawn McHale explores the contrasting relationship between publishers, printed matter, and readers in Vietnamese Buddhist and communist publishing, 1920-1945. He shows how both Buddhist and communist publishers tried, with vastly different results, to shape reader response to texts. The examination of the different publisher-printed matter-reader relationships, ones that owed little to market forces, calls into question the explanatory usefulness of Benedict Anderson's notion of "print capitalism" and its link to national imaginings of community.

Constructing Buddhist and Revolutionary Nationalist Print Cultures in Vietnam, 1920-1940

Shawn McHale, Case Western Reserve University

In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson posits that the rising importance of vernaculars, the decline of the great religious forms of imagining community, and the expansion of what he calls "print capitalism" sets the stage for the rise of a nationalist imagined community. Does his global argument fit the particular Vietnamese experience? I argue that it does not. Relying on little used Buddhist and communist materials from Vietnamese archives and libraries, I examine the contrasting publisher-reader relationships in Vietnamese Buddhism and communism to develop my point.

There are some superficial similarities between Buddhist and communist print cultures. For both Buddhists and communists, choice of technology influenced reading styles and the spread of a message. Both Buddhist and communist publishers promoted intensive reading of a few key texts, and underlined the importance of following particular methods of reading.

It is no surprise, nonetheless, that Buddhists and communists developed radically different publisher-reader relationships. Buddhist publishers printed tracts with religious subventions and did so for karmic, not capitalist, rewards. Communist ideologue-publishers, who frequently used technologically primitive methods like gelatin printing, spread a revolutionary and anticapitalist message. Both publishers constructed sharply different views of the natures of their readers and their responses to texts.

Both Buddhist and communist publishing made major contributions to Vietnamese senses of community, but ones that owed little to "print capitalism" and that cannot be subsumed under imaginings of a national community.

Session 61: Wanderers, Founders, and Ethnic Encounters: Political Hierarchy and Religious Movements in Highland Southeast Asia

Organizer and Chair: Lorraine V. Aragon, East Carolina University

Discussants: Clark E. Cunningham, University of Illinois, Urbana; A. Thomas Kirsch, Cornell University

Highland Southeast Asian groups historically have been characterized by frequent geographical movements propelled both by shifting subsistence strategies and political pressures. In connection with these roving communities, settlement founders have received elevated social status and often have been deified through their presumed special relationship to local spirit owners of their lands. This panel will explore the relationship of political and religious authority as it is grounded within territory. Panelists will discuss "religious movements" in two senses of the term: first, with respect to founder cults and their associated geographic mobility of political formations; second, with respect to millenarian movements and religious conversions that have occurred in conjunction with interethnic pressures experienced by Southeast Asian highlanders in their twentieth-century national circumstances. Through ethnographic data drawn from the Chinese-Southeast Asian border, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia, panelists will examine twentieth-century transformations of earlier ideas and practices concerning community founders, social hierarchy, and ethnic group relations. Our discussants will add a comparative perspective to augment both mainland and insular examples.

"The Dying God" Revisited: The King of Fire and Vietnamese Ethnic Policy in the Central Highlands

Oscar Salemink, Ford Foundation

In The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazier described "the King of Fire" among the Jarai of the Vietnamese Central Highlands as a living example of primitive, divine kingship. In reality the office of "king of fire" is largely of ritual significance among the Jarai but this often misunderstood position has been caught up in governmental interventions since the colonial period. The successor to the last "king of fire" has not been able to take office despite official plans and pronouncements. I will discuss the ritual versus secular political significance of this position among the Jarai and other minority populations in the Vietnamese Central Highlands, and the ways in which this position is entangled in official discourses and policies towards the highlanders. The presentation will juxtapose local and national agendas as they relate to the stalled succession, and consider how these factors interact with the politics of ethnic unity, national development, sedentarization, and ritual feasting.

Session 62: International Dimensions of the Vietnam War

Organizer: Qiang Zhai, Auburn University, Montgomery

Chair: Sandra C. Taylor, University of Utah

Discussant: David Anderson, University of Indianapolis

The Vietnam War was not just a conflict between the United States and North Vietnam. It also involved the allies of both countries. The interests, fears, and ambitions of those allies inevitably affected both the course of the war and the ability of the major contestants to achieve their objectives. While the relationship between Washington and its allies during the Vietnam War has been examined extensively, the inter-party contact on the Communist side remains little studied due to the lack of Communist sources in the past. In the last few years, however, new documentary evidence has emerged from the long-closed archives in China and the former Soviet Union. The new material makes it possible to reconstruct the concerns, calculations, and motivations of the Communist participants in the Vietnam War and the interactions between Hanoi and its principal allies. The three papers in this panel will use new Chinese and Soviet materials to discuss Beijing's and Moscow's perception of and policy toward the Indochina conflict, the extent of Chinese and Soviet material assistance to the North Vietnamese, Sino-Soviet differences over approaches to the war and peace settlement of the conflict, and China's involvement in the secret war in Laos. This panel represents an international collaboration in examining the Indochina conflict and seeks to contribute to the emerging international history of the Vietnam War.

China's Attitude Toward Vietnam Peace Talks, 1965-1968

Qiang Zhai, Auburn University, Montgomery

The Johnson administration's escalation of the war in Vietnam in 1965 triggered strong domestic criticism. Responding to public pressure, President Johnson made a number of peace overtures to Hanoi. The escalation of the conflict in Indochina Asia also drew serious attention around the world. Efforts were made by various countries to promote a peaceful solution to the Indochina problem. Thus, the war in Vietnam was intertwined with a series of peace initiatives made not only by Washington, but also by Moscow, London, Paris, and a number of British commonwealth capitals. How did leaders in Beijing perceive these initiatives? Why were they so consistent and firm in opposing them? How did Beijing's approach to peace settlement of the war differ from those of Hanoi and Moscow? What were the effects of Beijing's opposition strategy on China's relations with the US, the Soviet Union and North Vietnam? This paper uses newly released Chinese sources to answer these questions.

Between 1965 and 1968, Beijing provided extensive assistance to Hanoi in weapons, equipment as well as support troops. China was determined to help Ho Chi Minh to win the war against the Americans. Beijing's opposition to Vietnam peace initiatives reflected Chinese leaders' distrust of American and Soviet intentions. It also constituted an important part of Mao's general efforts to demonstrate China's anti-imperialist credentials among Third World countries, to establish Beijing's leadership position within the Asian-African nationalist movement, to combat Soviet revisionist foreign policy, and to mobilize domestic support for his social and political programs.

Soviet-North Vietnamese Military Cooperation and the Conflict in Indochina

Ilya Gaiduk, Russian Academy of Sciences

Soviet-North Vietnamese military cooperation was an integral part of relations between the two countries throughout the years of conflict in Indochina. Although during the first Indochina war the Soviet Union remained mostly on the sidelines, Moscow did provide occasional support to the Vietnamese Communists with arms and ammunition. According to some reports, the Soviet missile complexes KATYUSHA demonstrated their effectiveness at Dien Bien Phu. At that time, however, Beijing played the role of principal supplier of military equipment to Ho Chi Minh. The situation changed only slightly after the 1954 Geneva Conference. Despite Hanoi's insistent requests to the Soviet leaders about developing closer military cooperation, Moscow followed the policy of delegating the primary responsibility in supporting the Vietnamese Communists to Beijing, thus avoiding the transformation of the Vietnam problem into a stumbling block in its relations with the West. Only after Washington had directly intervened in the war in Vietnam, with China openly defying Moscow's position in the world communist movement, did the Soviet leaders change their attitude of restraint with respect to Vietnam. During the last months of 1964 and the first quarter of 1965, a number of agreements were signed between Moscow and Hanoi on Soviet aid to North Vietnam. Gradually, Moscow became the principal supplier of modern weaponry and equipment to Hanoi, while China lagged behind the Soviet Union in the amount of aid to North Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, military cooperation between the two countries developed in various spheres, including the training of North Vietnamese military cadres in the Soviet Union, the participation of Soviet advisers in combat operations in Vietnam, and the examination of samples of captured American weapons by Soviet experts. These Soviet efforts represent the most controversial aspect of Soviet policy toward the Vietnam War, particularly if one takes into account Moscow's desire to find a peaceful solution to the conflict.

A Secret War: China's Involvement in Laos, 1963-1975

Xiaoming Zhang, Texas A & M International University

China played an important, but secret, role in Laos during the conflict between the North Vietnamese and Americans for the control of Indochina. Due to the lack of access to Chinese sources, however, little of China's involvement in Laos has been known. In the past few years, new Chinese materials have become available to shed light on Beijing's role in the Vietnam War. As the continuation of an earlier study dealing with China's involvement with the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1969, this paper aims to examine China's role in Laos during the Indochina conflict. China's interest in Laos began at the 1954 Geneva Conference. Only after U.S. escalation of the war in South Vietnam in the early 1960s did China's involvement in Laos became substantial. Beijing not only provided significant material assistance to the Laotian national liberation movement, but also sent an advisory group and military troops to assist the Pathet Lao's war efforts against the United States and the Vientiane regime. Because of the special relationship between the Pathet Lao and the Lao Dong Party in Hanoi, China's involvement in Laos was bound for rivalry with the North Vietnamese. The paper pays particular attention to an analysis of Beijing-Hanoi competition over Laos. It argues that the special relationship between the Pathet Laos and Hanoi prevented China from having a more significant role in Laos. Thus, China's experience in Laos produced more frustration than success.

Session 103: Constructing the Indochinese Body

Organizer and Chair: Frank Proschan, Indiana University

During the decades of the French colonial domination of Indochina, the bodies of the subject people were constructed and reconstructed in and through various discourses, those of both the colonizers and the colonized. This panel brings together scholars of various disciplines to consider this process in several dimensions, drawing upon a variety of texts and documents. Literary critic Norindr discusses the medicalized body, as represented both in French medical discourse proper and in filmic and literary art. Historian Zinoman considers the incarcerated body, examining the Indochinese prison system to demonstrate how the colonial export of Western regimes of disciplinary power was, finally, limited and incomplete. Anthropologist Proschan explores how the Vietnamese male was desexualized and rendered androgynous in French discourse. The colonials' conception of the Annamite male body as sexless, effeminate, and unmanly had implications for both their personal conduct and their institutional responses. Literary critic Nguyen discusses the indigenous construction of the body-particularly the sexually marginalized or otherwise deviant body-investigating the emergent Vietnamese-language literature for the conceptions of the native body and of same-sex sociality and sexuality represented therein. Although each of these studies analyzes texts and how they functioned discursively to shape French or indigenous conceptions of the Indochinese body, our focus remains on the body in its corporeality and materiality: something that can be locked up, diseased, marginalized, or emasculated.

French Tropical Medicine and Empire: Medical and Literary Construction of the Indochinese Body

Panivong Norindr, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

"Western medical science," writes Frantz Fanon, is "part of the oppressive system, one of the occupier's modes of presence." Fanon's view challenges traditional historiography of imperial medicine as a series of heroic interventions against infectious diseases and their conquest. Medicine as an instrument of empire, as well as an imperializing cultural force, impinged directly upon the lives of the colonized people, assuming in the name of medical science an unprecedented right over the health and over the bodies of its subjects.

The French colonial era in Indochina coincided with the emergence of a relatively recent medical discourse, colonial or "tropical" medicine, and the creation of institutions to combat tropical infectious diseases: the London and Liverpool Schools of Tropical Medicine were established in 1899, and the first colonial Pasteur Institute opened in Saigon in 1891, soon followed by institutes in Nha Trang (1895) and Hanoi (1922).

The emergent discipline of tropical medicine gave scientific credence to the idea of the tropical world as a primitive and dangerous environment in opposition to an increasingly safe and sanitized temperate world. Andre Malraux's 1930 novel, The Royal Way, will be reread from an "epidemiological" perspective. The pathogenic atmosphere of the Indochinese jungle is indeed central to Malraux's classic work, written during the heyday of the colonial era. Malraux used tropical diseases to reimagine man's relation to nature, culture, desire and the Indochinese body. My aim is to demonstrate the centrality of disease and medicine to any understanding of literary modernity and French colonialism.

Disciplining "Annamites": Colonial Power in Indochina

Peter Zinoman, University of California, Berkeley

Recent scholarship has suggested that European colonialism generated the global expansion of regimes of disciplinary power. Using the Indochinese prison system as an example, this paper assesses the extent to which colonial strategies of domination embodied the same disciplinary technologies which had transformed Euro-American institutional life in the 18th and 19th centuries. Paying special attention to the relationship between surveillance and spatial order, the significance of efforts at rehabilitation and behavioral modification, the role of specialists and the production of bodies of knowledge about individuals and social groups, I argue that the ascendance of disciplinary power in Indochina was limited and incomplete. Finally, I look at how colonial racism and the enduring influence of pre-colonial modes of domination shaped the distinctive nature and intensity of disciplinary power in Indochina.

Eunuch Mandarins, Effeminate "Boys", and "Soldats Mamzelles": The Annamite as Androgyne

Frank Proschan, Indiana University

During their decades of colonial domination of Indochina, the French constructed images of the genders and sexualities of the "subject peoples." In their broad patterns, these constructions coincide with the familiar processes of colonialism, exoticizing, and Orientalism: the Asian male is typically effeminized, the Asian female typically eroticized. Yet in their sociohistorical specificity, the images of the Indochinese constructed by French colonials resist simplistic characterization as the predictable or inevitable products of a universal, monolithic, and uniform process of Orientalism. Indochinese males were both desexualized (effeminized, emasculated, literally castrated) and hypersexualized (hypervirile, eroticized, and lascivious, both heterosexually and homosexually). Indochinese females were both the sensuous foci of lustful (heterosexual) "amour exotique," and disgustingly repellent syphilitics who impelled otherwise-innocent Frenchmen to pederastic activity. Focusing here on one aspect of this larger discourse, I consider the French conception of the Vietnamese male body as androgynous and sexless. The colonial construction of the effeminized or desexualized body had important implications both for the interpersonal relations of Frenchmen with their "boys" and for the institutional responses of the French administration to the Vietnamese court and military. This examination of the French colonial era in Indochina seeks to contribute to an ongoing effort to put the erotic back in the exotic and to critique the heteronormative thrust of most counter-Orientalist discourse.

Deviant Bodies and Dynamics of Displacement of Homoerotic Desire in Vietnamese Literature

Vinh Quoc Nguyen, Harvard University

This paper takes an exploratory look at the largely uncharted terrain of homoerotic desire, considering it as an archetypal example of deviance at the intersection of sociality and sexuality in Vietnamese culture. Despite a high incidence of same-sex socialization among the Vietnamese, there is a marked reticence, if not exactly a taboo, with regard to same-sex desire. The ethnographic and historical dimensions of this question are only beginning to be explored, but it is nonetheless possible to undertake a substantial literary critical excavation of textual traces in support of the argument that representations of homoerotic desire in Vietnamese literature display a dynamic of displacement and marginalization. The range of deviant bodies onto which same-sex desire can be mapped-and thereby displaced from the normative sexual symbolic-is rather diverse, as this paper will hope to demonstrate by examining such examples as: diseased bodies, both physical and psychical; outcast bodies lying at the fringes of or even beyond legal and social bounds; disciplined bodies subjected to surveillance and/or deprivation in such spaces as the prison, military camps, monasteries, schools, the clinic, brothels, and cruising grounds; sexually ambiguous and deceptive bodies, be they corporeal such as those of eunuchs and hermaphrodites, or performative such as those of thespians and transvestites; racially defamiliarized bodies of foreigners and metis; and allegorically transmuted and surrealistically transmogrified bestial bodies and spectral/oneiric presences, among others drawn from 20th-century Vietnamese language prose and poetry.

Session 123: Vietnamese Politics in Transition: New Conceptions and Inter-Disciplinary Approaches, Part One (See Session 146)

Organizer: Daniel Goodkind, University of Michigan Chair: Thaveeporn Vasakavul, Australian National University

Discussants: David W. P. Elliott, Pomona College; Hy Van Luong, University of Toronto

Research on Vietnamese politics and its recent transformations continues to broaden as new sources of information become available. Among the central questions of interest are: (1) the extent to which political transformations towards socialism were successful since the 1940s and 1950s; and (2) the interplay between the more recent free market reforms beginning in the 1980s, political processes, and the changing distribution of influence. Our panel was designed to bring together a variety of disciplinary perspectives and approaches to the study of Vietnamese politics. Collectively, our back-to-back panel extends from the eras of socialist transformations in Vietnam to the present. Papers address the causes, consequences, and structure of Vietnamese political transformations at a variety of levels: the highest echelons of political power (Thayer); local or intermediate associations, legal and business institutions (Vasakavul, Sidel, Stromseth); and ordinary Vietnamese citizens and their families at home and abroad (Goodkind, Bousquet). Several papers also explicitly try to link changes across such levels.

The first panel is focused more on micro-level issues set against a wide temporal panorama since the 1950s. These papers are concerned with postmarital residence patterns as indicators of changes in political economy (Goodkind), hidden influences on and contending approaches to the role of law (Sidel), and recent renegotiations of political space between local and central governments (Vasakavul). The second panel concentrates more on macro-level or contemporary political shifts. These papers address continuity and change in the membership of the Party's Central Committee since 1976 (Thayer), the increasing variety of business organizations and their participation in the political process (Stromseth), and narratives of Viet Kieu returning to their homeland as well as related implications for Vietnam joining the global market economy (Bousquet).

Postmarital Residence Patterns Amidst Socialist Transformations in a Northern Province of Vietnam, 1948-1993

Daniel Goodkind and Tom Fricke, University of Michigan

We explore the determinants of postmarital residence in Hai Hung, a Northern province of Vietnam. Field survey data collected during 1993 reveal a dominant patrilocal norm (e.g. residence in the home of the grooms' family) over the past 45 years, as well as two notable dips in that norm. Ironically, each dip occurred in the wake of opposing changes in political economy-the Socialist Marriage and Family Law of 1960 and the free market reforms during the 1980s-but for different reasons in each case. Powerful changes in marital characteristics in the wake of the 1960 Law (as well as during the war of reunification) inadvertently contributed to the first dip in patrilocality. The second dip following the free market reforms was associated with a rise in wealth that allowed newlyweds the resources with which to reside on their own.

More generally, as modernization perspectives would suggest, we found that social circumstances and marital patterns associated with contemporary life (e.g. later age at marriage, mate choice independent of parents' wishes, and urban location) were negatively associated with patrilocality. On the other hand, patrilocality was also negatively associated with some traditional prenuptial divination and gift-giving practices. We hazard two explanations for this latter finding, one more economic, the other more normative. First, these practices likely depended on family wealth, and such wealth in turn was associated with independent residence. Second, this association is plausible once we consider which specific practices the socialist state did, and did not, attempt to label as deviant.

Contending Approaches to the Role of Law in Vietnam, 1954-1995

Mark Sidel, University of Iowa

For several decades, foreign (and many Vietnamese) scholars have treated Vietnamese legal development as a simple matter of Party instrumentalism. And in the five decades since 1945, a unified Party leadership has often looked with near unanimity on law entirely as a mechanism of Party rule.

But throughout the 1954-1995 period there have also been different, sometimes important shadings of emphasis on the relative autonomy the legal sector might enjoy. Those differences reflected the views of key Party leaders and of key legal researchers, who emerged from different French and Soviet streams of legal training. And those different emphases have never been clarified or understood outside Vietnam. In addition, there has at times been significant and direct, if episodic, opposition to the instrumentalist theory and policy itself, both from within the party and from without.

This paper seeks to disinter those buried shadings of thought and that sometime opposition, analyzing contending approaches both within and outside the Vietnamese Party toward the role of law in Vietnam between 1954 and 1995.

Renegotiating the Political Space: Local Territory and Central Power in Post-Socialist Vietnam

Thaveeporn Vasakavul, Australian National University

Writing on Vietnamese politics has tended to treat the Vietnamese state as monolithic. In fact, during the pre-reform period, the relationship between the central and local state (trung uong va dia phuong) had to be constantly negotiated. The transition from central planning to a market economy that took place in the 1980s weakened the socialist period, while strengthening horizontal ties among state agencies and between state and non-state sectors. The rise of local autonomy was often characterized by such terms as "departmentalism," "mandarinism," "bossism" and "provincialism."

This paper examines the breakdown of organized hierarchies during the transition to a market economy and the responses of the Vietnamese Communist Party and the central government to these developments. Specifically, it discusses increasing local autonomy in regulating and executing economic and cultural policies; debates over the authority and power of local government agencies at the municipal/provincial, precinct/district, and quarter/commune levels; and the implications of these processes for the nature of the post-socialist state and state-society relations.

The paper highlights the discourses on "legality," "modernization," and "national interests" as mechanisms used by different parties in the process of negotiating political space.

Session 146: Vietnamese Politics in Transition: New Conceptions and Inter-Disciplinary Approaches, Part Two (See Session 123)

Organizer: Daniel Goodkind, University of Michigan

Chair: Carlyle A. Thayer, University of New South Wales

Discussants: Dorothy R. Avery, U.S. Department of State; William S. Turley, Southern Illinois University

The Regularization of Politics Revisited: Continuity and Change in the Party's Central Committee, 1976-1996

Carlyle A. Thayer, University of New South Wales

This paper revisits the issue of "the regularization of politics" in Vietnam by analyzing leadership change on the party's Central Committee from the Unification Congress of 1976 (Fourth Congress) until the Eighth National Congress held in 1996 by employing the same methodology adopted by the author in an earlier study. Members of the Central Committee are classified by longevity of appointment, dated from their first selection to national office. Retention and promotion rates are examined. Members are also classified into sectoral categories-senior party, central party-state, military and provincial. Changes in these categories over time are also analyzed.

The paper notes that the regular convening of national party congresses every five years in accord with party statutes sets Vietnam's political calendar. There is intense lobbying for leadership positions by individuals and sectors representing Vietnamese society. The paper notes that the process of generational change has been accelerated and that there have been marked changes in the sectoral composition of the Central Committee as well. During 1976-86 as economic reforms were set in motion, local provincial-level officials rose to prominence. As Vietnam began to consolidate and slow the pace of change, a tendency towards recentralization became evident. The paper concludes that "the regularization of politics" has become institutionalized at the expense of stable collegial decision-making.

Business Associations and Politics in Vietnam

Jonathan R. Stromseth, Columbia University

Doi Moi has resulted in significant changes in the organizational life of Vietnam. A wide spectrum of "socio-economic" groups exist and the number is growing. At the top of the spectrum are the old mass organizations, such as the General Confederation of Labor and the National Peasants' Association, which have been the subject of an officially-sponsored renovation campaign since the late 1980s. At the bottom of the spectrum are a growing number of small-scale non-governmental groups, such as shrimp-grower and beekeeper associations in the countryside and charity and research groups in the cities. Somewhere between these two extremes, various kinds of business associations are making their presence known. One prominent example is the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Vietnam. A more localized example is the Union of Associated Industrialists of Ho Chih Minh City. This paper will profile these business associations and examine the extent to which they are participating in policymaking processes of the government and representing emerging business interests.

Broken Mirrors, Shattered Lives: Analyzing the Narratives of the Returning Viet Kieu (Overseas Vietnamese) to Vietnam

Gisele Bousquet, California State University, Fresno

This paper examines how the returning Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) are negotiating their role and identity in contemporary Vietnamese society. There are about two million Vietnamese living in the diaspora. Most tourists visiting Vietnam every year are Viet Kieu returning from exile to find meaning to their turmoil and fragmented lives. They survived the wars, separations, and the alienation of the diaspora. They are returning to reconcile with the ones who stayed behind and to share their pains of decades of violence and suffering. At Ton Son Nhat airport in Ho Chi Minh city, they arrive with tears in their eyes desperately searching for familiar faces in the thick crowd of relatives. Regardless of their political loyalties, they hug and cry, and laugh at each others' gray hair.

For almost twenty years, Vietnam was a war zone in the collective memory and then simply a forgotten country. Today, it is the latest business frontier, with its 72 million consumers and a cheap, educated labor force. Under Doi Moi, the new economic reforms, the Viet Kieu have become key players in Vietnam's open-door economic policies, forging partnerships with never-migrated Vietnamese to meet the state's desire for joint ventures. Thus, it is crucial to consider that the cultural politics of return take place within an economic context. This paper discusses the role of the Viet Kieu in their homeland during their return for reconciliation and healing while Vietnam joins the global market economy.

Session 169: The Construction of Usable Pasts in Dai Viet

Organizer and Chair: Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Harvard University

Discussant: Peter K. Bol, Harvard University

Histories written after Dai Viet became free of Chinese rule in the 10th century exhibit an increasingly localized perspective. This trend coincided with the growing influence of Chinese historiographical practices and, in particular, of Sima Guang's history.

In Hue-Tam Ho Tai's opinion, these histories displayed a new understanding of the past as being arranged along linear time rather than spatially dispersed. The new interest in temporality was reflected in the histories' focus on chronology and royal genealogies. It also led to a concern with endowing Dai Viet with origins that were as ancient as that of China. But while the myth of the Hung kings located the roots of Dai Viet in the period before Han rule, Dai Viet's polity and culture were also shaped during the long centuries of Chinese rule. Keith Taylor explores the role of the Tang envoy Kao Pien/Cao Bien in promoting what became viewed as Vietnamese culture and assesses his place in local historical memory. In so doing, he calls into question the modern conceit of nationalized culture. This theme is pursued also in Stephen O'Harrow's paper on Nguyen Trai's biography of Le Loi, the founder of the Later Le dynasty. In order to explain the striking parallels between Le Loi's biography and that of Liu Pang, founder of the Han dynasty, O'Harrow points to the multiple audiences (both in China and Dai Viet) for whom it was written.

The panel thus goes beyond conventional presentations of early Vietnamese historiography as a patriotic project to focus on the problems involved in using Chinese historiographical practices and cultural categories to construct local pasts while also affirming Dai Viet's continuing membership in a China-centered universal culture.

Kao Pien/Cao Bien and the Vicissitudes of Being Remembered in Vietnam

Keith Weller Taylor, Cornell University

Kao Pien, the Tang general who led armies into An Nam in the 860s, was remembered as Cao Bien, a king, by generations of Vietnamese. His interest in sorcery and geomancy left a legacy that associated famous local spirits and local geographical knowledge with him. He was thought to have elicited manifestations of supernatural powers with his personal potency, and his reputation as a ruler and builder was taken as a model by later Vietnamese kings. I am interested in the place of works attributed to him within the landscape of Vietnamese cultural practice, and I am also interested in how a biographical image of him was constructed, transmitted and changed from generation to generation of erudite Vietnamese. I would like to take the case of Cao Bien as an example from which to consider alternatives to the modern conceit of nationalized culture. Reading Vietnamese texts about Cao Bien or attributed to him lead us to imagine a political and cultural space that has been eradicated by the fence-builders of modern nationalism. Cao Bien has been positioned and used by Vietnamese in several ways; as a magician and sorcerer, a patron and worshipper of deities, a surveyor and engineer, a military strategist, the builder of a city, a ruler, a geographer, a scholar of the classics, and a poet. He has been given a role in nearly every category of elite endeavor among Vietnamese, which suggests memories of him being used to orient a cultural field.

Foundational History: The Vietnamese Myth of Genesis and the Construction of the Past

Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Harvard University

Officially commissioned dynastic histories and unofficial compilations of "wild" histories of Dai Viet began appearing in the 12th century. The first dateable official history (1272) located the beginnings of Dai Viet in the 3rd century BC. The Dai Viet Su Ky, written one century later, pushes these origins back 24 centuries by transferring the myth of the Hung kings from the wild histories into its dynastic framework. The dynastic histories and their incorporation of the myth of the Hung kings reflect two related themes. The first is the influence of Chinese historiographical thought with its concern with both temporal continuity and antiquity, an influence which led Dai Viet rulers to claim, on behalf of their realm and their subjects, genealogical parity with their northern neighbors. The second is a shift from a sense of the past as something dispersed through the landscape and apprehended through ritual performance to one that is arranged along linear time through the written word. The merger of wild and dynastic histories can be interpreted as an example of postcolonial strategy by Dai Viet historians to carve for Dai Viet a rightful place in a cultural universe dominated by China while appropriating the language and thought processes of their Chinese counterparts. The paper also seeks to highlight the different understandings of the past held by premodern Vietnamese, and the role of historical writing in not only recollecting but also constructing that past and putting it at the service of dynastic power.

Parallel Foundations: Nguyen Trai's Biography of Le Loi

Stephen O'Harrow, University of Hawaii

This paper considers the structure, content, and circumstances surrounding the creation of the Lam Son Thuc Luc by Nguyen Trai (1380-1442) circa 1430, in the aftermath of the Vietnamese recovery of independence from the Ming. This officially authorized biography of Le Loi (1382-1432), founder of the Later Le dynasty (1428-1788?), contains striking parallels to the biography of Liu Bang, the founder of the Han dynasty, which is contained in the Shi Ji. The paper explores the reasons behind these parallels and examines the role played by the Lam Son Thuc Luc in the effort to create a distinct Vietnamese polity with rights of place within a sinitic weltanschauung shared by the author and the audience for his writing both in China and Vietnam.

Session 183: The Impacts of Global Restructuring on Labor Relations in Textile and Garment Industries in Southeast Asia: Cases of Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines

Organizer: Angie Ngoc Tran, California State University, Monterey Bay

Chair: Irene Norlund, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Denmark

Discussants: Frederic C. Deyo, State University of New York, Brockport; Irene Norlund, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Denmark

This comparative panel focuses on two major inter-related issues in countries with a fairly recent export orientation: the role and development of the textile and garment industries, and the impacts of this development on the labor force as well as the possibilities for labor organization. It analyzes similarities and differences regarding these issues in the three Southeast Asian countries-Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines-which have taken over some parts of production from the East Asian NICs (such as South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore).

The panelists will discuss different historical contexts of these three countries. The Philippines started their textile and garment exports in the 1970s with a less coherent strategy of industrialization and internal political problems. Indonesia's industrialization started in the 1980s with both textile and garment products as being important for export. Vietnam has recently entered into the world market in the 1990s with garment export playing a significant role in the total export, and continued exporting to the former Socialist countries.

The expansion of textile and garment production results in a growing labor force. Due to the labor-intensive character of these industries, the tendency is to employ low-skilled and low-paid labor, often migrants and young women. One of the characteristics of the East Asian NICs' export-oriented industries is the development of a "hyper-proletatiat" which did not have a strong bargaining power vis-à-vis the employers. However, this system of exclusion of labor changed during the 1970s, and new modes of labor control were developed in which labor organizations and unions were regarded more positively by the state as a means to include labor through corporatist arrangements and paternalistic relations. The panelists will examine the extent to which these tendencies have emerged in the three Southeast Asian countries in the process of global restructuring.

Reorganizing the "Rag Trade" in Southeast Asia: Comparative Perspectives on Capital and Labor in Apparel Production

David A. Smith, University of California, Irvine

The textile and garment industries are extremely interesting cases of global economic restructuring. This paper illustrates the factors promoting the shift of apparel production (and other light industries) away from core and semiperipheral regions in the world economy; illuminates some of the complexities and nuances of that process; and discusses the implications of this for the regional division of labor in East Asia. In the East Asian NICs (particularly South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan), apparel manufacturing helped propel "economic miracles" during the 1970s and 1980s, but it now faces an uncertain future due to escalating wages and severe labor shortages. This forces NIC-based garment makers to seek "offshore" production sites. Southeast Asia, along with Central America and the Caribbean, became attractive targets for this type of apparel investment. In the 1980s, Indonesia, with its cheap and abundant labor and a state eager to welcome foreign investment, was a powerful magnet for garment capital from Korean and the other Asian NICs. Despite some recent wage pressure and labor unrest, this country (along with China) seems well-positioned to continue as a major global "sourcing" area. More recently, Vietnam, with a nominally Communist regime pushing a policy of "market liberalization" and gradually improving relations with its old enemy the United States, appears poised to become a big player in world apparel production. Garment manufacturers from the NICs and elsewhere have begun to set up factories in Indonesia and Vietnam to take advantage of these countries' large, industrious, and extremely cheap labor forces. Dealing with a rapidly changing global apparel production and marketing system presents special challenges to the states, local capital, and workers through this region.

Impacts of Global Restructuring on Manufacturing and Labor Relations in the Vietnamese Textile and Garment Industries

Angie Ngoc Tran, California State University, Monterey Bay

This paper explores the opportunities as well as challenges arising from greater integration into the world economy and responses of domestic actors to this process in the case of the Vietnamese Textile and Garment Industries (VTGI).

The first part of this paper outlines the evolution of the VTGI from the command economy to a more market-oriented system since the mid 1980s, and how these industries provide an impetus to economic development, just as they led the way for the East Asian NICs in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, this paper presents major structural issues of the VTGI such as production, exports, ownership, labor force (textile and garment workers in general, and women workers in particular), as well as the relationship between domestic integration and performance of domestic firms in the VTGI (or value-added).

The second part of this paper examines responses of the main domestic actors to global restructuring the state (via labor policies) and the labor unions. While the market-oriented economy creates more employment in both public and private sectors, it also engenders many challenges such as job fluctuation due to the nature of subcontracting, poor working and living conditions of workers (especially women workers from rural areas). Moreover, many new labor laws have been passed and implemented since the early 1990s such as the labor union law, the law concerning workers in firms with foreign investment, the law on labor contract, and the new labor code effective since the beginning of 1995 legalizing labor strikes among other protection for workers. This paper examines how these labor laws are implemented and their effects on welfare of workers in VTGI. It also examines the changing roles of labor unions, which are still the only trade union in Vietnam and under government control, and their response to global restructuring.

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