Village Leaders and Can Bos
From rob@coombs.anu.edu.au Thu Apr 15 10:49:04 2004
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 18:00:15 +1100 (EST)
From: Rob Hurle <rob@coombs.anu.edu.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Village leaders and can bos
Jim Delaney enquired:
In Nghe An province, I have increasingly heard village leaders (truong ban or truong thon) referred to as cadres or can bo by both villagers and other local officials. I may be quite wrong, but my feeling is that the reference to village leaders as state officials is rather new. I have noted these
Sorry, I can't comment on the usage of "ca'n bo^." in this particular context, but I note that the word is not used just for "state officials". I have a library readers' card from the National Library in Hanoi, and it declares me to be "ca'n bo^." - maybe there was no other classification, but I have seen the term used elsewhere in this very general way. Hope this may shed some light.
Cheers,
Rob Hurle
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Rob Hurle Tel: +61 2 6247 2397
Faculty of Asian Studies, ANU
PO Box 4013 Fax: +61 2 6247 2397
Ainslie Cell phone: 0417 293 603
Australia e-mail: rob@coombs.anu.edu.au
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From vern.weitzel@undp.org Thu Apr 15 10:49:20 2004
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 14:12:56 +0700
From: Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel@undp.org>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Village leaders and can bos
Staff in our office have been referred to as ca'n bo^ and we are not
State officials.
Vern
From bodemer@hawaii.edu Thu Apr 15 10:49:25 2004
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 11:18:56 -1000
From: Margaret Barnhill Bodemer <bodemer@hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Village leaders and can bos
Adding to Rob and Vern's comments that the term is not only used for "state/village officials", many of the researchers that I've met who are attached to various institutes in Hanoi were described to me as "can bo" also.
In addition to the complexity/fluidity of language in general, Delaney's original question also highlights issues of translation in our researches on VN...what is meant by "village leader" these days, anyway?
Margaret Barnhill Bodemer
Department of Anthropology
University of Hawaii, Manoa
From jmdelane@yahoo.ca Thu Apr 15 10:49:30 2004
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 14:21:33 +0700
From: Jim Delaney <jmdelane@yahoo.ca>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Village leaders and can bos
Dear all,
The question of "what is a village leader" these days is at the heart of what I am asking. It is in some ways a translation issue and in some ways a political issue. The word can bo is used in many contexts and does not uniquely refer to state employees.
In most uplands rural communes where I work, the word can bo would be reserved for commune officials, officials of large enterprises such as state forest enterprises (now management boards) and the official representatives of mass organizations. I have never heard a village level mass organization leader referred to as a can bo. And, increasingly, I hear the village leaders referred to as can bo. My own understanding of the term is that it refers to somebody with an official job. University lecturers are called can bo, as are researchers in research institutes (both of which are usually government jobs). Market sellers are not can bo. I would therefore translate it as being closer to `personnel' or those who work in lager, often hierarchical organizations.
Young business people like to laugh at times and refer to each other can bo and call their friends dong chi. When I refer to myself as a can bo of an NGO in front of an educated Hanoi or HCMC professional, I am certain to get a laugh. In the countryside, I am called a can bo by default.
What does this mean, then, when elected village leaders are now referred to as can bo and increasingly delivering social services such as agricultural extension and access to benefits under the HEPR program? Villages are increasingly acting as units of the state. Village boundaries are now at times changed by District level geographic cadres, and I have seen cases where villages have been split in two to deal with population growth.
It could be that the reservation of the term can bo for village leader would be simply to indicate that they are more than a farmer, and do have other knowledge and/or responsibilities. It could also mean that the village leader is increasingly seen as an agent of the state.
Best,
Jim
Jim Delaney
Technical Coordinator, Viet Nam
CHF - partners in rural development
www.chf-partners.ca
From jhannah@u.washington.edu Thu Apr 15 10:49:35 2004
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 00:22:16 -0800 (PST)
From: Joe Hannah <jhannah@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Village leaders and can bos
Jim and all,
This is an interesting thread. I agree with Jim's assessment that this is only partly a translation issue. Understanding the term gives us outsiders a better understanding of the system and the power dynamics within it.
However, Jim (to single you out), I am confused about the question, "What is a village leader?" because it doesn't sit well with my particular experience. Your other comments also seem to indicate a different experience to mine: "What does this mean, then, when elected village leaders are now referred to as can bo and increasingly delivering social services..." And: "Villages are increasingly acting as units of the state." And: "the village leader is increasingly seen as an agent of the state."
In my very limited and decidedly low-land experience in Vietnamese villages, the "leader" is always the People's Committee cadre. The village (xa~) is certainly an administrative division of teh Nha` Nu+o+'c . Everything I know about "village" (or perhaps the more common translation, especially in the north, "commune") is a state construct.
So, in regards to your question(s), are you juxtaposing some more "traditional" form of village against the state-imposed one? Are "elected village leaders" not elected through the state-controlled processes? Am I completely missing the boat, here?
(Isn't it wonderful how many "different Vietnams" there are out there -- nearly one for each researhcer!)
Cheers,
Joe Hannah
Department of Geogrpahy
University of Washington
From adam@aduki.com.au Thu Apr 15 10:50:23 2004
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 22:02:11 +1100
From: "Adam @ Aduki" <adam@aduki.com.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Village leaders and can bos
I am not sure, but perhaps apart from what Jim and Joe and others have mentioned there are some other interesting things to consider when talking about the construction of images of leadership in Vietnam's rural areas.
First, much effort has been, with good intentions, put by various aid donors into the development of relatively autonomous (hopefully) counterparts in rural areas, often focused upon the distinction between the commune and the village (let us say 'thon') - village development committees, for example. There is obvious concern about working too closely with People's Committees and Mass Organizations, although this often seems to work well. This 'village option' is re-represented in the recent World Bank report for the CG meeting late last year, which has hopes for progress through the democratic selection of 'village leaders'. At times, I have heard it argued (eg in the Sida MDPA) that the village level is NOT (I recall hearing) part of the state and so village leaders are NOT, therefore, like commune cadres - in the same position as the 24 (or is it 25?) 'suat' or positions paid for by the state budget at commune level, which include the Mass Organization leadership, the police, the Party leadership, some of the People's Committee and Council and so on. Pertinent to this is the formal position as I understand it, which is that village leaders 'thon truong' receive an allowance from the state and also have reporting responsibilities to higher levels. This leads me to think that discussions about the possible roles of village leaders are usefully seen in perspective. And of course as ever in Vietnam there is massive variation, both between places and between the formal and actual situations.
Second, we know that there is an extensive literature in Vietnam studies (as elsewhere) arguing that communes act as 'negotiated interfaces' between 'inside' and 'outside', so that the political science literature on the essentially blurred nature of the state - society boundary seems highly applicable. What is happening in this murk, though? What I am still very unclear about, as a matter of fact, is whether there yet exist any NEW formal mechanisms to operate in cases where the formal elections (such as of village leaders) run into problems: more widely, are then any implementation decrees that tell, for example the district, what to do if the 'Democracy at the Base' or related decrees are, for some reason, deemed to have been implemented wrongly (the 'Florida Question'). There are of course existing systems (eg khieu nai) as part of the system of People's Democracy.
Third, the evidence from the new-style cooperatives, as the result of Party Decree # 68 (stating that "There should be a strong development of cooperative economic forms (in the rural areas), with reform of the activities of SOEs in agriculture and the rural areas and the development of SOEs in distant and remote regions ... There should be a continued development of the autonomous role of the family and individual economies. There should be a concentration upon guiding a strong development of farmers' forms of economic cooperation in accordance with order # 68 ... and the Cooperative Law, with consequent implementation in many but not all provinces as part of local plans) is that what could be called 'Leninist' practices are still around. Our paper on this, which has been on the aduki website since 2002 (in English as well as in good Vietnamese translation), remains I think what we English call the 'King Charles' Head' of these discussions. I have no trouble believing that provinces and districts and communes do vary, but in the three provinces we looked at, two had a general plan to implement 100% re-establishment of cooperatives; I visited Thai Thuy in Thai Binh in late 1996, and the district had such a plan. Who knows exactly what the wider picture is?
Regarding Joe Hannah's comments, I do find it hard to agree that the 'leader' is "always the People's Committee cadre". Knowing where real power lies in such communities is always very hard. Could it be the Party Secretary? Perhaps sometimes. To say that the state controls elections is to confront abundant evidence of lack of control (eg Thai Binh 1997), just to start with. I tend to feel comfortable with the idea that much is negotiated, but that the terms of the negotiation are often tightly circumscribed. Some may feel that this is a cop out.
On the 'can bo' issue: I once got ribbed on a rural project I was working with for very unusually wearing a jacket (tweed) by a Vietnamese friend who said I was 'can bo lam'.
When Jim writes that "It could be that the reservation of the term can bo for village leader would be simply to indicate that they are more than a farmer, and do have other knowledge and/or responsibilities. It could also mean that the village leader is increasingly seen as an agent of the state." This would seem to be correct, and not mutually exclusive, though I am not sure whether the term 'agent' - suggesting a 'principal-agent' relationship - might not confuse me. Perhaps the sense, though, that Jim is intending is that, as in all such relationships, the agent may well do their own thing rather than what is intended by the principal - and then what happens?
Adam
Website: www.aduki.com.au
Contact details:
PO Box 2096, Ivanhoe E,
Melbourne Vic 3079, AUSTRALIA
Tel 61 3 9497 3493; Fax 61 3 9497 4856
From ProschanF@folklife.si.edu Thu Apr 15 10:50:10 2004
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 09:28:21 -0500
From: Frank Proschan <ProschanF@folklife.si.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Village leaders and can bos
To point, but outside of Vietnam's borders: the Thai government is currently moving to abolish the election of local leaders at the "tambon" (i.e., sub-district, extra-village--more or less like VNese "xa") and replace them with a system of political appointment. The government's defense of this move in the face of strong critiques from advocates of democracy is that the tambon chiefs are the government's representatives and not the people's leaders. Elections conveyed the misleading impression that the tambon chief should somehow represent the interests or aspirations of his (non)"constituents" rather than being the hand of the state.
Best,
Frank Proschan
Save Our Sounds
From OJHM.Salemink@fsw.vu.nl Thu Apr 15 10:50:59 2004
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 23:01:19 +0100
From: Oscar Salemink <OJHM.Salemink@fsw.vu.nl>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Village leaders and can bos
I had prepared very similar remarks about the more basic question being "what is a village?" and pointing to the distinction between xa~ and the various types of la`ng, a^'p, xo'm, ban etc. When I came back from a meeting this had been overtaken by the subsequent discussion (so I won't repeat what others have said more eloquently). But anyway, this suggests that a number of people are on the same wavelength on this question. The point that I would like to emphasize here relates to the implications of Adam's 'village option' for development practice in Vietnam. The conflation of commune with community results in a confusion between commune officials (can bo) and community leaders (and this could be elders, notables, religious leaders) in many 'participatory' development interventions, thus defeating the stated purpose of most participatory development theories. Strange that so many scholars seem to be in agreement on this, without there being any discernable effects in developmentland.
Oscar Salemink
From adam@aduki.com.au Thu Apr 15 10:51:14 2004
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 09:39:47 +1100
From: "Adam @ Aduki" <adam@aduki.com.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: FW: Village leaders and can bos
To come in to what Oscar has written.
I think that it is perhaps worth pointing out that the key agent in development land, as Oscar puts it, is the VCP, and rightly so. Donors are, and rightly, the minor partners in the process.
I think that the dance between different formal levels in the processes we are discussing does not just balance between the dyad of `xa' and `thon' (leaving aside regional variations) for, as I found out from the old days, if there are important issues, then the sub-thon xom may come into play. Here a useful triad of English terms is commune-village-hamlet (hamlet being a double diminutive in English etymology, and so easily read as `small'). At that time, the hamlet (still refered to as `doi' in Red River delta postal addresses?) became more important as the interaction with the formal made it so - then, the advocacy of `xom/doi' based production units, which had important economic issues to contend with and over. But this was then.
My impression is that we can find situations where either the thon or the xa can be identified with the lang (and so with certain emotions). This in part depends upon the history of amalgamations, how many `dinh' there are in the `xa' and so on. It also depends upon interests.
The problem, it seems to me, for any developer is the way in which intentionality becomes mediated through negotiations with the local. This is true for the VCP, in what happens to formal structures (as `dan' and `can bo' negotiate with each other and with outsiders to give them local meaning); and for those foreigners in `development land' who have similar but of course different agendas. Is the village (`thon') development board capable of articulating the interests of the local population, in areas such as extension, crop planning, marketing, participatory decision-making and local infrastructure planning? This is often a key question for aid projects. How different is it from the VCP's question - do the People's Committee, Mass Organisations and the Party together provide a basis for development initiatives in the rural areas? I do not think it is so very different. Both approaches seek intentional change, based upon certain views of such a project, such as the belief that we can know what correct development is, and link this to intentionality. There are things to discuss about such views.
Using local structures as development mechanisms leads to problems. If there is `success', in terms of implementing development, then is the local formal structure effective this because it is part of a wider outcome where the local Party beyond the commune (or thon) supports such things, so these people `look upwards'? Or is it part of an outcome where local interests are better seen as popular, so that it `looks downwards'? And, crucially, how does one know the difference, in practice? I think that many academics would argue that there is very little in the way of firm foundations to allow us to agree on what a correct answer to the latter actually is: so we expect people to keep on arguing about it. This seems to be a fact of life.
It seems to me that the latter point is such, and that it is so hard to answer questions about structures in ways that would access cause-effect relations, that viewing change in these terms, as `development', is really the main issue. Developmentland is then what? A set of authority fields?
Adam
Website: www.aduki.com.au
Contact details:
PO Box 2096, Ivanhoe E,
Melbourne Vic 3079, AUSTRALIA
Tel 61 3 9497 3493; Fax 61 3 9497 4856
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 09:38:38 +1100
From: "Adam @ Aduki" <adam@aduki.com.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Village leaders and can bos
PS Closer to Oscar's note, it is worth recalling that the senior members
of the new-style cooperative management teams were, when they were first
set up, allowed by the Ministry of Finance to count years in post towards
their state pensions. This suggests that they were less private and
more public in their essential and negotiated nature.
www.aduki.com.au
Contact details:
PO Box 2096, Ivanhoe E,
Melbourne Vic 3079, AUSTRALIA
Tel 61 3 9497 3493; Fax 61 3 9497 4856
From maigray@yahoo.com Thu Apr 15 10:51:22 2004
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 21:19:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael Gray <maigray@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Village leaders and can bos
Dear Jim and all,
In my limited experience in the highlands, I was amazed at the variation in local patterns of power relations, as others more knowledgeable than I have already noted. Nonetheless I was surprised to see Jim write ... [perhaps] "the village leader is increasingly seen as an agent of the state." I don't think it's "increasingly" - I would have thought the truong ban was *always* considered an agent of the state, at least in the living memory of most villagers (let's say post-1954, in the north).
Working exclusively in the highlands, my Vietnamese colleagues approached villages with the belief - only sometimes realized - that there would be a 'traditional leader' alongside the state-appointed officials like the truong ban. This traditional leader, the gia lang (village elder), or sometimes the clan leader (truong ho? I don't know the translation) would be the "real" voice of the communitee, as opposed to the truong ban, who was just a lowly bureaucrat.
Now, obviously, this structure is nowhere near universal. Sometimes there is no gia lang, and sometimes everyone over the age of 70 is a gia lang. Once or twice the gia lang was also the commune Party leader (ong bi thu xa). But in the dozen-or-so villages I visited in the highlands (Hmong and Dao in the north, and very isolated MaCoong and Arem villages in Quang Binh), I don't recall the truong ban as being a powerful figure - meaning "the most respected voice" of the village, etc.
Best,
Mike Gray