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Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 2001
Session 6: Vietnam and the State in the 1950s: Arguments, Visions,
Implementations
Organizer: Shawn F. McHale, George Washington University
Chair: Helen R. Chauncey, University of Victoria
Discussants: Helen R. Chauncey, University of Victoria; William S. Turley,
Southern Illinois University
Keywords: land reform, state, Vietnam, Marxism, dissent.
Vietnam from 1945 to 1965 has been the object of insufficient academic
study and the period from the transition from colonial rule (1954) to
massive American intervention (1965) has fared the worst. In one sense,
then, the aim of this panel is modest: to fill a gap in the scholarship
by examining the intellectual, political, and economic history of the
1950s. In another sense, however, the panel is more ambitious. Going
beyond Cold War or revolutionary nationalist approaches, an international
panel of scholars will explore how Vietnamese conceptualized, argued
over, and implemented the DRV state.
Shawn McHale (George Washington University) examines the fascinating
trajectory of the Marxist "dissident" Tran Duc Thao, punished
in 1958 for speaking out against state abuse of power. His paper looks
at the contested nature of state rule and the evolution of self-criticism
as a tool to construct a national community and punish dissent. Tran
Thi Lien (Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris, France) focuses
on Nguyen Manh Ha, a Catholic who served in Ho Chi Minh's first cabinet.
Was Ha's vision of a unified Vietnamese state that could transcend Cold
War ideological confrontations utopian? Martin Grossheim (University
of Lund, Sweden) gives a bottom-up perspective on state-village relations
during the land reform (1953-1957). Despite its problems, land reform
proved to be a decisive step in the development of post-1945 state-village
relations and in the creation of a centralized administrative system.
Marxism, Dissent, and the State: Implications of Tran Duc Thao, 1945-1958
Shawn F. McHale, George Washington University
This paper uses the example of Tran Duc Thao, an erudite Marxist punished
for his "dissidence" in 1958, to explore issues in state formation,
the nature of the national community, and the state's use of self-criticism
to enforce new boundaries of this community.
Tran Duc Thao, now mostly forgotten in Vietnam, is well-known in Western
philosophy for his work on phenomenology and Marxism. After returning
to Vietnam, he became an important public intellectual and head of the
Faculty of History at the new national university. He antagonized the
communist party, however, when he criticized the state for its abuse
of power and called for more democracy. By 1958, he was forced to undergo
public self-criticism as he and over one hundred others were accused
of involvement in a conspiracy against the revolution.
Thao's trajectory shows, ironically, that the definition of national
community, and the parameters of politics, were still up for negotiation
in the mid-1950s: many Vietnamese, not just state agents, thought they
had a role to play in this process. But Thao's fate also points to the
reassertion of autocratic rule by 1958, the weakness of the public realm,
and the continued power of conspiracy thinking. Thao's eventual fate
has limited parallels to developments in the Soviet Union and China:
the democratic promise of the revolution, so cherished by many activists,
was pushed aside as self-criticism was used (abused) to make "suspects"
implicate themselves in "hidden conspiracies" undermining
the revolution.
"First Comes the Land Reform Team, then Heaven": State-Village
Relations during the Land Reform in the DRV (1953-1957)
Martin Grossheim, University of Lund, Sweden
Drawing on local sources in Bac Ninh province, this paper focuses on
the development of state-village relations during the land reform campaign
in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). I argue that though the
transformation of land property relations was the main aim of the land
reform, it should also be seen as a new and decisive step in the development
of state-village relations after 1945.
After the French failed to implement far-reaching administrative reforms
in the North Vietnamese countryside, the DRV smashed old administrative
institutions (like councils of notables) at the village level in 1945.
But since the Viet Minh followed a moderate united-front policy during
the war against the French, the state could only partly curb the power
of the old village elite. This changed at the beginning of the 1950s,
when the Hanoi leadership shifted to a "class against class"
strategy to consolidate mass support and carry out radical land reform.
The land reform campaign, by mobilizing poorer villagers and undermining
the remnants of old hierarchical structures in the villages, helped
government and party cadres gained insights into village property relations.
The DRV's land reform was a forceful intervention of the central government
in village life. It aimed to integrate the villages further into a centralized
administrative system and prepare for an even more radical step: to
transform rural society through the collectivization of agriculture.
Nguyen Manh Ha: A Voice for a Reunified Vietnam
Thi Liên Trân, Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris
This paper focuses on Nguyen Manh Ha, whose political position had been
forgotten in the spiral of the Cold War. Indeed, from 1954, he was the
first ardent but isolated supporter of a peaceful reunification of Vietnam
by setting up a neutralist solution in South Vietnam. This idea would
be taken up again in the sixties by de Gaulle.
Nguyen Manh Ha staked out an original political position. After brilliant
studies in France, he became a civil servant of the colonial administration.
He was also a committed Catholic (he founded the Jeunesse Ouvrière
Chrétienne in Vietnam), infusing his deep attachment for the
Roman Catholic Church with his social conscience. Wanting to take part
in the nationalist movement, he accepted Vo Nguyen Giap's proposition
to participate in the National Union Government in summer 1945 as a
Secretary of the Treasury. Later, he was expelled from Vietnam by General
de Lattre because of his relations with Viet Minh leaders. Ardent advocate
of organizing elections and of a peaceful reunification of the country,
he opposed his fellow Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem from 1954 onwards.
Nguyen Manh Ha tried to imagine a unified Vietnamese state which would
transcend the logic of ideological confrontation. Given the Cold War,
was his vision of a neutral Vietnam utopian? Did it realistically understand
the strength of Communist Party and its leaders? These questions will
be at the heart of my presentation.
Session 27: Competing Knowledges in Post-Revolutionary Indochina
Organizer: Barley Norton, SOAS, University of London
Chair and Discussant: Charles F. Keyes, University of Washington
Keywords: epistemology, Indochina, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, social practice.
This panel seeks to address one central question: how have the dramatic
cultural upheavals of the past fifty years affected the epistemological
assumptions employed in social life in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam?
While these three nations have gone through the similar experiences
of warfare, revolution, and the recent reintegration into the international
community, they have also experienced the introduction into social life
of new definitions of what constitutes legitimate knowledge and in what
ways one can legitimately know the world. Research has shown, however,
that despite the introduction of these new definitions, they have not
enjoyed universal acceptance and instead have had to contend with other
concepts and definitions. This panel seeks to address how these multiple
and competing definitions of knowing and legitimate knowledge interact
with each other, and how they inform social practice. The papers presented
will address a range of related themes, such as the nature of conflicting
epistemologies (e.g., how does one know a national border? Can one know
the world through ecstatic trance or only through empirical methods?),
the institutions or social actors that have been responsible for the
propagation of different knowledges (e.g., political parties, spirit
medium groups, or international NGOs), and the way in which these divergent
assumptions have guided particular forms of social action (e.g., the
construction of official histories and individual biographies, or the
formulation of development policies). The panel promises to provide
a unique comparative perspective on the ways in which similar historical
processes have affected the sociocultural worlds of these three nations.
Mediumship Versus the State: Conflicting Epistemologies in Vietnam
Barley Norton, SOAS, University of London
This paper will examine the conflicting epistemological assumptions
regarding mediumship in post-revolutionary Vietnam. The anti-superstition
campaign, implemented by the Vietnamese Communist Party, argues that
for knowledge to be 'legitimate' it must be scientific (i.e. must employ
empirical methods), and it ridicules the notion that intangible forces,
such as spirits, can affect 'reality.' In contrast, mediumship rituals
are based on the premise that spirits engage with, and affect, people's
everyday lives. When possessed, mediums transmit the 'knowledge' of
the spirits in order to ensure prosperity, good health and happiness
for their disciples.
The vigorous implementation of the anti-superstition campaign severely
restricted mediums' practices from the 1960s to the '80s. In the doi
moi era, however, the authorities have been increasingly tolerant of
mediumship. The contrasting knowledges of mediums and the state remain,
in many respects, rigidly opposed, but during the 1990s there have been
various attempts to reconcile 'spiritual' ways of knowing the world
with the interests of the state. The paper will outline the ways in
which mediumship is being appropriated by, and to a certain extent,
legitimated through nationalist discourse. It will include discussion
of how nationalist discourse depicts mediumship as a 'folk culture activity'
which contributes to the construction of national identity, and how
it downplays 'non-empirical' aspects of mediumship, such as invoking
the spirits for the purposes of curing illness. The paper will also
seek to show how some of the epistemological assumptions of the anti-superstition
campaign have influenced mediums' ritual practices and their conception
of spiritual agency.
"We Were Younger Then, And It Was Different": Vietnamese
Factory Women Reconsider Their Past
Mila Rosenthal, London School of Economics
Factories in northern Vietnam constituted one of the most significant
locations for the implementation of revolutionary policies. Not only
did employees work together, they also lived together in collective
factory living quarters, creating a tightly-controlled environment for
socialization into revolutionary values and social roles. This paper
will examine how the recent liberalization of Vietnamese social and
economic life has affected the female workers of the state-owned Eighth
of March Textile Factory in Hanoi, specifically how they construct and
appropriate knowledges of their past, and how they employ these knowledges
to adapt to their changing social world and understand their role as
women in it. As workers in a state-owned enterprise, the workers have
an intimate acquaintance with official ideology and are encouraged to
forget the evidence of their own lived experiences and accept the Vietnamese
Communist Party's interpretation of the past; yet, at the same time,
they must also contend with their own versions of remembered and recalled
experience. This disjuncture becomes especially powerful with regard
to how to appropriately respond to such contemporary concerns as status
competition, consumer desire, class aspiration, and gender role expectations.
By examining the factory's official history, women's own versions of
their history in the factory, and the recent social changes in the factory's
collective living quarters, this paper will show the ways in which these
women have negotiated their responses to these knowledges and histories,
and how these diverse ways of knowing continue to inform their moral
and social lives.
Session 49: Competing Realities in Post-Revolutionary Indochina
Organizer and Chair: Shaun K. Malarney, International Christian University,
Tokyo
Discussant: Richard P. Madsen, University of California, San Diego
Keywords: Indochina, ontology, post-revolutionary change.
This panel seeks to address one central question: how have the dramatic
cultural upheavals of the past fifty years affected the ontological
assumptions employed in social life in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam?
While these three nations have gone through the similar experiences
of warfare, revolution, and the recent reintegration into the international
community, they have also experienced the introduction into social life
of new definitions of what does or does not exist, and what has effective
causal force in human life. Research has shown, however, that despite
the introduction of these new definitions, they have not enjoyed universal
acceptance and instead have had to contend with other concepts and definitions.
This panel seeks to address how these multiple and competing definitions
interact with each other, and how they inform social practice. The papers
presented will address a range of related themes, such as the nature
of the conflicting definitions (e.g., do spirits exist or not? Can an
aborted fetus influence the lives of the living?), the institutions
or social actors that have been responsible for the propagation of different
definitions (e.g., rural residents, Communist parties, or diasporic
refugee intellectuals), and the way in which these divergent assumptions
have guided particular forms of social action (e.g., the formation of
government policies, the conduct of commemorative rites, or debates
on the nature of authority). The panel promises to provide a unique
comparative perspective on the ways in which similar historical processes
have affected the socio-cultural worlds of these three nations.
Do Spirits of the Dead Exist? Divergent Ontologies of the Dead in
Northern Vietnam
Shaun K. Malarney, International Christian University, Tokyo
This paper's purpose is to examine the diverse ontological assumptions
regarding the dead that exist in contemporary Vietnamese society. The
dead are an important part of Vietnamese social life. The socialist
state regularly invokes them, whether in the form of official histories
that glorify ancient heroes who set an example for the contemporary
nation to follow, or official commemorative rites that celebrate those
who gave their lives for country and revolution. Everyday Vietnamese
people are also engaged with them, whether in the family ancestral altars
that maintain a space for the dead in people's homes, or the family
ancestral rites in which the living contact the dead and care for them.
This paper seeks to show that despite this shared focus, these different
contexts employ divergent ontologies of the dead. The atheistic Vietnamese
state, while mobilizing the dead as an important component for legitimizing
their regime, employs an ontology that grants the dead no existence
beyond the sum of their actions while alive. Many Vietnamese people,
however, employ an ontology in which the dead continue to live as spirits,
and these spirits have the ability to influence human life. The diverse
conceptions, as will be shown, necessitate different forms of social
interaction with the dead, and also place limits on the consequences
the dead can have in human life. As will be argued, living social agents
continue to engage the dead; but what they engage varies with the actors
and social context.
Abortion Conventionalized, Abortion Ritualized: Competing Perceptions
of Fetal Life in Contemporary Vietnam
Tine Gammeltoft, University of Copenhagen
In Vietnam today, induced abortion is a highly prevalent and apparently
non-controversial solution to unwanted pregnancies. Particularly among
unmarried youth, abortion rates are high and seem to be increasing.
Although some have commented that young people "go for abortions
like they go to buy chewing gum," induced abortion is for many
socially stressful and morally problematic. This paper will examine
one method through which youth attempt to resolve the emotional and
moral dilemmas that abortion engenders, ritual practice. As will be
shown, many women have begun to perform a variety of rituals for their
aborted fetuses, such as prayers, burning of incense, and spirit medium
sessions. While these rituals help provide relief from immediate personal
troubles, they also reveal the conflicting ontological and epistemological
assumptions regarding the fetus that exist in Vietnamese social life.
From the socially and politically dominant "scientific" perspective,
a first trimester fetus belongs to the domain of nature, being nothing
but a morally neutral collection of blood and cells. Yet from the "spiritual"
perspective which has considerable strength in the life-worlds of youth,
a fetus at any stage of gestation belongs to the cultural domain and
is considered as a human being worthy of moral recognition. Within this
tense and politicized field where differing modes of knowledge compete
over the social and moral limits to human life, rituals provide a way
for young women to reconcile conflicting ontologles of human life, cope
with profound tensions and dilemmas, and re-unite contradictory epistemologies
of human life and personhood.
Session 65: Unifying and Dividing Nationalism: The Influence of the
Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere on Asian Nationalisms (AAS Presidential
Designated Panel)
Organizer: Taro Iwata, University of Oregon
Chair: Peter Duus, Stanford University
This panel, entitled "Unifying and Dividing Nationalism: The Influence
of the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere on Asian Nationalisms,"
seeks to address the unifications and the divisions of Asian nationalisms.
This proposed panel is part of three closely-related but independent
Border-Crossing panels (see panel 45 and panel 107) that seek to examine
how various forms of nationalisms and transnationalisms functioning
within the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere articulated with Japanese
rhetoric and institutions related to national and ethnic boundaries.
This particular panel will focus on the multiple and often contradictory
effects of the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere on emergent Asian
nationalisms in Vietnam, the Philippines, Manzhouguo, Indonesia, and
Korea. Exploring the often unexpected alliances that were formed across
national, religious, ethnic and gendered boundaries, the papers in this
panel complicate any simple binary understanding of imperialist Japan's
impact on "Greater East Asia" during World War II.
Ultimately the panel will shed light on the ongoing effects of the Coprosperity
Sphere in Asia's postwar experience. Specifically, the papers will explore
the role played by the GEACS in the wartime and postwar development
of the nationalist and militant religious group of Hoa Hao in Vietnam;
a wide variety of nationalist choices made by the Filipinos under the
Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere; women's reconfigurations of gender
roles and national identities in Manzhouguo before, during, and after
the period of GEACS; and the relationship between Thai irredentism and
the Coprosperity Sphere.
Under the Japanese Umbrella: South Vietnam's Hoa Hao during the Japanese
Occupation and Aftermath
My-Van Tran, University of South Australia
World War Two brought a new chapter to the history of Vietnam as well
as Japan. In the name of the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere Japan
played a major part, directly and indirectly, in shaping developments
inside Vietnam. This paper examines the political and military emergence
of one particular group, the Hoa Hao during this period. The focus is
on Huynh Phu So, founder and leader of the Hoa Hao-a religious and nationalist
group in Cochinchina-who relentlessly sought national salvation from
the French colonialists under Japanese "protection." Huynh
Phu So, popularly referred to as Venerable Master-Preacher (Duc Thay)
by his devotees, succeeded in building and mobilising a large group
able to prosper under the Japanese-French alliance that then dominated
Vietnam.
Thus the paper highlights the Japanese impact on the Hoa Hao, including
its quasi-military armed wing, the Protectors of Peace (Bao An); itself
a creation of the wartime Japanese-French regime which went on to become
a nationalist military force following the Japanese surrender. During
the following turbulent period from late 1945, which witnessed both
the reestablishment of French colonial authority and the rise of the
Communist led Viet Minh, and the effort of other nationalists to bring
genuine independence to Vietnam, the leader of Hoa Hao emerged as a
national leader who posed a challenge to the Viet Minh. Consequently
he became a victim of the Viet Minh
The paper concludes that the overall impact of the Japanese occupation
on Vietnamese national inspirations was in some respects negative. The
nationalists' hope for genuine independence in peace and unity was diminished.
What is more, there are echoes between events in the aftermath of Japanese
withdrawal to recent conflict between religious and nationalist groups
in South Vietnam, most importantly the Hoa Hao, with the contemporary
Communist authorities. Even 53 years after the disappearance of the
Hoa Hao's most revered leader, the Hoa Hao within Vietnam and abroad
still seek to pursue his unfinished agenda.
Session 90: Village Modern: Transforming Tradition in Rural Northern
Vietnam
Organizer and Chair: Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Harvard University
Discussants: John Kleinen, University of Amsterdam; Neil L. Jamieson,
George Mason University
Keywords: Vietnam, village, ritual, tradition, community.
Since the Doi Mai reforms were launched in the 1980s, Vietnam has gradually
been transformed from a socialist, centrally planned economy to a market-driven
one. In the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam, the new economy has
profoundly transformed once remote villages that were largely engaged
in subsistence agriculture. The transition from subsistence to commoditized
economy has been accompanied by the resurgence of village traditions
that had previously been discouraged as backward, superstitious, or
wasteful. Until now, scholarly analysis of this phenomenon has concentrated
primarily on issues of continuity and change, authenticity and re-invention,
and changing relations between the socialist state and rural society.
While village traditions are indeed being re-invented even as they are
revived, they also, the three papers in the panel suggest, play an important
transformative role of their own. Neither a rejection of current policies
nor of the socialist past, the revival of tradition in rural northern
Vietnam constitutes an imaginative and creative response by villagers
to the new opportunities and uncertainties of the market economy. It
is an attempt to negotiate new identities for themselves in a process
that involves not only the different components of the village community
but also outsiders (including foreign visitors), local cadres, scholars,
and various levels of the state. As such, it is an effort to control
both the past and the future.
"Village Affairs": The Making of Communal Identity Through
the Revivification of Rituals in a Northern Vietnamese Village
Chi Huyen Truong, University of Toronto
This paper explores the ritual revivification process in Dong Vang village
(Ha Tay) since the decollectivization and commoditization of agriculture.
I will focus on the ways in which various groups with different and
cross-cutting interests based on age, gender, and socio-economic status
participate in Dong Vang's annual festival as well as the year-round
preparation for this event. I examine how village identity is formed
through everyday negotiation over contributions of materials, time and
labor as well as debates over the very meaning of participation in the
festival within households, lineages, and at village-wide meetings.
Competition to donate funds and labor for the renovation of religious
buildings and the intensification of village rituals is not limited
to a few elites from competing lineages. Instead, it represents a shared,
albeit multivocal, set of interests for all members of the community.
By extravagantly reviving their ritual traditions, Dong Vang villagers
do not simply pursue symbolic distinctions, either at the level of the
individual, household, lineage, or of the village-as-a-whole; more importantly,
they seek to respond collectively to the uneven implementation of economic
and political policies by the local authorities resulting from continuous
tensions among the nine villages that make up Hoang Long commune.
Praying for Profit: The Cult of the Lady of the Treasury
Hong Ly Le, Institute of Popular Culture, Hanoi
In the wake of the Doi Moi reforms, the cult of the Lady of the Treasury
in Co Me village (Bac Ninh) experienced an explosive growth, going from
a purely local cult to a national one. Mirroring the larger transition
of the Vietnamese economy from subsistence to market, the goddess was
transformed from being the guardian of a granary to the keeper of a
symbolic bank, making "loans" and collecting "interest."
The paper looks at three groups affected by the cult's new popularity:
the mostly female urban petty traders who are her devotees, the villagers
whose lives and interpersonal relationships have been transformed by
the expansion and commoditization of the cult, and the local authorities
who welcome the new prosperity but must also deal with a profoundly
altered social, political, and economic landscape. Co Me village thus
serves as a microcosm for Vietnamese society as it abandons the ethos
of wartime austerity in favor of consumerism and profit-seeking. I argue
that, far from being a vestige of superstitious traditions, for both
devotees and villagers, the cult of the Lady of the Treasury represents
an attempt to maximize profits, exploit new opportunities and negotiate
the risks involved in the modern market economy.
Manure and Modernity: Villagers and Ethnographers in Dong Ky Village
Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Harvard University
In 1996, the villagers of Dong Ky (Bac Ninh) discovered that a book
published by the Institute of Popular Culture in Hanoi depicted their
village god as a one-time manure collector. The villagers indignantly
complained to the highest echelons of the State and forced the Institute
to produce new ethnographic materials that better reflected their own
understanding of their current religious practices and ancient traditions.
This paper locates the roots of the conflict between villagers and scholars
in their clashing representational agendas. In their quest to document
"authentic" Vietnamese traditions, urban ethnographers are
also exoticizing customs rooted in a vanishing agrarian-based subsistence
economy. From the perspective of villagers, however, the revival of
these customs is a sign of the new prosperity which is rapidly transforming
village life. As the new market economy and better means of communications
give them unprecedented access to outsiders' images of them, villagers
have become self-conscious about their "backward traditions"
and now have the means, financial and political, to control the production
of these images. This self-consciousness, reflecting their desire to
appear modern, leads them into a dialogic process of re-invention which
is bringing their notions of proper ritual behavior closer to those
of the State. For both scholars and villagers, the recording of tradition
thus acts as a catalyst for both restoration and change.
Session 134: Writing and Narrating Socialist Personhoods: State Tropes,
Autobiography, and the Rhetoric of Self-Presentation in Vietnam
Organizer and Chair: Narquis Barak, Harvard University
Discussant: Mary M. Steedly, Harvard University
Since the 1920s, socialist revolutionaries and the Vietnamese state
have used life history narratives to construct and promote visions of
socialist personhood. Combining history and anthropology, this panel
explores how state models and other frameworks for presenting life history
have shaped the biographical narratives of various social groups in
Vietnam. The papers address three central issues: What forms have influenced
written and oral biographies in 20th-century Vietnam? How have these
models determined what events, situations, and experiences are noteworthy
in an individual life? How are these details deployed strategically
in the rhetoric of self-presentation?
Philippe Peycam explores 1920s revolutionary biographies as a narrative
form combining traditional life history with communist theories of self-development.
Kim Ninh examines conflicting self-presentations in a celebrated writer's
memoirs; a literary genre often viewed as an alternative to state-sanctioned
history. Ann Marie Leshkowich explores how a state-imposed system of
biographical production both constrains and enables contemporary Saigonese
marketwomen's self-presentations. Narquis Barak explores how multiply-authored
biographical narratives that do not abide by state models allow for
the possibility of self-agency and recovery among peasants affected
by madness.
Although focused on Vietnam, both the panel's exploration of the relationship
between individual narratives and state discourses about personhood
and its combination of historical and anthropological perspectives are
intended to spark inter-area discussion of the social, political, and
experiential processes shaping the construction of life histories. To
promote this dialogue, discussant Mary Steedly will offer insights from
her extensive research in narrative experience, revolution, and the
state in Indonesia.
Individual Stories and Social Commitment: The Case of Vietnamese
Intellectuals in 1920s Saigon
Philippe Peycam, Center for Khmer Studies, Cambodia
My proposed paper derives from my study of the emergence of a Vietnamese
'public sphere' in colonial Saigon in the decade preceding the foundation
of the Communist Party. This revolution of Vietnamese political culture
was the product of a small group of Western-educated Vietnamese 'intellectuals'
who used Vietnamese and French language newspapers to establish themselves
as anti-colonial representatives of the 'native' population.
In this paper, I argue for the importance of prosopography-the attempt
to expand individual 'itineraries' or 'profiles' into brief biographies-as
a method for the historian examining a socially and politically defined
group of people. Prosopography not only reveals the complexity and plurality
of the individual's experience and choices, but also helps to identify
broad historical patterns, such as the links within, and tensions between,
generations of intellectuals.
Discussions of biography and self are even more pertinent for understanding
the ways in which intensive reflection on their own social role as individuals
and their responsibility towards the wider community fueled intellectuals'
efforts to seize the political initiative. This tension at the level
of the individual was particularly acute among the younger generation
of urban Western-educated Vietnamese, who felt torn between Western
norms of individualist behavior and a deeply felt sense of responsibility
towards the majority of their 'compatriots.' For this reason, the reconstruction
of individual stories in the writing of Vietnamese history must take
into account awareness of social belonging and responsibility (often
associated by Western scholars with the Confucian notion of 'dependency').
Conflicting Self-Presentations in the Memoirs of To Hoai
Kim Ninh, The Asia Foundation
In 1992 the writer To Hoai, one of the most respected writers in Vietnam
who has achieved some measure of literary prominence before 1945, created
a literary sensation with his memoir Cat Bui Chan Ai (Dust upon Whose
Feet). To Hoai's memoir provides a wealth of details about the intellectual
community and offers glimpses into the tumultuous intellectual environment
of the 1950s. After so many years in which the official line defines
history in socialist Vietnam, To Hoai's memoir, and the genre of memoir/autobiography
in general, has become for many Vietnamese both at home and abroad a
way to challenge state-sanctioned narratives. In other words, it presents
the possibility of an alternative location for the truth.
To Hoai's second memoir Chieu Chieu (Evening) was published in 1999,
and the official guideline to the media was to ignore the book's existence.
Such a reaction further established To Hoai's reputation as the voice
of truth being undermined by an oppressive state. A close examination
of Chieu Chieu, however, raises difficult questions about To Hoai's
own presentations of events in which he took part and his larger portrait
of life under socialism. Using his two memoirs, this paper explores
the shifting selves that make up his narratives and the conflicting
political and personal motives that animate them. To take better advantage
of the more relaxed intellectual environment in Vietnam today and understand
the continuing tension between the communal self and the individual
self, a much more critical reading of these works is essential.
State Tropes and Personal Tales: Telling and Writing Female Traders'
Lives in Vietnam
Ann Marie Leshkowich, Harvard University
In 1997, a Ho Chi Minh City boutique owner gave me a notebook in which
she had written her life story. The narrative was organized into sections
corresponding to key periods in the author's life. At the end of her
story, she signed her name, wrote the date, and affixed her photo. Clearly
organized around some model of what a written life history should comprise,
this last page seemed intended as a seal of authenticity.
Using the boutique owner's life story as a starting point, this paper
explores the narrative forms which contemporary Vietnamese marketwomen
utilize in constructing written and oral accounts of their lives. Chief
among these is a state-imposed system of autobiographical production
which since 1975 has required most urban Southerners to submit accounts
of their lives to local party cells. Submitted to officials for perusal,
state-mandated biographies clearly constrain the form and content of
personal histories. In other contexts, however, these same narrative
frameworks can provide models for legitimate, authoritative, and compelling
accounts of personal experience. The market traders examined in this
paper have used the dominant narrative tropes enshrined in state-sponsored
biographies in ways which both confirm them and subtly demonstrate how
the authors' lives have departed from government-sanctioned blueprints.
This exploration of an official system of biographical production situates
contemporary women's life stories within the social, cultural, and economic
currents of post-war Vietnam and highlights the political and personal
implications of living, thinking about, and talking about one's life.
"Remaking One's Life" (Lam Lai Cuoc Doi): Biographical
Construction as a Means of Survival in Rural Vietnam
Narquis Barak, Harvard University
When I first met Tan, he had lost his lover, his career, his dignity,
and his sense of humanity. Diagnosed with "schizophrenia"
by state psychiatrists, he had spent most of his 20s on neuroleptics.
In response to the perceived failure of the state's "scientific
cure" for his illness, over the course of a year, he and his family
constructed an alternate account of his "madness" that centered
around a biographical narrative which drew on traditional models of
illness, religious theories of suffering, opera and literary narratives
that enabled him to "remake his life." By the end of the year
Tan was working, had a wife, and was expecting a baby, achievements
that had been assumed nearly impossible only a year before.
This paper explores the lives of peasants for whom the construction
of a biographical narrative is a necessary means of surviving the experience
of mental illness. It demonstrates how the imposition of meaning to
an individual's life, the act of narrating the self so that there is
a possibility for self-agency, is an intersubjective process, multiply-authored
in village society. Locally constructed narratives are contrasted with
state secular constructions of illness, which the paper argues, tend
to diminish self-agency. It suggests that the marshalling of symbolic
resources by villagers to mediate the experience of madness has been
possible only since the early 1980s, when major agrarian transformations
led to the return of pre-Socialist forms of local agency and the burgeoning
of religious and other "non-scientific" visions of suffering
and selfhood.
Session 150: Boundary Disputes in the Asia-Pacific Region: An Examination
of their Origins, Dynamics, and Resolution
Organizer: Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, University of Pennsylvania
Chair: Carlyle A. Thayer, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies
Discussants: Allen S. Whiting, University of Arizona; Carlyle A. Thayer,
Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies
Keywords: boundary disputes, maritime disputes, Vietmanese-Cambodian
relations, South Korean-Japanese relations, Russo-Japanese relations,
Sino-Japanese relations, Sino-Vietnamese relations, Tokto Islands, Takeshima
Islands, Kurile Islands, Diaoyu Islands, Senkaku Islands, South China
Sea.
The Asia-Pacific Region (APR) has an abundance of territorial and maritime
quarrels. In some cases, these disputes have resulted in militarized
conflicts such as clashes between Vietnam and China over the Paracel
Islands and war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. In other cases,
these problems have dampened the development of interstate relations.
For example, they have poisoned Russian-Japanese interactions and polluted
Sino-Japanese relations. APR controversies over borderlines are of significant
interest to many different scholars. They provide information on how
states define their national identity, reveal how domestic politics
affect external behavior, and represent an important part of the narrative
of the post-colonial APR.
This panel adds to our knowledge of several important APR boundary disputes.
It also informs our understanding of the reasons for these controversies,
the forces that shape their dynamics, and the factors that spur their
settlement. Jean-Marc F. Blanchard analyzes the Vietnamese-Cambodian
boundary dispute that began in 1975 and ended in 1979. Blanchard highlights
the causal role of Cambodian national identity and borderland concerns
in the conflict. Youngshik Bong studies the 1996 South Korean-Japanese
quarrel over the Tokto/Takeshima Islands. Bong asserts the two countries'
efforts to balance the exigencies of domestic politics and the international
environment explain the dynamics of the conflict. Daniel Landau weighs
whether domestic political considerations or great power politics has
had the greatest effect on Japan's behavior towards its offshore island
disputes. Eric Hyer analyzes the Sino-Vietnamese territorial dispute
and recent settlement, arguing that the geopolitical context best illuminates
the controversy.
Barbarians at the Gate: The Cambodian-Vietnamese Boundary Dispute,
1975-1979
Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, University of Pennsylvania
In April 1975, Khmer Rouge forces landed on the Vietnamese-held islands
of Phu Quoc and Poulo Panjang and launched incursions into Vietnam.
These assaults led to hundreds of deaths and the Vietnamese seizure
in June of Cambodia's Puolo Wai Island. Over the course of 1977, the
conflict escalated with Khmer Rouge troops launching frequent attacks
into Vietnam, which were reciprocated by Vietnamese counterattacks.
The Cambodians were not cowed by Vietnamese might and continued to strike
Vietnam. Vietnam responded in December 1978 with a huge invasion that
led to the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime. Why did Cambodia fight
with Vietnam given the latter's superior military capabilities? Was
a boundary clash inevitable given the history of conflict between the
two states or was it a function of ideological differences between Phnom
Penh and Hanoi? I argue that the boundary conflict can be attributed
to the Khmer Rouge's conceptualization of Cambodia's national identity
and borderland considerations. Specifically, the war resulted from its
desire to implement a national identity defined in terms of national
sovereignty, rectification of past territorial losses, and the removal
of foreign influences. It also resulted from the Khmer Rouge's desire
to gain control over its internal borderlands which were "tainted"
by Vietnamese influences.
The End Game: The Sino-Vietnamese Boundary Dispute and Settlement
Eric Hyer, Brigham Young University
Although not openly contested at the time, the Sino-Vietnamese boundary
dispute was a contentious issue of discussion between the newly established
People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, struggling
for its survival against the French and Americans. As relations between
China and Vietnam deteriorated in the early 1970s, the boundary dispute
surfaced and became a major cause of conflict between the two countries.
After the end of the Cold War, Beijing and Hanoi have inched toward
a final settlement. Although the boundary dispute and settlement can
be analyzed from many different perspectives, adopting a systemic structural
framework provides insights into the twists and turns the negotiations
and armed conflicts have taken over the past five decades. The Chinese
and Vietnamese are approaching the final stages of a comprehensive land
and sea boundary. However, a settlement of the South China Sea dispute,
involving not only China, but also the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei,
and Taiwan is not in sight. This paper will adopt a historical analytical
approach to explain the evolution of the Sino-Vietnamese boundary and
consider the future of the South China Sea dispute.
Session 171: Rethinking the Redistributive Economy: The Institutional
Origins of Post-Socialist Developments in Vietnam and China
Organizer: Regina Abrami, University of California, Berkeley
Chair: Mark Selden, State University of New York, Binghamton
Discussants: Melanie Beresford, Macquarie University; Mark Selden, State
University of New York, Binghamton
Keywords: economic culture, political economy, China, Vietnam.
Did socialism make a difference? This panel examines the interplay
of orthodox and unorthodox rationalities of economy in socialist Vietnam
and China. We show how idiosyncratic forms of livelihood in socialism
played a fundamental role in the definition of economic organization
and economic culture in post-socialism. Earlier research on the impact
of "socialist legacies" in Vietnam and China has largely focused
on the legacy of formal institutions, such as inefficient bureaucracies
and state preference toward the state-owned sector to account for the
revival of pre-socialist cultural idioms in the economy. In contrast,
we show how both state and social actors appropriate these terms as
part of their broader conflict over the definition of legitimate post-socialist
economic activity.
Our panel contributors have conducted extensive fieldwork, including
archival research that allows them to provide a richer account of the
successes and failures of the command economy in Vietnam and China.
Earlier comparative studies of Asian socialism (Chan et al., 1999) have
focused on the role of policy and economic structure in their accounts
of difference. Our panel examines instead less visible forces, such
as contested notions of economy, productive labor and class. In so doing,
we offer a different perspective on studying the command economy. Further,
our panel encourages comparative and cross-disciplinary discussion of
how differences in "actually existing socialism" engender
distinct market formations in the Asian context. To our knowledge, no
panel of this kind has been presented at the annual meeting of the Association
for Asian Studies.
Economies Under Different Commands: Socialist Norms and the Making
of Market Power in Contemporary Hanoi and Chengdu
Regina Abrami, University of California, Berkeley
Peasants and other classes marginalized in socialism now play a leading
role in the urban marketplaces of China, with many of them incorporated
into state regulatory bodies as quasi-officials. In contrast, Vietnamese
rural citizens who comprised a formidable part of the second economy
find it increasingly difficult to sustain a place in the urban arena.
To account for this divergence, I examine the relationship between local-level
responses to state socialist ideas of economy and cultural idioms of
market power. Challenging existing interpretations of the second economy,
I show that underground economic activities do not arise naturally as
a response to economic crisis or the systemic inefficiencies of socialist
production. Each state faced unorthodox economic activities from the
earliest days of state-building. Differences in how they understood
the nature of class formation and role of class struggle in socialist
development, however, ultimately meant that the particular kind of unorthodoxy
and language of resistance that emerged varied in line with the different
incentive structure each interpretation offered to local level cadre.
Drawing on case material from several villages in the Red River Delta
of northern Vietnam and Sichuan Province, China, I explain why the protected
intensive networks of underground exchange in Vietnam proved less successful
after market transition and ultimately led to a re-assertion of "peasant"
identity, while the more autarkic strategies of China's marginal classes
led not only to an expanded role in the urban economy, but converted
many into some of the most vocal advocates of law, order and modernity.
States of Emergency: Economic Crisis and the Renovation of Craft
Villages in the Red River Delta
Michael DiGregorio, University of California, Los Angeles
The decomposition of Vietnam's centrally planned economy over the last
decade took place through a bottom-up, top-down process in which low-level
experiments in market exchange were gradually instituted through state
regulations. Most of the studies of this process have focused on agricultural
villages and their cooperative institutions. This paper examines the
process of transition through the development histories of three industrializing
craft villages in the Red River delta.
In narratives of Vietnamese economic and cultural evolution, historic
craft villages (lang nghe) in the Red River delta, which employed more
than 250,000 people at mid-century, have played an important role as
emblems of arrested development. From independence, state policies sought
to recover the development potential of craft industries by mobilizing
artisans in the project of modernization and socialist transformation.
Peasant-artisan-trader households had to be convinced, however, that
the forms of organization required by the state were in their interests.
Most were, but equally, some were not. As a result, artisans and traders
continued to maneuver on the fringes of the planned economy throughout
the cooperative period. As economic crises deepened in the late 1970s,
opportunities for direct market exchange increased. Artisans and traders
took advantage of these opportunities, in the process reinventing forms
of industrial production inherited from their own histories. The paper
explores how the unorthodox and idiosyncratic forms of household and
community production that have emerged from this process have become
emblems of rural development and a focus of state support in the contemporary
Red River delta.
Session 175: Individual Papers: Women and Labor in Transitional Economics
in Southeast Asia
Organizer: Thongchai Winichakul, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Chair: Susan D. Russell, Northern Illinois University
Women Entrepreneurs in Vietnam's Transitional Economy
Pamela Chieu Nguyen, University of Colorado, Boulder
The policy of economic restructuring, Doi Moi, has undeniably brought
about tremendous changes in Vietnam on both a macro and a micro level.
The steady flow of mass media and Western consumer products makes its
way into the everyday lives of the average Vietnamese individual via
small, localized businesses. In Vietnam, women comprise a majority of
small business owners and thus act as vehicles and agents of globalization.
But how have the new economic policies affected women's personal experience
and their daily lives? In order to approach these issues this paper
focuses on Vietnamese gender ideology and how it defines "women's
work." This paper will illustrate how capitalism and economic policies
function within traditional gender hierarchies to not only define but
also reinforce women's work. In light of the debates surrounding women
and development in Third World nations, this paper examines the impact
of economic development on women entrepreneurs in Vietnam. Drawing on
ethnographic field research among women entrepreneurs, this paper explores
how Vietnamese women are reconceptualizing themselves and are being
reconceptualized by Vietnamese society as a result of the economic transition.
It will examine the interplay of social, political, and economic aspects
of Vietnamese society, along with women's personal experience.
Session 195: Individual Papers: Domesticating Global Ideas in Colonial
and Contemporary Southeast Asia
Organizer and Chair: Thongchai Winichakul, University of Wisconsin,
Madison
The Professor and the President: Wesley Fishel and Ngo Dinh Diem,
1950-1963
Edward Miller, Harvard University
In this paper, I propose to illuminate American relations with South
Vietnam in the 1950s by examining the friendship of American political
scientist Wesley Fishel and South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.
The two men met during Diem's exile abroad in the early 1950s; when
Diem returned to Vietnam in 1954, he brought Fishel along as his advisor.
From 1954 to 1959, Fishel was one of Diem's key confidants, and perhaps
the most important American in Vietnam. However, the two men subsequently
became estranged, as each lost confidence in the other's ability to
grasp South Vietnamese political realities.
In contrast to some other histories of US-South Vietnam relations, my
interpretation of the Diem-Fishel relationship will place more emphasis
on ideas and less on personalities. Diem and Fishel were drawn together
by their shared interest in matters such as decolonization, democratization,
and modernization. But similar interests did not always imply similar
views, and the two men eventually found that that their opinions on
these issues diverged at least as often as they ran in parallel. Such
differences of opinion were not rooted in the idiosyncrasies of each
man's personality so much as they reflected different intellectual approaches.
The Diem-Fishel relationship thus provides a way to examine the interaction
and tension between Vietnamese and American ideas about political and
social development.
This paper is based on research in both Vietnamese and American sources,
including Diem and Fishel's personal correspondence as well as various
US and South Vietnamese government documents and publications.