Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 2002

Session 5: Social Change in the Red River Delta: Results from the Vietnam Longitudinal Survey

Organizer and Chair: Charles Hirschman, University of Washington, Seattle

Discussant: Hy Van Luong, University of Toronto

Keywords: Social change, modern Vietnam, family, sociology.

This panel will present new empirical research based on a large household sample survey of 1,855 households (and 4,464 adults in the selected households) in the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam. The 1995 Vietnam Longitudinal Survey, based on a stratified probability sampling design, covers the old province of Ha Nam Ninh (currently three provinces), one of the largest and most populous areas of the densely-settled Red River Delta. The sample design includes the three largest towns in the province and seven rural communes, stratified by distance from major highways. The papers presented in this panel will cover a range of demographic and sociological topics on contemporary social change in Vietnam, including mortality decline, arranged marriage, educational stratification, and occupational attainment. In addition to presenting baseline description of social and demographic change, each of the papers will test a major hypothesis about the sources of social change. The presenters on the panel are recent Ph.D.'s and graduate students who represent a new generation of international researchers with both strong disciplinary skills and in-depth knowledge of Vietnamese society. Professor Hy Van Luong of the University of Toronto, a distinguished scholar of Vietnamese society, will discuss the papers.

Mortality Decline in Northern Vietnam following Independence

M. Giovanna Merli, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Jonathan London, University of Wisconsin, Madison

This paper uses an innovative approach to reconstruct historical trends in adult mortality by using data on the birth and death dates of parents and siblings of the respondents in the 1995 Vietnam Longitudinal Survey. Vietnamese survey respondents appear to give very accurate demographic reports of dates, perhaps because birth and death dates have significant cultural importance. This analysis documents the rapid decline in mortality following independence. Even with the rise in deaths due to war-related causes in the 1960s and early 1970s and slow economic progress in the 1970s and 1980s, Vietnam has maintained low levels of mortality by international standards. Explanations of mortality decline are evaluated in light of Vietnam's distinct historical stages since 1954.

From Traditional to Modern Marriage and Mate Selection

Huu Minh Nguyen, Institute of Sociology, Vietnam

One of the most dramatic changes in Vietnamese marriage patterns has been the shift from traditionally arranged marriages where the marital partners were matched by parents to the modern practice where young marriageable adults select their own spouse. For the oldest marriage cohort in the Vietnam Longitudinal Survey, the majority of respondents report arranged marriages, while "free choice" of spouse is almost universal among the youngest marriage cohorts (freedom is usually tempered by parental approval of marriage choices). Education is the most important factor explaining the historical change of mate choice during the last 50 years. The Marriage and Family Law of 1959 and broad policies aiming at restructuring socioeconomic structure after 1960, as well as religious affiliation also appear as important factors in shaping the patterns of mate selection. Catholics are more associated with arrangements by their parents in mate selection process. Family influence also remains significant as measured by the continued role of family participation in the introduction of prospective marriage partners. The most important new source for the introduction of couples is "friends." These results are similar to findings on marriage selection from other East and Southeast Asian societies-perhaps suggestive of an Asian style of limited courtship with only one person prior to marriage. This Asian style of courtship is different from both the Asian past and the Western present.

Educational Opportunity and Stratification in Socialist Vietnam

Lan Phuong Nguyen, University of Washington, Seattle

Although socialist ideology claims to promote equality and to reduce the impact of family background on life chances, this study shows that patterns of educational stratification are very similar to those of most other countries. Urban residence and parental socioeconomic status (father's and mother's education and occupation) have significant effects on educational attainment in northern Vietnam. Having a parent who is a member of the communist party has a significant positive effect on education, net of other family status variables. This study, based on the 1995 Vietnam Longitudinal Survey, was able to trace the trend in educational attainment for successive birth cohorts of Vietnamese who reached school-going age from the 1950s to the 1990s. Following independence in the 1950s, there was a significant increase in average levels of education as primary school became universal. The traditional gender gap in schooling has all but disappeared. Over the last few decades, there has been little further progress in average levels of schooling, and some signs of declining rates of secondary schooling, particularly for boys.

The Impact of Social Origins, Human Capital, and Political Capital on Occupational Attainment: A Test of the Market Transition Hypothesis

Kim Korinek, University of Washington, Seattle

Although the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese men, and especially women, continue to work in the family agricultural economy, there is an increasing minority who work in household non-agricultural enterprises, employees for private businesses, and as government workers. As Doi Moi, the policy of economic reform, takes root in the countryside, more individuals will respond to emerging opportunities in market economy. Victor Nee, a specialist on China, has proposed "market transition theory" to explain emerging patterns of social stratification in post-socialist societies. Nee predicts that human capital (education) will become a more important predicator of socioeconomic attainment relative to traditional status in the socialist system (communist party membership). This hypothesis has met with only mixed support in China, but it has stimulated considerable research in other post-socialist societies. I will test the market transition hypothesis for Vietnam with the VLS data in a preliminary fashion. The survey analysis will be supplemented with in-depth accounts of occupational careers based on interviews conducted by the author in a rural and urban community in the Fall of 2000.

Session 28: Individual Papers: Identity Matters in Southeast Asia

Organizer: Kenneth M. George, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Chair: Katherine A. Bowie, University of Wisconsin, Madison

On the Historicity of the Vietnamese Goddess Princess Lieu Hanh: A Prostitute or a Saint?

Olga Dror, Cornell University

Princess Lieu Hanh is one of the most famous "Mother" deities in Vietnamese popular religion. Her cult ostensibly originated in the sixteenth century in Northern Vietnam. The scope of the paper is to investigate the origins of her cult, its development and its transformation since the sixteenth century, considering the factors which played a decisive role in Lieu Hanh's deification, such as personalities (her biography written by the eighteenth-century woman writer Doan Thi Diem), events (the internecine wars and dynastic recognitions of her cult) and popular religious tradition, in which context Lieu Hanh's cult is now placed. The paper will address the contradictory accounts of Lieu Hanh's cult, namely accounts written by European missionaries claiming Lieu Hanh to be a prostitute and the legends and literary works created in Vietnam sanctifying Lieu Hanh's virtues. I will suggest some preliminary considerations to diminish this outward contradiction in the context of the process of deification in Vietnam. One more point which will be analyzed is the local or indigenous character of the cult in comparison with possible borrowings from neighboring cultures and similarities found between customs connected to Lieu Hanh's cult and those among the Chinese and the Cham peoples.

Session 42: AAS Presidential Panel: Abortions, Agent Orange, and AIDS: Social Suffering in Vietnam and Thailand

Organizer and Chair: Charles F. Keyes, University of Washington

Discussant: Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University

The volume, Social Suffering, edited by Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock (first published in 1996), began with the recognition that many modern experiences entail a fundamental problem of meaning that has traditionally been left to religion to address. In the words of Arthur and Joan Kleiman in their introduction to Social Suffering "suffering is one of the existential grounds of human experience; it is a defining quality, a limiting experience in human conditions." The rise of modern societies organized around secular institutions, science, and rationalized action have not only failed to provide people with adequate means to address the suffering that pushes humans to the ultimate conditions of their existence but they have also generated new forms of social suffering. Those who conceived of and contributed to the book Social Suffering have redirected the attention of social scientists to what "political, economic and institutional power does to people and, reciprocally how these forms of power themselves influence responses to social problems" (from the introduction to the volume).

Understanding social suffering always requires situating such suffering in particular cultural contexts. This panel has been conceived of as a forum for reflections on the innovative work on social suffering initiated by Kleinman and others. The presenters take up three contemporary experiences of peoples in Vietnam and Thailand who confront very modern manifestations of social suffering-abortion, the impact on humans of the use of defoliants, and the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. While each case is distinctive, each also deals with deep existential problems that underlie all manifestations of social suffering as Kleinman and his associates have shown.

Second Trimester Abortion in Contemporary Vietnam: Social Vulnerability and Moral Responsibility

Tine Gammeltoft, University of Copenhagen

With an annual number of 1.4 million induced abortions, Vietnam has the world's highest abortion rate. Pregnancy terminations can be legally performed until the 22nd week of gestation and around 1% of abortions take place in the second trimester of pregnancy. Nearly all women obtaining late abortions are young and unmarried. In the spring of 1998, as an element in a larger study on premarital sexuality and abortion, I conducted a series of in-depth interviews with young women who had recently undergone an abortion in their fourth or fifth month of pregnancy. These women told me about how it feels to kill one's own child-this was what they felt they did-sometimes under brutal circumstances. Having to decide to terminate the life of another human being, and a human being that could have lived to become one's own son or daughter was deeply existentially shattering. The pain suffered by these young women was moral at its core, stemming from having to inflict pain on another, from feeling forced to act against one's own deepest moral convictions, from failing to act in accordance with one's intentions to do good, from doing something that makes one feel inhuman.

In this paper I shall consider moral dimensions of the suffering experienced by these young women. First, seeing induced abortion as a moral practice rather than as an abstract ethical issue, I shall examine the young women's moral deliberations as they opted for a late abortion as the most viable response to an unwanted pregnancy. Second, arguing that the most urgent ethical issue at stake here concerns the social conditions which compel women to opt for a late abortion rather than the act of abortion itself, I shall analyze the social forces which motivate young Vietnamese women to undergo a second trimester pregnancy termination, in spite of their moral qualms in doing so. Finally, throughout the paper I shall reflect upon my own role as a researcher and as a fellow female human being, as I listened to and recorded the young women's accounts.

Agent Orange and Narratives of Suffering in Viet Nam

Diane Fox, University of Washington

"For the anthropologist, an inquiry into the meanings of illness is a journey into relationships," writes Arthur Kleinman in The Illness Narratives. In this paper, I consider relationships encountered in the process of trying to understand the ways Vietnamese have confronted illnesses and suffering that many believe may be traced to the effects of defoliants dropped by the United States from 1961 to 1971.

During that period, American forces sprayed 19 million gallons of chemicals over the south of Viet Nam, destroying twenty percent of the forests, three percent of the cropland, and causing an unknown and perhaps unknowable number of human health problems. What have been the human responses to these consequences?

Families living with the illnesses and disabilities thought to be caused by the spraying tell stories that are at times reflective, at times angry, at times inspiring as they define their experiences in terms of religion, science, or irreducible uncertainty.

The United States government, after thirty years of official silence and denial, has haltingly begun to engage in preliminary discussions with Viet Nam, though the two sides have yet to find a common language. While the U.S had insisted on scientific discourse, Viet Nam has refused to speak if humanitarian concerns are not considered simultaneously.

This paper is one step in a search for a language adequate to the subject. It is based primarily on interviews carried out in 2000 and 2001 with 38 families from the north, center, and south of Viet Nam, and with the community workers who have supported them these last twenty to thirty years.

Session 68: Crossing Borders, Changing Life: Vietnamese Diaspora in 20th-Century France

Organizer and Chair: Kimloan Hill, University of California, San Diego

Discussant: Keith Weller Taylor, Cornell University

Keywords: World War I, Vietnamese diaspora, transnational identity, France, Indochina.

In World War I, due to a shortage of manpower, France had to turn to its neighbors and the colonies in Africa and Asia to recruit volunteers for its army and factories. In effect, this practice opened a floodgate that had previously kept the people in the colonies from entering France. Since then, the Vietnamese immigrants have arrived in France in many waves for different reasons and with different purposes.

In France, these immigrants were given a glimpse of the constraints and potentials of the French social, political, and legal institutions. They utilized such knowledge to advance their economic interests, to serve their political agenda, to preserve their culture, and to build the country they had left. In doing so, the Vietnamese immigrants have actively participated in the making of both countries' history and have constantly redefined their identities in order to find their places in both societies. As a result, Vietnamese identity in diaspora has taken many forms and meanings to fit the immigrants' visions and images.

Hence, this panel seeks to examine the developments of Vietnamese diaspora in France and its contribution to history. It focuses on France and Viet Nam from the point of view of sociology, literature, anthropology, and military, social, and economic history. Kimloan Hill examines the labor markets in France and Indochina (Viet Nam) and the participation of the Vietnamese soldiers and workers in World War I to argue that the war was a watershed in the history of French colonialism and Franco-Indochinese relationship. For the first time, people from Indochina could enter the French labor market en masse and joined the French people and members of the Allied Forces in a "sacred union" against the Germans. The war experiences, however, changed their lives and altered the course of the colonial enterprise in postwar period. Marie-Eve Blanc analyzes how the Vietnamese immigrants in France utilized a Southeast Asian tradition, the associative practice, to re-establish their identities, rebuild their communities, and maintain many cultural practices in diaspora. The function of this practice, she points out, changed with social and political developments and the immigrants' visions and needs. Henri Eckert studies the experiences of Vietnamese soldiers who came to France in the 1920s. The military leaders in Paris wanted the people from Indochina to assume a greater share of the "national" defense burden. This attempt, however, backfired. Although the experiences of the sojourn in France turned the men from Indochina from "peasants to Frenchmen," like the Frenchmen at the time, they engaged in many anti-colonial and anti-government activities. Finally, Dan Duffy offers a different way to examine the transnational identity of Vietnamese immigrants and the culture of Vietnamese diaspora in France; that is, through the examination of Vietnamese literature and the organization of libraries and bookstores in Paris. His recent research reveals that although these institutions differ in goals and operations, their activities have facilitated the diversity of Vietnamese culture, provided the immigrants with community support, and contributed to the foundation of the modern nation of Viet Nam.

World War I and the Developments of Indochinese Colonies in France: A Historical Perspective

Kimloan Hill, University of California, San Diego

During World War I, to meet the demand for more manpower on the battlefields and in the factories France had to turn to its neighbors and its colonies in Africa and Asia to enlist volunteers. In Indochina, poverty, social disorder, and economic crisis prompted nearly 100,000 men to volunteer. In France, they adopted many French values (i.e. the value of labor) and exercised many rights that did not exist in the colonies (i.e. the right to protest and to form political associations). Their experiences also changed their worldview. In their eyes, France was no longer a superpower and the French people were no longer a superior race. When the war was over, while most of these men returned to Indochina, a few hundred remained in France to get married, to work, and to pursue a higher education. In the 1920s, as France continued to recruit more manpower from Indochina, Indochinese colonies began to appear on French soil; and the immigrants formed a significant political bloc. They utilized the existing political and legal practices to establish their place in the Metropole and remove French yoke from Indochina.

In short, this paper examines the economic conditions and the labor markets in France and Indochina before and after the outbreak of World War I to argue that the war was a watershed in the history of French colonialism. It set the stage for the downfall of the colonial enterprise in Indochina. The Vietnamese diaspora, on the other hand, contributed to its downfall.

Indochinese Soldiers in Europe, 1920-1939

Henri Eckert, Lycée de Crépy en Valois

In 1920, General Charles Mangin, a military leader of the colonial army felt that the colonies should have had contributed more troops to the defense of the "Greater France." Starting in 1922, small groups of Indochinese troops were sent to Europe on a three-year duty. Some served in the colonial infantry units in the remote Vosges Mountains. Others went to Lebanon or Morocco and helped local troops to put down native revolts. Several thousands, however, were employed as military workers in the metropolitan army.

To help these military workers cope with their new living and working conditions, military leadership in Indochina gave them lessons in French language and culture and some professional training in clerical work, truck driving, health services, and some other special skills before sending them to Europe. As a result, during their sojourn in France, these Indochinese soldiers were accorded a better treatment and enjoyed a greater freedom than the men who served France in the First World War. They had more opportunities to participate in French social life and to make contacts with the communities of Indochinese civilians in France. Their participation in French way of life and their contacts with other Indochinese immigrants changed their perceptions about France and Indochina and led to their participation in anti-French activities.

In the end the leaders of the Metropolitan Army decided to replace these Indochinese military workers with French civilian workers when it realized that the Indochinese soldiers had become a political liability.

Vietnamese Immigrants' Associations in France: A Tool for Shaping Identity

Marie-Eve Blanc, Institut de Recherche sur le Sud-Est Asiatique, Marseille

In most Southeast Asian societies, associative practice is a common tool to organize the community, not only to foster religious, cultural and political life but also to build solidarity among the members of the association. During the colonial period, the French changed the law concerning the right of association to control associations with political aims. But the practice forming association continued to flourish, especially among those who left their native villages to work overseas or to live in new resettlements. This practice was particularly prevalent among northern immigrants who resettled in South Viet Nam during the colonial era.

In the 1920s and 1930s France, the Vietnamese immigrants' associations were the places to manufacture nationalist identity and breed anti-colonialism activities. After 1954 and more so after 1975, Vietnamese immigrants have accepted the idea that they will never return to their native country. In that sense, their associations have been tie places to preserve their memories and "real traditions," and to build a polyvalent identity-the identity of a Viet Kieu.

In summary, this paper will first show how in the first period of the immigration into France "association" is a tool to promote democracy and shape nationalist identity. It then will explain how, after the war, "association" is a tool for the immigrants to re-establish and maintain their identities.

Strands and Contexts in Vietnamese Identity in the Diaspora: Vietnamese Literature in the Libraries and Bookstores of Paris

Dan Duffy, University of North Carolina

The presentation investigates Vietnamese identity in the diaspora by focusing on libraries and bookstores, institutions of Vietnamese literature in Paris, France. Vietnamese books, and the institutions that bring them into being and pass them around, are material evidence of the activity of Vietnamese identity. Paris is a site of Vietnamese diaspora that pre-dates the modern nation of Viet Nam.

Searching for Vietnamese literature in the bookstores and libraries of Paris reveals the diverse institutions that came together to found the modern nation of Viet Nam. There is a store in a Buddhist temple, two lending libraries in Catholic churches, stores sponsored by the Vietnamese government and others by exiled nationalists. Meanwhile, French research libraries and mainstream bookstores locate Vietnamese literature firmly in the Orientalist discourse that governed the French conquest of Indochina.

However, in the diaspora, diverse Vietnamese cultural institutions stand alone and articulate separately with the world outside of Viet Nam. One store that came into being as a place to rally Western support for Ha Noi against the United States' intervention now sells crafts to help artisans in the homeland succeed in the liberal economy. Other sites engage with the discourses of social welfare and cultural diversity within France.

To recapitulate, looking at the Vietnamese books of Paris brings attention to different strands in Vietnamese national identity. Looking at the social life around these books shows different contexts in which Vietnamese identity now makes itself in the world outside of the nation.

Session 88: Representing Ethnicity in Vietnam

Organizers: Frank Proschan, Smithsonian Institution; Hjorleifur R. Jonsson, Arizona State University

Chair: Vinh Quoc Nguyen, Harvard University

Discussant: Frank Proschan, Smithsonian Institution

Keywords: Vietnam, ethnicity, representation, tourism, ethnography.

Ethnographic representation has never been the exclusive province of academically credentialed anthropologists. Rather, ethnicities constantly represent themselves to others and are just as constantly represented by others in diverse forms. Some of those representational forms approximate the forms of knowledge production employed by anthropologists: monographs, articles, or essays. Others take the form of tourist guides, military memoirs, paintings, advertising billboards, internet web sites, policy documents, or political tracts, to name but a few representational genres. How are Vietnam's diverse ethnicities-both minority and majority-represented by themselves and others today, and how have they been in the past? How do these forms of ethnographic representation compare with the canonical representational genres of academic ethnography? And what are the effects and consequences of these representational acts on the people who are their subjects?

This panel draws together Nora A. Taylor and Hjorleifur Jonsson's examination of how contemporary visual culture in Vietnam-billboards, posters, and paintings-depicts minorities as backwards contributors of diversity to the overarching unity insisted upon by the state; Duong Bich Hanh's comparison of how Hmong in northwestern Vietnam are represented in international touristic literature and ephemera, and how they choose to represent themselves to those tourists; Jean Michaud's discussion of the French military officers and missionaries who served to represent Vietnamese highland groups prior to the professionalization of ethnography as a science; and Philip Taylor's consideration of how both ethnic groups and religious sub-cultures in the Mekong Delta are perceived and represented vis-à-vis state projects of defining national identity.

Other Attractions in Vietnam

Hjorleifur R. Jonsson, Arizona State University; Nora A. Taylor, Arizona State University

What is the attraction of Vietnam's Others, representations of ethnic minorities and of pre-national populations that signify different regions of the now unified country? Our examination of this issue concerns the place of ethnic and regional diversity in Vietnam's visual culture, particularly billboards, posters, and paintings, and the recent international tourist interest in highland minorities. For decades, artists have appropriated markers of ethnic difference in propaganda posters about national unity and progress. Contemporary Vietnamese notions of ethnic groups draw on a historical trajectory that involves colonial racial classifications as well as the anti-colonial notion of "the people." The inclusion of ethnic minorities in official portrayals of the people has roots in the historical conditions of Vietnam's nation-building and the armed struggle for independence. Equally important, the visual appropriation of the markers of ethnic and national difference projects national unity and progress through the mapping of variety and backwardness on highland ethnic groups. We argue that the visual emphasis on ethnic and regional diversity in the Vietnamese public sphere is in fact about national unity and state control. The recent traffic in minority artifacts and in paintings of ethnic minorities, and the emergence of minority culture shows are fuelled by Western tourists' interest in encounters with non-modern and non-Westernized peoples. We argue that the transnational traffic in culture reinforces the Vietnamese projection of backwardness on highland peoples, and suggest that the facilitation of cultural exchange is simultaneously about state officials' control of the practices of identity.

Lonely Planet Comes to Sa Pa: Seeing the Hmong Through Others' Eyes and Their Own

Duong Bich Hanh, University of Washington, Seattle

Not until the early 1990s was Sa Pa in northwestern Vietnam opened up again to visitors, after almost fifty years of no outsiders other than lowland Kinh (Viet) migrating into New Economic Zones in the 1960s and government officials enjoying subsidized holidays. But nowadays, due to its magnificent landscape, favorable climate and diverse minority communities, Sa Pa has once again become one of the most popular destinations within Vietnam. It is featured in every tourist guidebook, and dozens of tour agencies in Hanoi provide color brochures with detailed information and pictures of the Sa Pa area. In this paper I explore how Sa Pa and especially its ethnic minorities are represented in the recent tourist literatures, by analyzing a wide range of guidebooks, tour agencies' materials, web sites, postcards, and other documents.

While outsiders are actively engaging in the new strategy of using ethnic minorities to draw tourists to Sa Pa, how do the Hmong in the area represent themselves to tourists? In many similar situations elsewhere, scholars claim that local people use "staged authenticity" or "constructed identity" as a way to attract tourists. Is this conclusion valid to the case of Sa Pa as well? Do the Hmong in Sa Pa wear Hmong clothes because they think that is what tourists look for, or simply because they are Hmong? The paper will discuss this question using young Hmong girls who have left their home villages to go live in town as a case study.

French Military and Missionary Ethnography in Upper Tonkin, 1885-1925: A Critical Assessment

Jean Michaud, University of Hull, England

At the time of France's conquest of Tonkin at the end of the 19th century, the Third Republic was busy back home promoting republican values, pushing the aristocracy out of military command, and seriously curtailing the Church's prerogatives. The professionalization of French ethnography had begun only with the 1789 Revolution, despite earlier systematic and prolonged contact of French observers with the 'savages' in New France (Canada). Through the course of the 19th century, while the evolutionist movement triggered further formalization of French anthropology as a discipline, political turmoil prevented it from reaching beyond academic circles. Even after a century of development, French ethnography in the colonies of Indochina still had to be incidental and instrumental.

Men without specific academic formation in observing unfamiliar cultures were pushed to the forefront of France's encounter with the Other, and asked to record their observations. In Upper Tonkin, these 'incidental ethnographers' were diplomats, military officers from middle-class families, and missionaries with peasant backgrounds. The way they conceived and represented the populations in upland northern Vietnam and the texts they produced bear the marks of their individuality. I argue that understanding the biographical details of these early ethnographers is the first step in evaluating the intellectual context of production of their writing and methods in order to critically assess their texts as ethnography, test its validity today, and measure its contribution to current debates on colonial missionary and military ethnography.

The Predicament of Local Cultures in the Mekong Delta: Representing Colonialism and Ethnicity

Philip Kenneth Taylor, University of Western Australia

The Vietnamese portion of the Mekong delta is home to a number of ethnic groups and religious sub-cultures with a distinct history of settlement in the area. Members of these groups identify serious threats to their way of life, which include the erosion of cultural heritage, the undermining of human capacities and social marginalization. The state is often represented as in opposition to local ethnic and religious cultures, leading some to describe it as colonialist in nature. Yet the predicament of local cultures may not be as bleak as is sometimes presented, for the fonts of identity in the Mekong delta are particularly subtle, resilient and diverse. This parallels considerable flux and diversity in portrayals of the 'national essence' by the state and Vietnam's social scientists.

Underlying these considerations, the majority of those living in the Mekong delta are poor and economically marginalized, environmentally vulnerable and subject to class and gender distinctions. The metaphor of colonialism, with its rich resonances in Vietnamese history, may be an apt way to describe the relations of domination to which local cultures are subject, but this process is best understood as multiple and overlapping. This brings into consideration not only inequalities within and between groups and their historically layered relationship to the state, but also the potent local effects of other distant loci of power such as large cities, distant centers of economic power and development projects along the course of the Mekong river, which further undermine the precarious conditions of life in the delta.

Session 109: Locality and Practice: Reinterpreting Vietnamese Christianity (Sponsored by the Vietnamese Studies Group)

Organizer: Wynn Wilcox, Cornell University

Chair: Michele Thompson, Southern Connecticut State University

Discussant: Peter C. Phan, Catholic University of America

Keywords: Vietnam, Christianity, 17th and 18th centuries, culture.

Existing historical studies have tended to interpret Christianity in Vietnam as inextricably tied to the presence of Europeans in Vietnam. Therefore, Christianity has typically been depicted as something imposed upon unsuspecting Vietnamese from the outside. Not surprisingly, this perspective has oriented studies of Vietnamese Christianity toward European bringers of the religion, and away from Vietnamese practitioners of the faith. Consequently, we still know relatively little about the concrete realities of Vietnamese Christianity, particularly in the precolonial period, a gap the papers in this panel propose to address.

The papers in this panel suggest that both the development and the practice of Christianity in Vietnam were far more complex than has been previously understood. Christianity, as it developed in Vietnam, was very much the product of local adaptations, reflecting existing social and cultural realities. These papers explore these adaptive processes, both at the popular cultural and the elite political levels, revealing the complex negotiations that shaped emergent Christian practices in Vietnam. More specifically, the papers in this panel examine the relationships between missionaries and mandarins, catechists and ordinary Christians in Vietnam in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In looking at these relationships we hope to be able to contribute to a more balanced and more nuanced understanding of Vietnamese Christianity in this period, and of the political and cultural context in which it developed.

Reassessing Vietnamese Christianity in the Tay Son Period, 1771-1802

George Dutton, University of California, Los Angeles

Christianity in Viet Nam has roots dating to the early seventeenth century, yet few studies have examined this religion in its local context or looked closely at pre-nineteenth-century aspects thereof. This paper will examine Vietnamese Christianity in a particular political context, that of the Tay Son uprising of the last three decades of the eighteenth century. Scholars of European missionary activity and of Vietnamese peasant movements have both examined this period in some detail, but the accounts of each have substantial flaws. Scholars of the missionary movements have too frequently ignored Vietnamese Christians as they focused on the spiritual struggles and occasional martyrdoms of European clerics. Vietnamese historians of the Tay Son uprising have equally distorted the realities of this period by portraying the rebels as very sympathetic to the new faith, when in reality Tay Son attitudes toward Christianity were far more complex, vacillating between tolerance and forceful repression.

My paper will consider both the constantly shifting actions and attitudes of Tay Son leaders toward this religious minority, and the responses of members of Vietnamese Christian communities during this period. In doing so, my paper will show that Tay Son actions with regard to Christianity most frequently reflected political and military calculations rather than ideologically-motivated suspicion of the faith. Moreover, the paper will demonstrate that rather than constituting an exceptional period in Vietnamese history in terms of attitudes toward Christianity, the period of the Tay Son regime was one of continuity, offering obvious parallels to regimes that preceded and followed it.

The Bishop and the Prince: A New Look at an Overblown Relationship

Wynn Wilcox, Cornell University

This paper examines one of the most analyzed personal relationships in Vietnamese history. It suggests that the relationship between Ba Da Loc (The Bishop of Adran, Pigneau de Behaine) and Crown Prince Nguyen Phuc Canh has become overemphasized in colonial and nationalist historiography because of the use of both figures as prototypical stereotypes of the French colonizer and the Vietnamese collaborator. In fact, neither figure can be seen as prototypically French or Vietnamese, because neither seems to be concerned with their respective ethnicities or national states. This relationship has also been used to generate a foundational myth about the connection between Christianity and the French colonization of Vietnam. Pro-colonial authors use the Bishop as an example of the French Catholic civilizing mission in Vietnam, while nationalist authors claim that the Bishop demonstrates the clear link between Christianity and the imposition of French colonial domination. Because of their desire to use the relationship between the Bishop and the Prince as an allegorical device, these interpretations make the relationship out to be more dramatic than it appears to have been. The relationship between these is best understood as an extended relationship between teacher and student. Canh, like many students, was at times in awe of his mentor; at others, he rebelled against the Bishop. This relationship saw many of the vicissitudes of a relationship between a middle-aged teacher and a bright teenage student, including resistance and the distraction of the temptations of sex and drugs.

The Outlook of Native Catechists in Jesuit-Led Christian Communities in Vietnam, 1629-1665

Brian Ostrowski, Cornell University

The existence of a well-trained corps of commissioned spiritual leaders, or catechists, has often been credited for the success of the early Jesuit mission in seventeenth-century Vietnam. The writings of both Jesuit missionaries and native catechists themselves suggest ways in which the catechists conceived of their role in the Jesuit community and a wider world Christendom. The catechists thoroughly enmeshed themselves in the international Jesuit community. They devoted themselves to the maintenance of spiritually fervent Catholic communities, were open to international travel for education and other purposes, and came to share many of the missionaries' attitudes toward affairs not only religious, but political and social as well. At the same time, the catechists maintained a deep intimacy with Vietnamese customs, local geography, administration, and a popular sense of the past. Their ability to straddle the intellectual and emotive worlds both of Jesuit Christianity and of Vietnamese tradition uniquely qualified them to communicate the spiritual instructions of the missionaries to native Christians, and in turn to Vietnamese tradition, uniquely qualified them to communicate the spiritual instructions of the missionaries to native Christians, and in turn to communicate the needs and aspirations of the local faithful to the Church hierarchy.

Session 128: Ethnic Dynamics and Policies in Vietnam (Sponsored by the Vietnam Studies Group)

Organizer: Daniel Goodkind, U.S. Census Bureau

Chair: David Marr, Australian National University

Discussant: Neil L. Jamieson, Independent Consultant

Keywords: Vietnam, ethnicity, policy, environment, population.

In recent decades, Vietnamese authorities have attempted to forge a sense of national unity within an ethnically diverse society, incorporating ethnic groups within an overarching political structure. Yet over the past few years, ethnic conflicts in Vietnam have drawn increasing attention. Riots in the central highlands, the proposed forced migration of tens of thousands of ethnic minorities in Son La to make way for hydroelectric projects, and other inter-ethnic clashes threaten to spoil the image of a unified ethnic fabric. In addition to reflecting tensions which took root decades or even centuries ago, these conflicts have been sparked by current disparities in living conditions, development plans amidst market reforms, and mismatches between local and national policies.

Our panel examines the underlying dynamics and policies associated with interethnic relations in Vietnam as well as prospects for such relations in the future. Our wide temporal scope begins with an examination of ethnic policies in the colonial era that shaped the composition of military personnel. The colonial era provides a comparative foil for remaining papers which focus on contemporary Vietnam. The demographic aspects of ethnic group size, growth, and distribution are detailed through results from recent censuses. A review of public policies towards ethnic minorities over the past two decades illuminates strategies and challenges for encouraging national unity. Finally, recent ethnic unrest in the central highlands are traced to changes in local land rights policies.

Pan-Colonial Roots of Ethnic "Balancing" in the Colonial Army of Indochina

Sarah Womack, University of Michigan

This paper will explore colonial understandings and manipulations of ethnicity through an examination of ethnic "balancing" practices in the garde indigene and penal corps of Indochina. It discusses primarily the exploitation-or, in some cases, the invention-of inter-ethnic tension in the creation of both the garde indigene and the penal corps, a policy which was the result of the failure of the French to find a "martial race" among "effeminate" Southeast Asians whose blood had been weakened by either Indian or Chinese transfusions. This approach was a technology of colonial rule borrowed by the French from the British in India, whose use and mythologies of "martial races" such as the Gurkhas was much admired by other colonial regimes. One of the key divide-and-rule practices of the colonial regime in Indochina, this attempt to cultivate and employ a sense of alienation between peoples of the same land contributed to the development of both the character and practices of the colonial state and the history of ethnic relations in Indochina. This paper thus examines not only ethnic definition and tension, but also the role of race and ethnicity in strategies of domination, colonialism as a global network, and the use of "modular" technologies of rule.

Ethnic Counting: Growth, Distribution, and Change Among Vietnam's Ethnic Populations Since 1979

Daniel Goodkind, U.S. Census Bureau

This paper examines the relative size and growth of ethnic group populations in Vietnam at the national and regional level. Data are drawn from national censuses of 1979, 1989, and 1999. In addition to analyzing past trends, the paper projects future ethnic populations as well as their regional distribution. A variety of simplifying assumptions underlying the projections are identified. In addition to offering empirical findings based on recent censuses, this paper emphasizes how the process of "ethnic counting" illuminates Vietnamese government authorities' thinking about ethnic issues. Clues to such thinking include the form in which census questions are asked, stated rules for determining ethnicity (e.g., for children of parents from different ethnic backgrounds), and the ways in which results are tabulated, interpreted, and presented to the public. The census also establishes a kind of referendum on ethnic identification, and such identification is potentially fluid over time due to a variety of contextual factors identified herein. We can determine whether such fluidity has in fact existed in Vietnam by comparing our population projections of ethnic groups from 1979 onwards with actual data from 1989 and 1999. Prospects for future fluidity in ethnic identification and the general implications of these findings are discussed.

Becoming Socialist or Becoming Vietnamese: Ethnic Minorities in the Doi Moi Period in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Pamela McElwee, Yale University

There are fifty-four official ethnic groups in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and the treatment of minorities has always been a concern of the state, starting with the earliest proclamations of the Indochinese Communist Party in the 1930s. Particularly following reunification in 1975, various policies were implemented to transform the minorities in the name of socialism, and eliminate harmful 'feudal' societies. It was through a common identity as socialist that national unity among the Vietnamese and the minorities would be achieved. However, many of these policies-including transmigration, resettlement of swiddening agriculturalists, and regulation of traditional rites and customs-had the opposite effect and contributed to discontent and strife between minority and majority populations. However, in line with the reformation of state policies towards market economics (known as Doi Moi) that began in 1986, many of these policies for ethnic minorities are also being reformed. This paper will review the state policies toward minorities over the last 25 years, particularly focusing on recent changes in policy, and will assess their implementation at the local level in several research fieldsites. The paper will particularly look at two recent events in Vietnam directly related to the national policies on minorities: a corruption scandal involving the national ministry for minorities, and large scale protests by minorities in the Central Highlands in the spring of 2001, which have prompted a security crackdown in that area. The paper will conclude with an assessment of future trends for ethnic minority policies in Vietnam.

Changing Land Rights and Land Use Histories: The Role of Forests in Ethnic Communities in Dak Lak Province, Central Highlands

Huu Nghi Tran, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development

The Central Highlands of Viet Nam contain some of the last remaining natural forests in the whole country, and are also the traditional homelands of many ethnic minorities. However, in the years since reunification, this area has been the site of rapid changes in land use, mainly attributable to in-migrants who have come as agricultural pioneers to plant coffee and other cash crops. The migration and deforestation has in many cases completely altered the traditional land use systems of the indigenous groups, who once practiced shifting cultivation and used the forests for various subsistence and spiritual purposes. This has caused tension and recent clashes over land rights.

Along with Viet Nam's transition to a market economy, long-term land use rights are now being allocated to individuals, rather than continuing state control of all land. However, forest lands have not been allocated as quickly or successfully as agricultural land, and in most cases, forests remains under state control. However, in Dak Lak Province, allocation of stocked forestry land has been taking place, particularly allocation to whole communities of indigenous minorities. This is the only area in Viet Nam where this type of allocation is occurring. This paper will discuss this local experiment, and how state law is being adapted to the local realities of Dak Lak, a particularly important issue given recent land conflicts in the area. The paper will conclude with a look at the environmental and social effects of the new policy on indigenous communities such as the Jarai and M'Nong groups.

Session 173: The Vietnamese Body: Memory, Myth, and Geo-Politics in Viet Nam and the Diaspora

Organizer: Thu-huong Nguyen-vo, University of California, Los Angeles

Chair: Jayne Werner, Long Island University

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

Keywords: body, gender, class, race, war memory.

This panel examines Vietnamese bodies as the material sites where active agency intersects with social and historical structures of memory, gender, class and race in villages, cities, and diasporic spaces. One paper studies how village adolescents craft their identities as young men and women on the corporeal topography of male and female bodies, given the collective memories of past war violence. Another examines the contestations over truth and normative gender values by a group of village mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law after viewing a state-promoted film in which the state reclaims the female body as a site of mythical construction in the post-socialist era. The remaining two studies deal directly with how global processes play out on the intimate landscape of the body. One paper examines garment workers' use of global body products in negotiations of class and femininity in rural/urban geographies and the shifting landscape of global production and consumption. The final paper analyzes how white Australians police the bodies of Vietnamese immigrants, marking their danger and disorder, as a mean of reasserting larger geo-political differences between East and West and to reinscribe the whiteness of Australians at a historical moment when Australia is dependent on Asian economies. Together, the papers explore how extreme categories of purity and danger are used in discipline and self-discipline of bodies. The panel is designed to encourage discussion across geographic and disciplinary spaces with its multi-disciplinary focus (anthropology, cultural studies, political science, geography) and its inclusion of rural, urban, and diasporic contexts.

Incorporated Warfare Memories and Sexuality: Vietnamese Adolescents' Construction of Identities

Helle Rydstrom, Linkoping University, Sweden

This paper addresses the ways in which a violent past of warfare and dramatic bodily and sexual maturation influence rural Vietnamese adolescents' ways of crafting their identities as young women or men. The paper draws on anthropological fieldwork conducted in a rural community, which is located in northern Vietnam.

During the last century, Vietnam has been engaged in several wars. While generations of Vietnamese have been brought up in wartime, today's adolescents represent the first Vietnamese generation of this century that has not been directly confronted with the violence of wars. However, collective memories of brutal warfare pervade adolescents' perceptions of females, males, and their bodies. The reason is that ideas about femininity and masculinity are bound up to collective experiences regarding the ways in which violence neglects the boundaries of the human body and, by so doing, redefines the corporal topography of female and male bodies.

In addition, adolescents' increasing bodily maturity, has a profound impact on their configuration of a female or male identity. Because adolescents undergo tremendous bodily changes, they encounter assumptions about female and male sexuality. An intact hymen at marriage is still highly appreciated by many Vietnamese, and both female and male adolescents acquire knowledge about blood taboos and female impurity, which include that females should observe certain taboos while menstruating.

In this way, collective memories of warfare violence and contemporary body changes provide significant conditions for adolescents' constructions of identities as young women or men.

State Mythical Projection of Embodied Womanhoods: Mother-Daughter-in-Law Relations in the Red River Delta in Viet Nam

Jayne Werner, Long Island University

This paper examines the contestations over truth and normative gender values by a group of village mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law after viewing a state-promoted film in which the state reclaims the female body as a site of mythical construction in the post-socialist era. Using Altusser's notion of interpellation, the paper examines how gendered and embodied subjectivities are negotiated by women in response to state "hailing" via a state-produced popular film. The film "Me Chông Tôi" is used to elicit commentary from a group of mothers-in-law and a separate group of daughters-in-law about norms governing the ideal features of both womanhoods. The data was obtained in 1996, ten years after the launching of dôi môi. The paper finds differences in the way the two groups of women react to the film, and thus the way they respond to the hailing of the state. Some tentative interpretations are provided for why this is the case.

Class Geographies: Vietnamese Garment Workers' Consumption of Body Products

Thu-huong Nguyen-vo, University of California, Los Angeles

It is no longer news that garment workers in Viêt Nam, most of whom are women, are part of global production. But the questions regarding their class subjectivities have seldom been asked, perhaps because it seems self-evident that they would belong to a global (feminized) working class in the global economy. My investigation suggests we need to reexamine this assumption. The question I address is how these workers negotiate their class and gender subjectivities as consumers of global products in local contexts.

I interviewed garment workers in 2000, who came to Hô Chi' Minh City and its outskirts from rural areas. This paper explores the workers' consumption of globally and locally produced products to be used on the body-shampoo, soap, perfume, cosmetics, jewelry, clothing and accessories-to suggest that these bodies are sites where a balancing act takes place between the dreaming of a geographical and class elsewhere (e.g. overseas, Hô Chi' Minh City, middle class), and the assertion of a geographical place and class somewhere (e.g. Viêt Nam, rural origins, working class). As the landscape of global production shifts them into urban spaces, these workers attempt to draft a new geography in their use of products on their bodies through categories of beauty, purity, and hygiene negotiated locally in relation to urban middle-class femininity. Their class signification suggests intersections with constructions of gender, nation, and locality rather than a simple class location in the global economy.

The Geo-Politics of Bodies: Defining East and West on the "Aberrant" Bodies of the Vietnamese Diaspora

Allaine Cerwonka, Georgia State University

The paper examines the mapping and disciplining of "Asian" bodies in Australia by the police. I look at how the production of Asian bodies as "filthy" and the production of the Vietnamese immigrant community in particular as criminal is a means by which Anglo-Celtic Australians reconstruct the division between "the West" and "Asia" in the international landscape. Imagined geographical categories have been a means of coding and naturalizing the international political hierarchies of states. They have also been a means by which individual states like Australia have defined their own national identity as white and civilized in the past. These fictional "neat" borders between "the West" and "Asia" have been disrupted by the presence of Asian bodies on Australian streets in the last thirty years. This paper aims to contribute to our theories and empirical understandings of how national identity and international geography are constructed on Vietnamese bodies in highly local contexts.

Session 213: Foreign Military Transfers in Mainland Southeast Asian Wars: Adaptations and Rejections

Organizer: Christopher E. Goscha, Péninsule Indochinoise, Paris

Chair: Brantly Womack, University of Virginia

Discussants: Qiang Zhai, Auburn University; Stein Tonnesson, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo

Keywords: military, technology, arms, foreigners, Southeast Asia, Ming China, Japan, Europe, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia.

This panel has one main objective: To explore in pluri-disciplinary ways the importance of foreign military transfers in mainland Southeast Asian wars. As everywhere, external military technology, its transfer, and adaptations have played an important role in the history of mainland Southeast Asia. They will continue to do so. However, little research and reflection have gone into this subject. This panel would bring together three scholars, working on this question for mainland Southeast Asia. They would be asked specifically to reflect on the importance of foreign military transfers in critical and problematic ways, with special attention to questions of adaptation, rejection, and the overall importance of this phenomena.

Though focused on transfers to mainland Southeast Asia, this panel by no means excludes discussion of 'Southeast Asian' and 'national' technology transfers. This is a regional phenomena; the exchanges can flow in both directions, as these paper would argue. Moreover, this panel examines a variety of 'foreign' transfers, not just those coming from the West, but from other parts of Asia, and even those moving from one Southeast Asian state to another.

To get at this complex topic, this panel offers three critical studies, extending from the 'premodern' to 'modern' period: (1) The overland transfer of military technology from Ming China to upper mainland Southeast Asia (c. 1390s-1526); (2) the maritime transfer of military technology from Western Europe to lower mainland Southeast Asia (c. 16th-19th centuries); and (3) Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese technology transfers during the wars for Indochina (20th century).

This wider perspective would provide a rare opportunity to discuss critically similarities and differences in technology transfers across the region and time.

Transfer of Military Technology from Ming China to Northern Mainland Southeast Asia (c. 1390s-1526)

Laichen Sun, California State University, Fullerton

There are two assumptions regarding the spread of military technology to and from Southeast Asia. The first is that firearms appeared in Southeast Asia only after the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th century, while the second one is that the Chinese learned from the Vietnamese artillery technology. Thus the role of the Chinese in the spread of military technology to Southeast Asia has been ignored. On the one hand, this paper shows that from the late 14th century (more than 120 years before the appearance of the Portuguese in Southeast Asian waters in 1511), Chinese firearms and cannon started to spread to upper mainland Southeast Asia, including the land of the Maw Shan, Lan Na (Chiang Mai), and particularly Dai Viet. In this technological dissemination, war and trade were the two major agencies and Chinese soldiers and traders acted as important agents.

On the other hand, this research demonstrates that the Southeast Asians actively adopted and adapted the Chinese technology for their own political consolidation and territorial expansion, which had significant implications for mainland Southeast Asian history. This paper argues that several major historical events during the period in question, including the emergence of the Maw Shans and the subjugation of the Mon-Khmer speaking people, the golden age of Lan Na, and Dai Viet's southward expansion (the sack of Champa) and westward "long march" as far as the Irrawaddy River, and the rise of Mongmit and Mohnyn, need to be explained in the light of Chinese military technology and the absorption of it by the Southeast Asians.

Military Technology Transfers from Europe to Lower Mainland Southeast Asia (c. 16th-19th Centuries)

Frédéric Mantienne, Péninsule Indochinoise, Paris

During the 16th-18th centuries, the mainland kingdoms of Southeast Asia (Arakan, Burma, Siam, and Cambodia) were eager to enroll European mercenaries. These troops were used as royal guards, as well as elite force on the battle field. Their strength was based on their extensive use of firearms, muskets and guns. The two kingdoms of Dai-Viêt were not interested in mercenaries, but sought to import European-made guns and attract European founders. King Narai of Siam showed a real interest in importing European technology from Holland and France and in developing Western-styled manufactures in Siam (firearms and shipbuilding). In the 18th century, the Burmese army was still heavily relying on European mercenaries, mainly sailors and soldier-prisoners. They participated in the campaigns in Siam and in the capture of Ayuthia.

The 'import' of military technology was a particularity of Vietnam during the Tây-son civil war. Although the number of European soldiers and sailors who served with Nguyên Anh has been grossly exaggerated, this handful of Westerners nonetheless helped him to master modern European military techniques and deal with the much more numerous Tây-Son armies. Field artillery, infantry drill, fortifications, construction of European square rigged vessels were the main fields of this fascinating adaptation of European technologies to Vietnamese conditions. Although Gia long and Ming Mang tried to resist the increasing pressure of Europe in the early 19th century, they continued to purchase and build European type vessels and master the latest European military technologies and methods. From the arrival of Europeans in Asia until colonial conquest, Southeast Asian rulers made wide use of European military force.

The Asian Context of Mainland Military Science: Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese Military Transfers during the Vietnamese Resistance to the French

Christopher E. Goscha, Péninsule Indochinoise, Paris

This paper examines the Asian channels of the spread of military science into eastern mainland Southeast Asia during the 20th-century battles over Indochina. Most studies of modern military science in Southeast Asia assume either that the West or Western colonialism played the key role in military modernization or that there was little foreign influence during these wars of 'national liberation' against foreign intervention.

My goal is to muddy the waters methodologically and problematically. While Western military science was certainly important in the modernization of Southeast Asian armies, its entry and adaptation did not occur in the linear and simplistic ways colonial and nationalist writers would like us to believe.

Using the Vietnamese opposition to French Indochina, I argue there is an Asian context which needs to be taken into consideration when studying 20th-century military and technical transfers in Southeast Asia. I use three case studies to make my point. Part one argues that Japanese deserters who crossed over to the Viet Minh played an important early role in developing modern military science and training for the Vietnamese People's Army. Part two examines the importance of Chinese military contributions to the Vietnamese army, examining the Vietnamese sent to China for technical and military training (Whampoa) and the Chinese advisors dispatched to Vietnam to help defeat the French. How the Vietnamese adapted or rejected these Sino-Japanese military transfers is analyzed critically. The last part shows that the Vietnamese Army would, in turn, try to export military techniques to Laos and Cambodia to create armies there. The question of Lao and Khmer adaptations and rejections of this Vietnamese-brokered military science is crucial to understanding the limits of these Asian transfers.

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