Vietnamese Studies and Annual Meetings of the Association for Asian Studies

Chicago, March 22-25, 2001

1. Papers and Presentations on Vietnam

The number of panels and papers on Vietnam at the annual meetings of the Association for Asian Studies kept increasing, with 8 sessions focusing on Vietnam or having a significant Vietnam component. The number of panels with the exclusive focus on Vietnam (4) is larger than that on any other Southeast Asian country. The ideas for many of the Vietnam panels were discussed at the VSG business meetings in San Diego. The VSG listserve also greatly facilitated the exchange and dissemination of ideas for panel organization. However, the number of Southeast Asia panels remained very modest. Of the 225 scholarly sessions at the AAS meetings, only 19 focused on Southeast Asia. This is lower than in some other years, such as at the AAS meetings in Honolulu in 1996.

Here is a list of sessions and papers on Vietnam at the AAS meetings in Chicago.

1. Vietnam and the State in the 1950s: Arguments, Visions, Implementations (organized by Shawn F. McHale, George Washington University; chaired by Helen Chauncy, University of Victoria)

"Marxism, Dissent, and the State: Implications of Tran Duc Thao, 1945-1958" by Shawn McHale

""First Comes the Land Reform Team, then Heaven": State-Village Relations during Land Reform in the DRV (1953-1957), by Martin Grossheim, Humboldt University, Berlin

+ "Nguyen Manh Ha: a Voice for a Reunified Vietnam" Thi-Lien Tran, Institute des Etudes Politiques de Paris

Discussants: Helen Chauncy and Bill Turley (Southern Illinois University)

2. Competing Knowledges in Post-Revolutionary Indochina (chaired by Charles Keyes, University of Washington)

+ "Mediumship versus the State: Conflicting Epistemologies in Vietnam" by Barley Norton, University of Surrey, Roehampton

+ ""We Were Younger Then, and It Was Different": Vietnamese Factory Women Reconsider Their Past" by Mila Rosenthal, London School of Economics plus one paper on Cambodia by William Collins (U California at Berkeley) and one on Laos by Takeko Iinuma (Cornell University); discussed by Charles Keyes

3. Competing Realities in Post-Revolutionary Indochina (organized and chaired by Shaun K. Malarney, International Christian University [Tokyo])

"Do Spirits of the Dead Exist? Divergent Ontologies of the Dead in Northern Vietnam" by Shaun Malarney

+ "Abortion Conventionalized, Abortion Ritualized: Competing Perceptions of Fetal Life in Contemporary Vietnam" by Tine Gammeltoft, University of Copenhagen

plus one paper by Grant Evans (Univ. of Hong Kong) on Laos and another by Lindsay French (Rhode Island School of Art and Design) on Cambodia; discussed by Richard Madsen (Univ. of California at San Diego).

4. Village Modern: Transforming Tradition in Rural Northern Vietnam (organized and chaired by Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Harvard University)

+ ""Village Affairs": The Making of Communal Identity through the Revivification of Rituals in a Northern Vietnamese Village" by Truong
Huyen Chi, University of Toronto

+ "Praying for Profit: The Cult of the Lady of the Treasury" by Le Hong Ly, Institute of Popular Culture, Hanoi

+ "Manure and Modernity: Villagers and Ethnographers in Dong Ky Village" by Hue-Tam Ho Tai

Discussants: Neil Jamieson (George Mason University) and John Kleinen (University of Amsterdam)

5. Writing and Narrating Socialist Personhoods: State Tropes, Autobiography, and the Rhetoric of Self-Presentation in Vietnam (chaired by Narquis Barak, Harvard University)

+ "Individual Stories and Social Commitment: The Case of Vietnamese Intellectuals in 1920s Saigon"

+ "State Tropes and Personal Tales: Telling and Writing Female Traders' Lives in Vietnam" by Ann Marie Leshkowich, College of the Holy Cross

+ "Remaking One's Life" (Lam lai cuoc doi): Biographical Construction as a Means of Survival in Rural Vietnam" by Narquis Barak

Discussant: Mary Steedly, Harvard University

6. Roundtable on the Challenges of Field Research in Vietnam (organized by Hy V. Luong, University of Toronto, and chaired by Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Harvard University)

Presentations by John Kleinen (U of Amsterdam), Shaun Malarney (International Christian University), Jayne Werner (Long Island University), Michael Digregorio (UCLA), Pamela Chieu Nguyen (Univ. of Colorado), Truong Huyen Chi (U. Toronto), Ann Marie Leshkowich (College of the Holy Cross), Steve Graw (Cornell University), Hy Van Luong (U Toronto)

7. Wealth and Poverty in Vietnam: Local Dynamics, State Policies and Global Linkages (chaired by Hy Van Luong, University of Toronto)

+ "Bringing the Farm Back in: The Rural Development Debate and Overseas Remittances in Vietnam's Mekong Rice Bowl" by Steve Graw (Cornell University)

+ "Wealth and Poverty in Vietnam: A Sociological Perspective" by Tuong Lai, Institute of Social Sciences in Ho Chi Minh City

+ "Poverty, Household Structure, and Demography: An Analysis of their Sociocultural Dimensions in Ho Chi Minh City" by Hy V. Luong

Discussant: Charles Hirschman, Univ. of Washington

8. Rationalities of Economy: The Institutional Origins of Post-Socialist Developments in Vietnam and China (organized by Regina Abrami, University of California, Berkeley; and chaired by Mark Selden, State University of New York at Binghamton)

+ "Economies under Different Commands: Socialist Norms and the Making of Market Power in Contermporary Hanoi and Chengdu," by Regina Abrami

+ States of Emergency: Economic Crisis and the Renovation of Craft Villages in the Red River Delta," by Micheal Digregorio, Univ. of California at Los Angeles

plus one paper on China by Xiaolin Pei (Cornell University); Discussants:Mark Selden, and Melanie Beresford (Macquarie University)

Other papers on Vietnam

+ "Under the Japanese Umbrella: South Vietnam's Hoa Hao during the Japanese Occupation and Aftermath" by My-Van Tran, University of South Australia

+ "Vietnamese Embassies and Literati Cultural Contact" by John Whitmore, Univ. of Michigan

The Fund for Reconciliation and Development, under the direction of John McAuliffe, also held its regular roundtable on educational exchanges with Indochina at the AAS meetings this year. John McAuliffe also made a brief announcement regarding the review of the US-Vietnam Trade Agreement at US Congress.

2. Future Conferences and Meetings: Information and Planning

1. The Association for Asian Studies and the European Asian Studies community will hold the second International Conference on Asian Studies in Berlin in August 2001. Wang Gungwu will be a keynote speaker at this conference.

2. The next EuroViet conference will be held in St. Peterbourg, Russia. It is currently scheduled for 2002.

3. Vietnamese organizers are seriously considering holding the second international conference in Vietnamese Studies in 2002 in Vietnam.

4. The next AAS meetings will be held in Washington, D.C. from April 4 to April 7, 2002. The deadline for panel/paper proposals is May 1, 2001 for border-crossing panels and August 3, 2001 for regular panels and individual papers.

As in previous years, AAS encourages a number of border-crossing panels that involve the participation of scholars from another regional specialty, another discipline, another country, or another historical concentration. AAS has funds to assist the participation of such scholars.
For example, if you want to organize a panel on "The myth of immobile peasantry" with two Asianists in mind, you may consider requesting financial assistance from AAS Border-Crossing Fund to invite an Africanist, an economist, among others, as a participant. The deadline for border-crossing proposals is May 1, 2000.

The Association of Asian Studies will continue providing a limited number of grants to scholars from the less wealthy Asian countries who will present papers at the AAS meetings. Panel organizers can apply to the AAS for these grants at the time of panel proposal submission if they want to invite scholars from Vietnam to present papers on their panels. Two scholars from Vietnam received these grants to present papers at the AAS meetings in Chicago.

At the business meeting of the Vietnam Studies Group, a number of themes were briefly discussed for AAS 2002 meetings:

a. Vietnamese Diaspora in France (contact person, Kim Loan Hill at Univ. of California at San Diego)
b. Smuggling, sea pirates, maritime activities (contact person, John Kleinen at University of Amsterdam)
c. Arts in Vietnam (contact person: Nora Taylor)
d. The State and Society: State of scholarship
e. The 9th Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party (contact person: Carl Thayer)
f. Feminist Theory and Vietnam Research (contact person: Jayne Werner)
g. Assessment of the influence of scholarship on Vietnam by Ralph Smith, Oliver Wolters, or George Kahin
h. Mass Media and the Public Sphere (contact person: Helen Chauncy)
i. Colonial Impact of Ethnology
j. The State and Village in Vietnam: an Historical Perspective (to be organized by John Whitmore, list already finalized)
k. A panel to be organized by Charlie Hirschman on the Vietnam Longitudinal Study in Ha Nam Ninh
l. Representations of minorities

I will provide the names of contact persons for themes (d), (g), (i), and (l) in a future message.

3. Report on VSG activities

a. Report on a funding proposal by Helen Chauncy, Hue-Tam Tai, and Hy V. Luong

In 2000, at the AAS meetings in San Diego, a number of VSG Executive Committee members met to draft a funding proposal in order to strengthen the activities of the Vietnam Studies Group in the Association of Asian Studies, both internally and in its relation with Vietnam specialists in other parts of the world. The proposal, kindly written up by Helen Chauncy, discusses the following areas for possible funding: maintaining and expanding communications through the electronic listserve to Vietnam specialists in Europe, Asia, and Australia; electronic archiving of scholarly exchanges; short-term visits by Vietnamese scholars to North America for conferences and scholarly exchanges; academic training in Vietnamese language; support for publications and translation. The proposal has been circulated to some foundations for consideration.

b. Report on activities within the VSG by Hy V. Luong

In the meantime, the extremely productive VSG listserve has been heroically maintained by Judith Henchy at the University of Washington with very limited financial support from VSG. The scholarly discussions are archived on the VSG website at www.lib.washington.edu/southeastasia/vsg

I would also like to thank VSG members who sent in their $10 annual VSG fees in the Spring of 2000. The VSG budget remains very modest. I will appreciate it if VSG members can pay the fees by making checks payable to the Vietnam Studies Group-AAS. Until a new chair of the VSG is elected and announced, the checks can still be sent to me at:

Hy V. Luong
Department of Anthropology
Sidney Smith hall 1039
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 3G3.

c. Report on International linkages by Hy Luong

As VSG Chair, I continued providing feedback to Vietnamese scholars on their proposal to the Ford Foundation on a secretariat in Vietnam to work towards an International Association of Vietnamese studies and on the second international conference in Vietnamese Studies. A formal proposal to the Ford Foundation will be submitted by scholars in Vietnam once it is given the green light by Vietnamese governmental and political authorities, hopefully in the spring or early summer 2001.

4. Report from Southeast Asia Council (Nora Taylor)

The AAS will have another round of funding for projects up to $20,000 each with its Development Fund. The proposals will continue being vetted first by its four area councils. The selection criteria include: a. broad application and potentially long-term impact on AAS activities and membership; b. matching fund possibility; and c. boundary-crossing potential.(enhancing interaction across geographical areas and disciplines).

5. Report on Ford Foundation programs in Vietnam (Oscar Salemink)

Oscar Salemink presented an overview of Ford Foundation activities in Vietnam. The funding had increased from 8.9 million dollars in 1995-97, to 12.1 million dollars in 1998-99, to 8 million dollars in 2000 alone. The Ford Foundation has funded activities in the following areas:

a. international cooperation (e.g., through the Institute of International Relations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
b. Poverty alleviation in the uplands (through technically oriented institutions like CRES at the National University of Hanoi and Hanoi Agricultural University)
c. Reproductive Health (emphasis on innovative projects to fill gaps left by other agencies)
d. Social Sciences: to facilitate access to international scholarship (in theory and methods); to reduce isolation from the field; to support curriculum development partly through research and the exchange of library resources and information; Anthropology/ethnology and sociology are two disciplines of priority as they deal with contemporary issues, and as they have not received sufficient attention from other international donors.
The Ford-Foundation-funded M.A. and research/post-doctoral fellowship program in Anthropology and Sociology made a number of awards in the third round of selection in early 2001. Ford has also funded an annual interdisciplinary training course in Vietnam, focusing on Anthropology, Economics, and Sociology. It is organized by the U.S. Social Science Research Council and Vietnam's National Center for Social Sciences and Humanities.
e. Arts and Culture: focus on cultural identity and arts management

6. Election of VSG Executive Committee members

Six VSG Executive Committee members have their term ending in 2001:

+ Hy V. Luong, Anthropology, U. Toronto
+ Hue-Tam Ho Tai, History, Harvard University
+ Christoph Giebel, History, University of Washington
+ Irene Norlund, Economic History, U. Copenhagen
+ Shawn McHale, History, George Washington U.
+ Helen Chauncy, History, U. Victoria

Six new members were (re-)elected at the VSG business meeting in Chicago, joining 5 continuing members on the VSG Executive committee. As of March 25, 2001, the VSG Executive Committee is composed of:

+ Anne Marie Leshkowich, Anthropology, College of Holy Cross (term ending in 2002)
+ Carl Thayer, Political Science, Australian Defense Academy (2003)
+ Nora Taylor, Art History, Arizona State U. (2003)
+ Kim-Loan Hill, History & Language, U Calif. San Diego (2003)
+ Martin Grossheim, History, Humboldt University, Berlin (2004)
+ Shaun Malarney, Anthropology, International Christian University (Japan) (2004)
+ Steve Graw, Development Sociology, Cornell University (2004)
+ Michael Digregorio, Environmental Studies, UCLA (2004)
+ Helen Chauncy, History, U. Victoria (2004)
+ Hy V. Luong, Anthropology, U. Toronto (2004)
+ Judith Henchy, editor of VSG Home Page, ex-officio (continuing)

The VSG executive committee will elect a Chair in the next few weeks.

Hy V. Luong

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	« Return to About the Organization Vietnamese Studies and Annual Meetings of the Association for Asian Studies Chicago, March 22-25, 2001 1. Papers and Presentations on Vietnam The number of panels and papers on Vietnam at the annual meetings of the Association for Asian Studies kept increasing, with 8 sessions focusing on Vietnam or having a significant Vietnam component. The number of panels with the exclusive focus on Vietnam (4) is larger than that on any other Southeast Asian country. The ideas for many of the Vietnam panels were discussed at the VSG business meetings in San Diego. The VSG listserve also greatly facilitated the exchange and dissemination of ideas for panel organization. However, the number of Southeast Asia panels remained very modest. Of the 225 scholarly sessions at the AAS meetings, only 19 focused on Southeast Asia. This is lower than in some other years, such as at the AAS meetings in Honolulu in 1996. Here is a list of sessions and papers on Vietnam at the AAS meetings in Chicago. 1. Vietnam and the State in the 1950s: Arguments, Visions, Implementations (organized by Shawn F. McHale, George Washington University; chaired by Helen Chauncy, University of Victoria) "Marxism, Dissent, and the State: Implications of Tran Duc Thao, 1945-1958" by Shawn McHale ""First Comes the Land Reform Team, then Heaven": State-Village Relations during Land Reform in the DRV (1953-1957), by Martin Grossheim, Humboldt University, Berlin + "Nguyen Manh Ha: a Voice for a Reunified Vietnam" Thi-Lien Tran, Institute des Etudes Politiques de Paris Discussants: Helen Chauncy and Bill Turley (Southern Illinois University) 2. Competing Knowledges in Post-Revolutionary Indochina (chaired by Charles Keyes, University of Washington) + "Mediumship versus the State: Conflicting Epistemologies in Vietnam" by Barley Norton, University of Surrey, Roehampton + ""We Were Younger Then, and It Was Different": Vietnamese Factory Women Reconsider Their Past" by Mila Rosenthal, London School of Economics plus one paper on Cambodia by William Collins (U California at Berkeley) and one on Laos by Takeko Iinuma (Cornell University); discussed by Charles Keyes 3. Competing Realities in Post-Revolutionary Indochina (organized and chaired by Shaun K. Malarney, International Christian University [Tokyo]) "Do Spirits of the Dead Exist? Divergent Ontologies of the Dead in Northern Vietnam" by Shaun Malarney + "Abortion Conventionalized, Abortion Ritualized: Competing Perceptions of Fetal Life in Contemporary Vietnam" by Tine Gammeltoft, University of Copenhagen plus one paper by Grant Evans (Univ. of Hong Kong) on Laos and another by Lindsay French (Rhode Island School of Art and Design) on Cambodia; discussed by Richard Madsen (Univ. of California at San Diego). 4. Village Modern: Transforming Tradition in Rural Northern Vietnam (organized and chaired by Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Harvard University) + ""Village Affairs": The Making of Communal Identity through the Revivification of Rituals in a Northern Vietnamese Village" by Truong Huyen Chi, University of Toronto + "Praying for Profit: The Cult of the Lady of the Treasury" by Le Hong Ly, Institute of Popular Culture, Hanoi + "Manure and Modernity: Villagers and Ethnographers in Dong Ky Village" by Hue-Tam Ho Tai Discussants: Neil Jamieson (George Mason University) and John Kleinen (University of Amsterdam) 5. Writing and Narrating Socialist Personhoods: State Tropes, Autobiography, and the Rhetoric of Self-Presentation in Vietnam (chaired by Narquis Barak, Harvard University) + "Individual Stories and Social Commitment: The Case of Vietnamese Intellectuals in 1920s Saigon" + "State Tropes and Personal Tales: Telling and Writing Female Traders' Lives in Vietnam" by Ann Marie Leshkowich, College of the Holy Cross + "Remaking One's Life" (Lam lai cuoc doi): Biographical Construction as a Means of Survival in Rural Vietnam" by Narquis Barak Discussant: Mary Steedly, Harvard University 6. Roundtable on the Challenges of Field Research in Vietnam (organized by Hy V. Luong, University of Toronto, and chaired by Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Harvard University) Presentations by John Kleinen (U of Amsterdam), Shaun Malarney (International Christian University), Jayne Werner (Long Island University), Michael Digregorio (UCLA), Pamela Chieu Nguyen (Univ. of Colorado), Truong Huyen Chi (U. Toronto), Ann Marie Leshkowich (College of the Holy Cross), Steve Graw (Cornell University), Hy Van Luong (U Toronto) 7. Wealth and Poverty in Vietnam: Local Dynamics, State Policies and Global Linkages (chaired by Hy Van Luong, University of Toronto) + "Bringing the Farm Back in: The Rural Development Debate and Overseas Remittances in Vietnam's Mekong Rice Bowl" by Steve Graw (Cornell University) + "Wealth and Poverty in Vietnam: A Sociological Perspective" by Tuong Lai, Institute of Social Sciences in Ho Chi Minh City + "Poverty, Household Structure, and Demography: An Analysis of their Sociocultural Dimensions in Ho Chi Minh City" by Hy V. Luong Discussant: Charles Hirschman, Univ. of Washington 8. Rationalities of Economy: The Institutional Origins of Post-Socialist Developments in Vietnam and China (organized by Regina Abrami, University of California, Berkeley; and chaired by Mark Selden, State University of New York at Binghamton) + "Economies under Different Commands: Socialist Norms and the Making of Market Power in Contermporary Hanoi and Chengdu," by Regina Abrami + States of Emergency: Economic Crisis and the Renovation of Craft Villages in the Red River Delta," by Micheal Digregorio, Univ. of California at Los Angeles plus one paper on China by Xiaolin Pei (Cornell University); Discussants:Mark Selden, and Melanie Beresford (Macquarie University) Other papers on Vietnam + "Under the Japanese Umbrella: South Vietnam's Hoa Hao during the Japanese Occupation and Aftermath" by My-Van Tran, University of South Australia + "Vietnamese Embassies and Literati Cultural Contact" by John Whitmore, Univ. of Michigan The Fund for Reconciliation and Development, under the direction of John McAuliffe, also held its regular roundtable on educational exchanges with Indochina at the AAS meetings this year. John McAuliffe also made a brief announcement regarding the review of the US-Vietnam Trade Agreement at US Congress. 2. Future Conferences and Meetings: Information and Planning 1. The Association for Asian Studies and the European Asian Studies community will hold the second International Conference on Asian Studies in Berlin in August 2001. Wang Gungwu will be a keynote speaker at this conference. 2. The next EuroViet conference will be held in St. Peterbourg, Russia. It is currently scheduled for 2002. 3. Vietnamese organizers are seriously considering holding the second international conference in Vietnamese Studies in 2002 in Vietnam. 4. The next AAS meetings will be held in Washington, D.C. from April 4 to April 7, 2002. The deadline for panel/paper proposals is May 1, 2001 for border-crossing panels and August 3, 2001 for regular panels and individual papers. As in previous years, AAS encourages a number of border-crossing panels that involve the participation of scholars from another regional specialty, another discipline, another country, or another historical concentration. AAS has funds to assist the participation of such scholars. For example, if you want to organize a panel on "The myth of immobile peasantry" with two Asianists in mind, you may consider requesting financial assistance from AAS Border-Crossing Fund to invite an Africanist, an economist, among others, as a participant. The deadline for border-crossing proposals is May 1, 2000. The Association of Asian Studies will continue providing a limited number of grants to scholars from the less wealthy Asian countries who will present papers at the AAS meetings. Panel organizers can apply to the AAS for these grants at the time of panel proposal submission if they want to invite scholars from Vietnam to present papers on their panels. Two scholars from Vietnam received these grants to present papers at the AAS meetings in Chicago. At the business meeting of the Vietnam Studies Group, a number of themes were briefly discussed for AAS 2002 meetings: a. Vietnamese Diaspora in France (contact person, Kim Loan Hill at Univ. of California at San Diego) b. Smuggling, sea pirates, maritime activities (contact person, John Kleinen at University of Amsterdam) c. Arts in Vietnam (contact person: Nora Taylor) d. The State and Society: State of scholarship e. The 9th Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party (contact person: Carl Thayer) f. Feminist Theory and Vietnam Research (contact person: Jayne Werner) g. Assessment of the influence of scholarship on Vietnam by Ralph Smith, Oliver Wolters, or George Kahin h. Mass Media and the Public Sphere (contact person: Helen Chauncy) i. Colonial Impact of Ethnology j. The State and Village in Vietnam: an Historical Perspective (to be organized by John Whitmore, list already finalized) k. A panel to be organized by Charlie Hirschman on the Vietnam Longitudinal Study in Ha Nam Ninh l. Representations of minorities I will provide the names of contact persons for themes (d), (g), (i), and (l) in a future message. 3. Report on VSG activities a. Report on a funding proposal by Helen Chauncy, Hue-Tam Tai, and Hy V. Luong In 2000, at the AAS meetings in San Diego, a number of VSG Executive Committee members met to draft a funding proposal in order to strengthen the activities of the Vietnam Studies Group in the Association of Asian Studies, both internally and in its relation with Vietnam specialists in other parts of the world. The proposal, kindly written up by Helen Chauncy, discusses the following areas for possible funding: maintaining and expanding communications through the electronic listserve to Vietnam specialists in Europe, Asia, and Australia; electronic archiving of scholarly exchanges; short-term visits by Vietnamese scholars to North America for conferences and scholarly exchanges; academic training in Vietnamese language; support for publications and translation. The proposal has been circulated to some foundations for consideration. b. Report on activities within the VSG by Hy V. Luong In the meantime, the extremely productive VSG listserve has been heroically maintained by Judith Henchy at the University of Washington with very limited financial support from VSG. The scholarly discussions are archived on the VSG website at www.lib.washington.edu/southeastasia/vsg I would also like to thank VSG members who sent in their $10 annual VSG fees in the Spring of 2000. The VSG budget remains very modest. I will appreciate it if VSG members can pay the fees by making checks payable to the Vietnam Studies Group-AAS. Until a new chair of the VSG is elected and announced, the checks can still be sent to me at: Hy V. Luong Department of Anthropology Sidney Smith hall 1039 University of Toronto Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 3G3. c. Report on International linkages by Hy Luong As VSG Chair, I continued providing feedback to Vietnamese scholars on their proposal to the Ford Foundation on a secretariat in Vietnam to work towards an International Association of Vietnamese studies and on the second international conference in Vietnamese Studies. A formal proposal to the Ford Foundation will be submitted by scholars in Vietnam once it is given the green light by Vietnamese governmental and political authorities, hopefully in the spring or early summer 2001. 4. Report from Southeast Asia Council (Nora Taylor) The AAS will have another round of funding for projects up to $20,000 each with its Development Fund. The proposals will continue being vetted first by its four area councils. The selection criteria include: a. broad application and potentially long-term impact on AAS activities and membership; b. matching fund possibility; and c. boundary-crossing potential.(enhancing interaction across geographical areas and disciplines). 5. Report on Ford Foundation programs in Vietnam (Oscar Salemink) Oscar Salemink presented an overview of Ford Foundation activities in Vietnam. The funding had increased from 8.9 million dollars in 1995-97, to 12.1 million dollars in 1998-99, to 8 million dollars in 2000 alone. The Ford Foundation has funded activities in the following areas: a. international cooperation (e.g., through the Institute of International Relations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) b. Poverty alleviation in the uplands (through technically oriented institutions like CRES at the National University of Hanoi and Hanoi Agricultural University) c. Reproductive Health (emphasis on innovative projects to fill gaps left by other agencies) d. Social Sciences: to facilitate access to international scholarship (in theory and methods); to reduce isolation from the field; to support curriculum development partly through research and the exchange of library resources and information; Anthropology/ethnology and sociology are two disciplines of priority as they deal with contemporary issues, and as they have not received sufficient attention from other international donors. The Ford-Foundation-funded M.A. and research/post-doctoral fellowship program in Anthropology and Sociology made a number of awards in the third round of selection in early 2001. Ford has also funded an annual interdisciplinary training course in Vietnam, focusing on Anthropology, Economics, and Sociology. It is organized by the U.S. Social Science Research Council and Vietnam's National Center for Social Sciences and Humanities. e. Arts and Culture: focus on cultural identity and arts management 6. Election of VSG Executive Committee members Six VSG Executive Committee members have their term ending in 2001: + Hy V. Luong, Anthropology, U. Toronto + Hue-Tam Ho Tai, History, Harvard University + Christoph Giebel, History, University of Washington + Irene Norlund, Economic History, U. Copenhagen + Shawn McHale, History, George Washington U. + Helen Chauncy, History, U. Victoria Six new members were (re-)elected at the VSG business meeting in Chicago, joining 5 continuing members on the VSG Executive committee. As of March 25, 2001, the VSG Executive Committee is composed of: + Anne Marie Leshkowich, Anthropology, College of Holy Cross (term ending in 2002) + Carl Thayer, Political Science, Australian Defense Academy (2003) + Nora Taylor, Art History, Arizona State U. (2003) + Kim-Loan Hill, History & Language, U Calif. San Diego (2003) + Martin Grossheim, History, Humboldt University, Berlin (2004) + Shaun Malarney, Anthropology, International Christian University (Japan) (2004) + Steve Graw, Development Sociology, Cornell University (2004) + Michael Digregorio, Environmental Studies, UCLA (2004) + Helen Chauncy, History, U. Victoria (2004) + Hy V. Luong, Anthropology, U. Toronto (2004) + Judith Henchy, editor of VSG Home Page, ex-officio (continuing) The VSG executive committee will elect a Chair in the next few weeks. Hy V. Luong Return to top of page