Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 1999

Session 18: Gender, Household, and Family in Northern Vietnam: New Studies

Organizer and Chair: Jayne Werner, Long Island University

Discussants: David Marr, Australian National University; Jayne Werner, Long Island University

For the first time in several decades, long-term fieldwork is being carried out in Hanoi and the villages in the Red River delta. Much of this new work focuses on gender and the family. Data are being generated about the nature of the family, the structure and economic basis of the household, conceptions about gender and intergenerational relations, and sexuality. These new studies are providing insights into processes of social and cultural change as they are occurring under the impact of doi moi or economic renovation. Three aspects of recent concern will be explored: changing household structure and work-related mobility, single women and the family, and premarital abortion and sexuality. Methodologies include household surveys, intensive interviews, and long-term residence in the areas studied.

Composition and Recomposition of Rural Households in the Red River Delta

Nelly Krowolski and Nguyen Tung, LASEMA, CNRS-France

Over the course of 1990-1998 we have worked in several villages in the Red River delta. This paper is primarily based on the rural village of Ta Thanh Oai, located in a peri-urban zone (15 km from Hanoi) and an analysis of the household register held by the commune. The register currently includes more than 800 households. We focus on the structure of the household and the status of its diverse members in terms of their relationship with the head of the household. Our analysis is also based on intensive interviews conducted in the village in 1998, with a focus on around twelve families chosen at random from the register (with equal representation from the commune's hamlets). These interviews focused on household members' mobility from the standpoint of the issue of migration between the commune and the nearby urban center. Finally, the data from Ta Thanh Oai is analyzed from a comparative perspective with two other villages in the Red River delta where we have worked. The first is Mong Phu (Ha Tay province) at the edge of the "middle" region of the delta where we lived in 1990, 1991, and 1992, and the second is Mo Trach (Hai Duong) in the lower delta (studied in 1997 and 1998).

Never-Married Women in Rural North Vietnam: Two Case Studies

Danièle Bélanger, University of Western Ontario; Khuât Thu Hong, National Center for Social Sciences and Humanities

In Vietnam, as in other Asian countries, recent demographic data suggest that an increasing proportion of women will never marry. Most research on never-married women focuses on urban areas and stresses long-term education, work, and the reluctance to marry "downward" as the factors linked to this increase. This study, based on four months of fieldwork in 1998, addresses the issue of female singlehood in two rural villages located 15 kilometers from Hanoi (Ninh Hiep and Lien Mac). An ethnographic approach was used to explore the lives of 25 never-married women between the ages of 30 and 60. We interviewed these women and their parents, as well as key informants in the community such as the elderly and local leaders, about the status and role of never-married women. Most single women live with their natal families and many of them become caregivers for children and the elderly. Those who become independent have the financial resources to do so only when their parents are no longer alive. Results show that the community attributes the increase in singlehood to changes in the family, namely the decline of polygamy and arranged marriage. The marriage squeeze caused by the deficit of males following the American war has also contributed to the increase in singlehood in Vietnam.

Virginity and the Irony of Cultural Change: Exploring Female Sexuality in Urban Northern Vietnam

Tine Gammeltoft, University of Copenhagen

Whereas family and gender studies in Vietnam often tend to reify and essentialize cultural categories such as 'woman' or 'the family,' this paper aims to understand the social and cultural processes through which such categories are made. Due to its turbulent history and complex cultural dynamics, Vietnam seems a particularly privileged place for the study of such processes.

In Vietnam today, urban youth as a social group are particularly exposed to cultural and social change. Living in rapidly-changing urban environments while also undergoing the transformative personal changes involved in initiations into adulthood, young women and men are struggling with the exigencies of life, striving to find their own place and orientation in the world. Based on a four-month anthropological study of premarital abortion and sexuality conducted in Hanoi in the spring of 1998, the paper examines perceptions of virginity and experiences of virginity loss among Hanoian youth. The paper pursues two different arguments. First, it argues that the cultural tensions, with which the issue of virginity is fraught, index competing and contradictory perceptions of womanhood in Vietnamese history and culture. Second, it argues that young women today are both the agents and the victims of current cultural transformations as their bodies become a terrain where cultural conflicts are played out.

Session 22: Lips and Teeth: Border Relations Between China and Vietnam from 1945 to the Present

Organizer and Chair: Brantly Womack, University of Virginia

Discussants: William S. Turley, Southern Illinois University; Alexander Woodside, University of British Columbia

Although relations between China and Vietnam are usually discussed in terms of diplomacy and security, the most tangible effects of the relationship-whether friendly, hostile, or normal-are felt at the border. This panel will cover the range of border relations between China and Vietnam since the Second World War, beginning with commercial relations in the late 1940s, then considering the effects on border areas of China's patronage in the 1960s, hostility in the 1980s and the reemergence of border trade in the 1990s. The final paper will consider current efforts at cooperative border projects. All three papers are based on unusual access to relevant sources.

Since the papers will provide a long empirical thread, the commentators will be asked to draw general lessons concerning the relationship between China and Vietnam before turning to audience discussion. There are few scholars as appropriate for this task as William Turley and Alexander Woodside.

Before Recognition: Reflections on the DRV's Early Wartime Trade with China (1945-1950)

Christopher Goscha, Ecole des Hautes Etudes

If most studies of 20th century Sino-Vietnamese border relations take as their starting point the People's Republic of China's diplomatic recognition of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in 1950, in this paper I would like to show that the economics of the Franco-Vietnamese war had already forced the DRV to renew its ancient trading contacts with southern China since 1945.

Focusing on the 1945-1950 period, my paper is divided into three parts. First, I place this commerce in the context of political and military developments in China and the war between the French and the Vietnamese in Indochina. I then focus in greater detail on the geography and the structures of this Sino-Vietnamese war trade-the major trading zones, the diverse traders, the routes, the markets, the products and some tonnages. Lastly, I highlight the possible merits of analyzing the DRV's clandestine trade with southern China in terms of a regional perspective by comparing this northern commerce to the DRV's internal trade with French-controlled zones and overseas Chinese (Hua Qiao) markets and in comparison with southern Vietnamese external exchanges with Southeast Asian markets. This paper draws upon Vietnamese and French sources.

The Effects of Changing Sino-Vietnamese Relations on the Economy of Vietnam's Border Provinces, 1960-1990

Christopher Roper, University of Virginia

From closest of allies in the 1960s, the Sino-Vietnamese relationship deteriorated to a limited war by the end of the 1970s. After a decade of mutual suspicion and hostility, the two countries tentatively re-established political and economic ties at the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s. The consequences of this changing relationship are not merely political but are clearly evident at the local level. This paper examines the effects of the evolving Sino-Vietnamese relationship on the local economies of Vietnam's northern border provinces. Given their immediate proximity to China, these provinces should be the most sensitive to changes in the two countries' relationship. The paper explores the regional economy of Vietnam's northernmost provinces from the 1960s into the 1990s in light of its relations with China, using national data to establish a trend and local data of one border province in particular, Lai Chau, for specific examples.

Border Cooperation Between China and Vietnam in the 1990s

Gu Xiaosong, Guangxi Academy of Social Science

Based on a review of cooperative projects between China and Vietnam, especially those between the cities of Dongxing and Mong Cai, this paper will explore the interests, incentives and difficulties of border cooperation. Is cooperation driven by national policy, or does national policy constrain local enthusiasm? To what extent does the availability of third-party capital provide an incentive? What are the similarities and differences in interests and policies between China and Vietnam?

Besides being one of China's top experts on Vietnam's political economy, Professor Gu was the Vice-Director of the Dongxing Economic Development Zone for three years.

Session 116: INDIVIDUAL PAPERS: Marginal Figures

Organizer and Chair: Mary M. Steedly, Harvard University

The Vietnamese Catholics During the War of Independence (1945-1954) Between the Colonial Reconquest and the Communist Resistance

Thi Liên Tran, Institute Etudes Politiques de Paris

The national feeling of the Vietnamese Catholics became all the more violent in 1945 as it had been denied before; so that some of the clergy didn't hesitate to launch straight into political and military action. This need of political involvement in the fight for independence could be explained by the desire to put an end to the accusation of "traitors to their homeland" (they were accused to be at the origin of the French conquest). The Catholics soon faced a dilemma: the keenest fighters for independence were communists and their project of society was far from their aspirations. Between the minority that chose to rally the Viet Minh, and the one that collaborated with the French, a major trend rose, refusing both the French reconquest and the communist hegemony in the resistance to the French.

From 1945 to 1949, the theme of the fight for independence prevailed, then from 1950 to 1954, the theme of fight against communism took over, without suppressing the nationalist ideas. The experience of living under Viet Minh power and international events (communist China, Korean War) caused a progressive rallying of the Catholics to the Bao Dai's solution. Far from raising enthusiasm (the Bao Dai government was completely independent from the French), this alternative was the only one left. It was not by chance that the Catholic politician Ngo Dinh Diem came out at the Conference at Geneva, as the nationalist alternative in South Vietnam, to face the communist regime in the North.

"To Counter the Terror of Uncertain Signs": Mythologizing Vietnam in Interiors

Jennifer Way, University of North Texas

How can we make sense of American art world involvement in and representations of Southeast Asia during the 1950s? One response involves reconstituting the meaning and significance representations of Vietnamese peoples held for the American State Department, press, and middle class.

In 1955, the State Department's new International Cooperation Association hired industrial designer Russel Wright to tour Southeast Asia (November 1955-February 1956). The article Wright subsequently published in the art world's Interiors magazine (August 1956) metonymically represented South Vietnam by emphasizing peoples who had moved there between 1954-55. The State Department and press considered their status problematic. They'd fled the Viet Minh but might be swayed to communism by southern guerrilla forces.

I argue that Wright's article supports this view. Further, I demonstrate how especially the photographs diffuse anxiety about the refugees' vulnerability to ways of life Americans perceived to threaten their (and a global) political economy and middle-class lifestyle. Using semiotic analyses Roland Barthes applied to the mass media during this period, I discuss how the refugees function not only as an "uncertain sign" in the photographs in Wright's article, but also as "mythology." I conclude that the peoples Wright deems "The Refugee Problem" thus appear ready for salvage, and I show how Wright's article accommodates their visual representations to American discourses of work. As fears about communism spreading in Southeast Asia increased, the American art world maintained the hegemony of some American priorities.

Colonialsim and the Collaborationist Agenda: Pham Quynh, France, and the Invention of a Neo-Confucian Vietnam

Sarah Womack, University of Michigan

Considered by many Vietnamese revolutionaries (and Western historians) to be the arch-collaborator of the colonial period, Pham Quynh-translator, author, editor, philologist, minister, and "traditional" conservative-was an extraordinary figure who nonetheless typifies many aspects of the complex and largely overlooked category of indigenous collaborators with colonial regimes. Although viewed as traitor and lackey to French colonial ambition, Pham Quynh saw himself as a patriot, a visionary, and a social revolutionary. Arguing that we must see collaboration as inside an actor's agenda, this paper is a preliminary analysis of Pham Quynh's articulation of his own project within the context of the French colonial state in Vietnam.

My study is founded on the premise that "collaboration" and "collaborators" can offer students of colonial history subjects and frameworks of analysis that are lacking in the simple colonizer/colonized dichotomy. Collaboration, if seen as the active engagement with colonial policy and administration by indigenous agents, can also destabilize the illusion of overwhelming and unitary power of colonial regimes. It opens a space for the consideration of the possibilities of a colonial hegemonic project by focusing not only on what sort of consent was manufactured among "native colonialists" and by whom, but on a corresponding effort by indigenous agents towards the state itself. The new possibilities and realities created by the colonial state were a laboratory for both colonizers and colonized, and in that context of experimentation there is much to be learned about visions of the colonial and post-colonial future.

Session 153: Initiative and Response: Vietnamese Actors in the Introduction of European Medical and Technical Systems to Vietnam

Organizer and Chair: Michele Thompson, Southern Connecticut State University

Discussant: Lewis Pyenson, University of Southwestern Louisiana

Recently Asia has played an important part in widening the fields of medical and scientific history beyond the thematic and theoretical factors which located these disciplines firmly in Europe and North America. It can also be said that familiarity with history of science and medicine has provided new avenues of investigation for scholars whose geographic focus lies within Asia. Too often however, there is an intellectual divide between those who study traditional Asian systems of medicine or technology and those who study western technology and medicine in its Asian context. This panel will focus on the Vietnamese players in technical and medical endeavors which combined French and Vietnamese practical and theoretical perspectives. David Biggs looks at Vietnamese and French hydrological works in the Mekong Delta and at the environmental changes wrought by them. Michele Thompson discusses a French doctor's work with the Nguyen royal medical service and their importation of smallpox vaccine to Vietnam. Annick Guénel's work as a biologist informs her examination of Vietnamese theoretical constructs concerning malaria and their contribution to the evolution of malaria control programs. Laurence Monnais-Rosselot will argue that a blending of local practices and Western medicine formatted current Vietnamese national health policy. Lewis Pyenson's knowledge of French colonial scientific programs will inform his comments on our individual papers and on issues raised by members of the audience.

French and Vietnamese Civilizing Missions in the Mekong Delta

David Biggs, University of Washington

From 1858-1930, the French colonial regime in Vietnam directed a series of canal dredging projects that led to over 1300 kilometers of new waterways, transforming the Mekong Delta into an agricultural center of Southeast Asia. Colonial governors referred to these 'public works' as evidence of the 'benevolence' and superiority of French civilization and technology. However, the French were not the first to cultivate and dredge the Mekong Delta. Since the 1750s the Vietnamese royal court had encouraged intensive settlement on their southern frontier with Cambodia. Vietnamese soldiers and laborers built garrisons and dug large canals in the 1800s. The physical transformations brought on by both the Vietnamese and French regimes included efforts to survey the land and to pacify local resistance-in sum these were two civilizing missions. This essay looks at these missions and the environmental changes brought on by them in the late 1800s. Both Vietnamese pioneers and French colonizers sought to build systems of land tenure and infrastructure on the frontier. The end results were the creation of a hybrid culture not entirely French or Vietnamese but one born of futuristic visions and local contingencies.

A Medical Mission: The Vietnamese Quest for Smallpox Vaccine

Michele Thompson, Southern Connecticut State University

1820 was a momentous year for the four men at the Nguyen court who enacted an independent Vietnamese expedition to obtain smallpox vaccine. Gia Long, the reigning emperor at the beginning of the year, died on January 25 and his son Minh Mang inherited the throne. Two of Gia Long's courtiers, Philippe Vannier and Jean Marie Despiau, were involved in Gia Long's initial acquisition of information on vaccination for smallpox. They also served Minh Mang by planning and carrying out an expedition to Macao to bring vaccine back to the court in Hue, thus completing one of the projects left unfinished by Gia Long when he died. Despiau successfully transported live vaccine from Macao to Hue for the immediate objective of vaccinating Minh Mang's children. The expedition also succeeded in transferring smallpox vaccine on a potentially long term basis to the royal medical service. Five months after the mission to Macao, Despiau still had active vaccine on hand in Hue and he had trained ten Vietnamese physicians to vaccinate. For the Nguyen medical service to have kept vaccine going for so long indicates that Despiau and the Vietnamese doctors he worked with understood very clearly how to maintain the live vaccine. The details of the mission, as examined in this paper, will reveal what a notable accomplishment this feat of medical cooperation was.

Malaria Control, Land Occupation, and Scientific Developments in Vietnam

Annick Guénel, CNRS-INSERM, Paris

Long before the French colonial era, malaria was a major factor in the struggle for land occupation in Vietnam. This is illustrated by the land distribution among the different ethnic groups in Vietnam before the colonial era. To this land distribution were linked popular beliefs about the disease etiology of malaria among the dominant group-the Viet or Kinh. In the nineteenth century, Europeans considered all of Indochina as lands propitious for malarial fevers. This view was supported by hospital statistics which ranked malaria as the first cause of morbidity among the Vietnamese. These statistics in turn supported the need for a State-sponsored prophylactic measure-wide-range distribution of quinine. The first epidemiological data emphasized the specific distribution of endemic areas which were more systematically explored during the 1930s. By that time, the Pasteur Institutes had set up a service for "scientific malaria control." Since the end of the Indochina Wars, changes have taken place, not only in regard to the stakes involved, but also with respect to the actors implicated in malaria control in Vietnam. This paper will include a history of malaria control in Vietnam during the twentieth century, and will focus on the particularities of malaria history in Vietnam, the contributions of local knowledge and techniques in the evolution of control measures, and on the structure of relationships among different local communities in Vietnam affected by malaria control measures.

The Development of Health Care in Vietnam: In the Shadow of the Colonial Hospital (1860-1939)

Laurence Monnais-Rosselot, University of Montreal

In 1864 the first non-religious French hospital for Vietnamese people opened in Choquan (Cochinchina). By 1936 nearly a thousand health facilities served the regions of Cochinchina, Tonkin, and Annam. There was a continuity in French public health policy in which institutions such as hospitals and vaccination programs were considered to be the most effective way to fight disease. French colonial urban hospitals and rural clinics and infirmaries supplied people with medicines and launched education programs on hygiene and disease prevention. Colonial doctors were also engaged in medical research. This paper traces the history of western medicine in Vietnam from 1860 to 1939 and shows how medical institutions were shaped by French colonialism. I will argue that this was not simply a basic transfer of Western techniques onto Vietnamese society, but rather that it was a slow blending of Western medicine into local practices. For example, in the 1920s, French administrators and doctors who understood the financial advantages of "traditional medicine" for their patients began to use it in their own clinics along with Western medical practices. These practices were to set the foundations of current post colonial Vietnamese national health policy.

Session 188: Designing Women: The Use of Fashion to Construct International Modernity, National Tradition, and Gender in Indonesia, Vietnam, and Within the South Asian Diaspora

Organizer and Chair: Ann Marie Leshkowich, Harvard University

Discussant: Penelope Van Esterik, York University

Amidst rapid cultural and economic globalization, South and Southeast Asian women are using fashion to construct and challenge visions of modernity, nationalism, internationalism, and gender. This panel explores how specific Indonesian, Vietnamese, and diasporic South Asian women consciously draw on international styles to craft clothing items as markers of various identities and as commodities whose development, circulation, and use can offer social and economic advantage.

Sandra Niessen's paper examines how female Batak weavers in North Sumatra adapt pattern innovations in an attempt to reconcile their history with their future. Carla Jones analyzes how middle class women enrolled in manners and wardrobe classes in Yogyakarta transform international styles for proper "Indonesian women." Ann Marie Leshkowich's paper examines how female merchants draw on diasporic kin to reinterpret Vietnam's traditional costume as an amalgam of national heritage and international style. Parminder Bhachu explores how British South Asian female entrepreneurs use their multi-national identities and networks to develop a hybrid style with "couture" appeal. Discussant Penny van Esterik brings to the panel an extensive background of scholarship in gender, development, and material culture in Southeast Asia.

These papers suggest two ways in which fashion has become transnational: first, through the concrete circulation of items, ideas, and individuals within diaspora; second, through incorporating these styles into local products which tangibly represent an envisioned relationship to a global community. By focusing on the agency and intentions of individual designers, sellers, and consumers, the panel hopes to spark inter-area discussion of the processes shaping fashion's meanings and uses.

Big Families in a Small World: How Female Entrepreneurs Use International Kin Networks to Shape Vietnam's National Costume

Ann Marie Leshkowich, Harvard University

While economic and cultural globalization can threaten local producers and traditions, this paper suggests that it can also create opportunities for female entrepreneurs. Specifically, I examine how female designers and sellers of áo dài in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam use knowledge acquired through diasporic kin networks to craft and promote a garment which symbolizes both national tradition and international modernity.

In September 1995, the Miss International Pageant in Tokyo awarded Miss Vietnam "Best National Costume" for her blue and white brocade áo dài-a long, close-fitting tunic worn over loose pants. For many in Vietnam, this award both affirmed the value of Vietnam's traditions and signified its incorporation into the modern global community. International recognition also boosted the áo dài's domestic appeal. Within days, stalls and shops throughout Ho Chi Minh City had posted pictures of the winner with signs promising áo dài "just like Miss Vietnam's."

This paper argues that the Miss Vietnam advertisements are part of Vietnamese designers' and sellers' ongoing efforts to market the áo dài as an amalgam of local and global influences. For advice about international fashion trends, these entrepreneurs-most of them women-regularly turn to their relatives overseas. They then use this information to develop new áo dài styles. In this way, Vietnamese women's traditional role as maintainers of kin relations now gives many of them access to global fashion influences. Incorporating these touches into their designs helps female entrepreneurs make Vietnam's "national costume" attractive to today's cosmopolitan consumers.

Session 207: Reform and Resistance in State/Society Relations in South East Asia

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

Chair: Laura J. Summers, University of Hull

Discussants: Vincent K. Pollard, University of Hawaii, Manoa; Carlyle A. Thayer, University of New South Wales

The study of state systems has been challenged in recent years by scholarly focus on 'non-state' political processes. Although scholars are now more aware that the state cannot be regarded as the natural focus of political and historical analysis, states remain a most complex and expansive form of human organization.

This panel seeks to explore relationships between, on the one hand, power systems and ideologies promoted by state elites and, on the other, the concerns and priorities of the people over whom states claim authority. It will focus on points of intersection and resistance, exploring the complex processes by which political cultures and systems of power are continually contested by dissent and opposition, giving rise to altered conceptions of authority and community. A particular focus will be the extent to which popular concerns both constrain the development of state-sponsored ideologies and engender their transformation.

The panel will bring together scholars from history, political science, and anthropology, presenting diverse case studies such as the importance of semangat in nineteenth-century Sarawak and contests over ideology and state power in contemporary Vietnam. Participants will draw on a number of methodological approaches in their analyses.

The panel aims in this way to contribute to the understanding of political community and legitimacy in Southeast Asia.

Public Spaces/Public Disgraces?: Crowds and the State in Vietnam

Mandy Thomas, University of Western Sydney

This paper argues that a semantic shift in the crowd in Vietnam over the last decade has allowed public space to become a site through which transgressive ideologies and desires may have an outlet. At a time of accelerating social change, the state has effectively delimited public criticism yet a fragile but assertive form of Vietnamese democratic practice has arisen in public space, at the margins of official society, in sites previously equated with state control. Official state functions attract only small audiences, and rather than celebrating the dominance of the party, reveal the disengagement of the populace in the party's activities. Where crowds were always a component of state(stage)-managed events, now public spaces are attracting large numbers of people for supposedly non-political activities which may become transgressive acts condemned by the regime. In support of the notion that crowding is an opening up of the possibility of more subversive political actions, the paper presents an analysis of recent crowd formation and the state's reaction to them. These events include religious festivals, street celebrations after football matches, public gatherings outside law courts, and the massing of the public at the funeral of a popular young actor. The analysis reveals the modalities through which popular culture has provided the public with the means to transcend the constraints of official, authorized, and legitimate codes of behaviour in public space. Changes in the use of public space, it is argued, map the sets of relations between the public and the state, making these transforming relationships visible, although fraught with contradictions and anomalies.

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