Neil Jamieson
From: Robert Silano <silanora@mac.com>
Subject: Neil Livingston Jamieson
Date: March 17, 2015 7:52:59 PM EDT
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear VSGers: I received a call from Ginnie Jamieson earlier today informing me that Neil died yesterday. I spoke with him on last Friday for almost an hour and while I recognized that he was failing still found the news both shocking and sad. Neil had been my closest friend and colleague in Saigon during the late 1960s and early 1970s, serving as a touchstone to my initial understanding of Vietnam and its people. No arrangements for a funeral or memorial service have been made as yet, but I will pass along whatever information I glean from Ginnie in due course. Bob Silano (Independent Researcher)
Very sad. David Marr and I were just discussing Neil and his contributions and legacies yesterday.
I worked closely with Neil from Hanoi and Bangkok in the early and mid 90s, when Ford supported his presence and work with Winrock and others in Hanoi. In particular I remember with the greatest fondness many conversations about Vietnam and the Hanoi scene, and his gentle contributions to the programming strategy I was developing, some of which he probably didn't fully recognize he was making.
Taking him to a meeting I had with then-Gen Secy Do Muoi in early 1995 was a highlight. They found more to talk about than I might have imagined, but of course I should have known that would be the case....
I very much hope his unpublished translations, notes and other writings over the years will see an audience at some point.
Mark Sidel
Doyle-Bascom Professor of Law and Public Affairs
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Eric Henry and I enjoyed two trips out to Neil's place a few years ago. It is the house of a waterman, his wife's grandfather, around the corner from the slip.
We all talked and talked. First I remember Neil's stories about Obama's mother ducking in and out of Hawaii, doing nobody knew what.
Changing the world, as it turned out, with micro-credit and her son.
I also remember Neil speaking of the skills of the Special Forces men he knew in the Philippines where he was an enlisted Army signals man, a listener. That was near the beginning of the story.
At the end he praised the Marines, a squad of riflemen with a captain and pistol, who took him out of Saigon. In between was all about not wearing a gun.
Neil had left the service when they wouldn't send him to Viet Nam. He went to Washington to knock on doors with a letter from a society lady his mother knew.
He was eating lunch at a restaurant when an old-time super-spook overheard him from the next table and tapped him, on the shoulder. After that he was out and about in Viet Nam, talking to the people.
At first he slept at a base and would drive his jeep out the gate alone unarmed with the men gawking after him. He would do his business at a farm and the people would say, don't drive back that way, go this way.
And so he would arrive safe home. When it was all over he joined the profession of Edmund Leach and, well, of me, the university one that welcomes men and women who have done something or other and would like to figure it out.
What he did was write a book that has touched many. Hoang Ngoc Hien wrote a review of it titled "Understanding Neil Jamieson."
For both men understanding Viet Nam meant looking out of certain pairs of eyes at the common world. As Mark says there is a great deal that did not make it in the book.
Neil translated, as he told me, like doing a crossword. By that he meant both running through synonyms to see which one fit and also doing it in odd moments, waiting for this or that.
I have a stack of translations he asked me to see what I could do to get out, once in Ha Noi thirty years ago, and again a few years ago. I have not yet done that.
Cheers all -
Dan Duffy
This is very saddening. This is a great loss for the Vietnam studies community, not just for his scholarship but also because he was such a gentle, generous and friendly person.
Neil was an amazing source of knowledge about Vietnam; I know he was admired within Vietnam as well for the amazing width and depth of his knowledge about Vietnamese culture and history. His Understanding Vietnam contains only a fragment of this knowledge. I now he was working on more publications, but the last time we met (in September 2013) he told me that he lacked the energy; I am afraid that we may no longer see the rest of it.
My thoughts are with Ginnie.
Oscar Salemink
Professor in the Anthropology of Asia
Dear List,
This is sad news indeed. I have very fond memories of spending time with him in Hanoi in 1995 when I was Resident Director of the CIEE program in Hanoi and he generously met with the students to share his knowledge of Vietnam. He and I also enjoyed speaking about art history as he was researching what became a thoughtful and intelligent account of "Doi Moi" in art that still resonates today. For those of you collecting his bibliography, check out: "The Evolving Context of Contemporary Vietnamese Painting," in Transition: New Vietnamese Painting, Siam Society, Bangkok, Thailand, 1995.
He will be missed.
Nora Taylor
I too am saddened by the news about Neil as I have known him since he was at the East-West Center in the early 1980s. I have long been impressed by many of his meticulously researched and well written works. I read Understanding Vietnam in its much longer draft form and subsequently adopted it for my course on Southeast Asia for many terms. His unique ability to combine literary and ethnographic research for the book has made it a classic. His work with upland minorities in Vietnam was pioneering and I benefited greatly from my exchanges with him for my own thinking about ethnic relations in Vietnam with reference to neighboring countries. He now belongs in the ancestral hall of those whose work laid the foundations of Vietnamese studies.
Biff
Charles Keyes
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and International Studies
University of Washington