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Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 1997
Session 17: Print Culture and the Construction of Identity in Japan,
China and Vietnam
Organizer: Shawn McHale, Case Western Reserve University
In the last twenty years, the history of the book and of publishing
has moved from an often antiquarian pursuit to one that addresses questions
of power, economy, discourse, and readership. Quite independently, scholars
like Benedict Anderson are reasserting the centrality of print and other
media to the rise of nationalism. This panel, taking these twin developments
as a starting point, attempts a comparative presentation of issues in
the print cultures of China, Japan, and Vietnam, 1871-1940. How did
changing perceptions of publisher and reader redefine the role of print
in shaping identity? To what degree can we generalize about "print
capitalism" in these countries? Finally, how do these studies help
us revise previous assessments of print culture in modern historical
development?
Scholars of modern Asian history usually assume that the production
and circulation of printed materials played a key role in economic and
national development. The models supporting this view, however, are
derived from studies of Western Europe. Much research on Asian publishing
is still lacking. The three papers on this panel address this problem.
Giles Richter investigates how the circulation of unprecedented quantities
of published material through the modern Japanese postal system engendered
new forms of community. He looks at the emergence of subscription publishing
in Meiji Japan, 1871-1900, and shows how it supported the identification
of "consumer-readers" and the formation of readers networks
in the Meiji era.
Christopher Reed focuses on the production of printed material through
the study of the Shanghai entrepreneur Shen Zhifang (1882-1939). Showing
that we must not confuse entrepreneurial skill with capitalist acumen,
he shows how Shen owed his success more to personal connections and
opportunism than to capitalist logic.
Shawn McHale explores the contrasting relationship between publishers,
printed matter, and readers in Vietnamese Buddhist and communist publishing,
1920-1945. He shows how both Buddhist and communist publishers tried,
with vastly different results, to shape reader response to texts. The
examination of the different publisher-printed matter-reader relationships,
ones that owed little to market forces, calls into question the explanatory
usefulness of Benedict Anderson's notion of "print capitalism"
and its link to national imaginings of community.
Constructing Buddhist and Revolutionary Nationalist Print Cultures
in Vietnam, 1920-1940
Shawn McHale, Case Western Reserve University
In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson posits that the rising
importance of vernaculars, the decline of the great religious forms
of imagining community, and the expansion of what he calls "print
capitalism" sets the stage for the rise of a nationalist imagined
community. Does his global argument fit the particular Vietnamese experience?
I argue that it does not. Relying on little used Buddhist and communist
materials from Vietnamese archives and libraries, I examine the contrasting
publisher-reader relationships in Vietnamese Buddhism and communism
to develop my point.
There are some superficial similarities between Buddhist and communist
print cultures. For both Buddhists and communists, choice of technology
influenced reading styles and the spread of a message. Both Buddhist
and communist publishers promoted intensive reading of a few key texts,
and underlined the importance of following particular methods of reading.
It is no surprise, nonetheless, that Buddhists and communists developed
radically different publisher-reader relationships. Buddhist publishers
printed tracts with religious subventions and did so for karmic, not
capitalist, rewards. Communist ideologue-publishers, who frequently
used technologically primitive methods like gelatin printing, spread
a revolutionary and anticapitalist message. Both publishers constructed
sharply different views of the natures of their readers and their responses
to texts.
Both Buddhist and communist publishing made major contributions to Vietnamese
senses of community, but ones that owed little to "print capitalism"
and that cannot be subsumed under imaginings of a national community.
Session 61: Wanderers, Founders, and Ethnic Encounters: Political
Hierarchy and Religious Movements in Highland Southeast Asia
Organizer and Chair: Lorraine V. Aragon, East Carolina University
Discussants: Clark E. Cunningham, University of Illinois, Urbana; A.
Thomas Kirsch, Cornell University
Highland Southeast Asian groups historically have been characterized
by frequent geographical movements propelled both by shifting subsistence
strategies and political pressures. In connection with these roving
communities, settlement founders have received elevated social status
and often have been deified through their presumed special relationship
to local spirit owners of their lands. This panel will explore the relationship
of political and religious authority as it is grounded within territory.
Panelists will discuss "religious movements" in two senses
of the term: first, with respect to founder cults and their associated
geographic mobility of political formations; second, with respect to
millenarian movements and religious conversions that have occurred in
conjunction with interethnic pressures experienced by Southeast Asian
highlanders in their twentieth-century national circumstances. Through
ethnographic data drawn from the Chinese-Southeast Asian border, Vietnam,
Thailand, and Indonesia, panelists will examine twentieth-century transformations
of earlier ideas and practices concerning community founders, social
hierarchy, and ethnic group relations. Our discussants will add a comparative
perspective to augment both mainland and insular examples.
"The Dying God" Revisited: The King of Fire and Vietnamese
Ethnic Policy in the Central Highlands
Oscar Salemink, Ford Foundation
In The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazier described "the King
of Fire" among the Jarai of the Vietnamese Central Highlands as
a living example of primitive, divine kingship. In reality the office
of "king of fire" is largely of ritual significance among
the Jarai but this often misunderstood position has been caught up in
governmental interventions since the colonial period. The successor
to the last "king of fire" has not been able to take office
despite official plans and pronouncements. I will discuss the ritual
versus secular political significance of this position among the Jarai
and other minority populations in the Vietnamese Central Highlands,
and the ways in which this position is entangled in official discourses
and policies towards the highlanders. The presentation will juxtapose
local and national agendas as they relate to the stalled succession,
and consider how these factors interact with the politics of ethnic
unity, national development, sedentarization, and ritual feasting.
Session 62: International Dimensions of the Vietnam War
Organizer: Qiang Zhai, Auburn University, Montgomery
Chair: Sandra C. Taylor, University of Utah
Discussant: David Anderson, University of Indianapolis
The Vietnam War was not just a conflict between the United States and
North Vietnam. It also involved the allies of both countries. The interests,
fears, and ambitions of those allies inevitably affected both the course
of the war and the ability of the major contestants to achieve their
objectives. While the relationship between Washington and its allies
during the Vietnam War has been examined extensively, the inter-party
contact on the Communist side remains little studied due to the lack
of Communist sources in the past. In the last few years, however, new
documentary evidence has emerged from the long-closed archives in China
and the former Soviet Union. The new material makes it possible to reconstruct
the concerns, calculations, and motivations of the Communist participants
in the Vietnam War and the interactions between Hanoi and its principal
allies. The three papers in this panel will use new Chinese and Soviet
materials to discuss Beijing's and Moscow's perception of and policy
toward the Indochina conflict, the extent of Chinese and Soviet material
assistance to the North Vietnamese, Sino-Soviet differences over approaches
to the war and peace settlement of the conflict, and China's involvement
in the secret war in Laos. This panel represents an international collaboration
in examining the Indochina conflict and seeks to contribute to the emerging
international history of the Vietnam War.
China's Attitude Toward Vietnam Peace Talks, 1965-1968
Qiang Zhai, Auburn University, Montgomery
The Johnson administration's escalation of the war in Vietnam in
1965 triggered strong domestic criticism. Responding to public pressure,
President Johnson made a number of peace overtures to Hanoi. The escalation
of the conflict in Indochina Asia also drew serious attention around
the world. Efforts were made by various countries to promote a peaceful
solution to the Indochina problem. Thus, the war in Vietnam was intertwined
with a series of peace initiatives made not only by Washington, but
also by Moscow, London, Paris, and a number of British commonwealth
capitals. How did leaders in Beijing perceive these initiatives? Why
were they so consistent and firm in opposing them? How did Beijing's
approach to peace settlement of the war differ from those of Hanoi and
Moscow? What were the effects of Beijing's opposition strategy on China's
relations with the US, the Soviet Union and North Vietnam? This paper
uses newly released Chinese sources to answer these questions.
Between 1965 and 1968, Beijing provided extensive assistance to Hanoi
in weapons, equipment as well as support troops. China was determined
to help Ho Chi Minh to win the war against the Americans. Beijing's
opposition to Vietnam peace initiatives reflected Chinese leaders' distrust
of American and Soviet intentions. It also constituted an important
part of Mao's general efforts to demonstrate China's anti-imperialist
credentials among Third World countries, to establish Beijing's leadership
position within the Asian-African nationalist movement, to combat Soviet
revisionist foreign policy, and to mobilize domestic support for his
social and political programs.
Soviet-North Vietnamese Military Cooperation and the Conflict in
Indochina
Ilya Gaiduk, Russian Academy of Sciences
Soviet-North Vietnamese military cooperation was an integral part
of relations between the two countries throughout the years of conflict
in Indochina. Although during the first Indochina war the Soviet Union
remained mostly on the sidelines, Moscow did provide occasional support
to the Vietnamese Communists with arms and ammunition. According to
some reports, the Soviet missile complexes KATYUSHA demonstrated their
effectiveness at Dien Bien Phu. At that time, however, Beijing played
the role of principal supplier of military equipment to Ho Chi Minh.
The situation changed only slightly after the 1954 Geneva Conference.
Despite Hanoi's insistent requests to the Soviet leaders about developing
closer military cooperation, Moscow followed the policy of delegating
the primary responsibility in supporting the Vietnamese Communists to
Beijing, thus avoiding the transformation of the Vietnam problem into
a stumbling block in its relations with the West. Only after Washington
had directly intervened in the war in Vietnam, with China openly defying
Moscow's position in the world communist movement, did the Soviet leaders
change their attitude of restraint with respect to Vietnam. During the
last months of 1964 and the first quarter of 1965, a number of agreements
were signed between Moscow and Hanoi on Soviet aid to North Vietnam.
Gradually, Moscow became the principal supplier of modern weaponry and
equipment to Hanoi, while China lagged behind the Soviet Union in the
amount of aid to North Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, military cooperation
between the two countries developed in various spheres, including the
training of North Vietnamese military cadres in the Soviet Union, the
participation of Soviet advisers in combat operations in Vietnam, and
the examination of samples of captured American weapons by Soviet experts.
These Soviet efforts represent the most controversial aspect of Soviet
policy toward the Vietnam War, particularly if one takes into account
Moscow's desire to find a peaceful solution to the conflict.
A Secret War: China's Involvement in Laos, 1963-1975
Xiaoming Zhang, Texas A & M International University
China played an important, but secret, role in Laos during the conflict
between the North Vietnamese and Americans for the control of Indochina.
Due to the lack of access to Chinese sources, however, little of China's
involvement in Laos has been known. In the past few years, new Chinese
materials have become available to shed light on Beijing's role in the
Vietnam War. As the continuation of an earlier study dealing with China's
involvement with the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1969, this paper aims
to examine China's role in Laos during the Indochina conflict. China's
interest in Laos began at the 1954 Geneva Conference. Only after U.S.
escalation of the war in South Vietnam in the early 1960s did China's
involvement in Laos became substantial. Beijing not only provided significant
material assistance to the Laotian national liberation movement, but
also sent an advisory group and military troops to assist the Pathet
Lao's war efforts against the United States and the Vientiane regime.
Because of the special relationship between the Pathet Lao and the Lao
Dong Party in Hanoi, China's involvement in Laos was bound for rivalry
with the North Vietnamese. The paper pays particular attention to an
analysis of Beijing-Hanoi competition over Laos. It argues that the
special relationship between the Pathet Laos and Hanoi prevented China
from having a more significant role in Laos. Thus, China's experience
in Laos produced more frustration than success.
Session 103: Constructing the Indochinese Body
Organizer and Chair: Frank Proschan, Indiana University
During the decades of the French colonial domination of Indochina,
the bodies of the subject people were constructed and reconstructed
in and through various discourses, those of both the colonizers and
the colonized. This panel brings together scholars of various disciplines
to consider this process in several dimensions, drawing upon a variety
of texts and documents. Literary critic Norindr discusses the medicalized
body, as represented both in French medical discourse proper and in
filmic and literary art. Historian Zinoman considers the incarcerated
body, examining the Indochinese prison system to demonstrate how the
colonial export of Western regimes of disciplinary power was, finally,
limited and incomplete. Anthropologist Proschan explores how the Vietnamese
male was desexualized and rendered androgynous in French discourse.
The colonials' conception of the Annamite male body as sexless, effeminate,
and unmanly had implications for both their personal conduct and their
institutional responses. Literary critic Nguyen discusses the indigenous
construction of the body-particularly the sexually marginalized or otherwise
deviant body-investigating the emergent Vietnamese-language literature
for the conceptions of the native body and of same-sex sociality and
sexuality represented therein. Although each of these studies analyzes
texts and how they functioned discursively to shape French or indigenous
conceptions of the Indochinese body, our focus remains on the body in
its corporeality and materiality: something that can be locked up, diseased,
marginalized, or emasculated.
French Tropical Medicine and Empire: Medical and Literary Construction
of the Indochinese Body
Panivong Norindr, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
"Western medical science," writes Frantz Fanon, is "part
of the oppressive system, one of the occupier's modes of presence."
Fanon's view challenges traditional historiography of imperial medicine
as a series of heroic interventions against infectious diseases and
their conquest. Medicine as an instrument of empire, as well as an imperializing
cultural force, impinged directly upon the lives of the colonized people,
assuming in the name of medical science an unprecedented right over
the health and over the bodies of its subjects.
The French colonial era in Indochina coincided with the emergence of
a relatively recent medical discourse, colonial or "tropical"
medicine, and the creation of institutions to combat tropical infectious
diseases: the London and Liverpool Schools of Tropical Medicine were
established in 1899, and the first colonial Pasteur Institute opened
in Saigon in 1891, soon followed by institutes in Nha Trang (1895) and
Hanoi (1922).
The emergent discipline of tropical medicine gave scientific credence
to the idea of the tropical world as a primitive and dangerous environment
in opposition to an increasingly safe and sanitized temperate world.
Andre Malraux's 1930 novel, The Royal Way, will be reread from an "epidemiological"
perspective. The pathogenic atmosphere of the Indochinese jungle is
indeed central to Malraux's classic work, written during the heyday
of the colonial era. Malraux used tropical diseases to reimagine man's
relation to nature, culture, desire and the Indochinese body. My aim
is to demonstrate the centrality of disease and medicine to any understanding
of literary modernity and French colonialism.
Disciplining "Annamites": Colonial Power in Indochina
Peter Zinoman, University of California, Berkeley
Recent scholarship has suggested that European colonialism generated
the global expansion of regimes of disciplinary power. Using the Indochinese
prison system as an example, this paper assesses the extent to which
colonial strategies of domination embodied the same disciplinary technologies
which had transformed Euro-American institutional life in the 18th and
19th centuries. Paying special attention to the relationship between
surveillance and spatial order, the significance of efforts at rehabilitation
and behavioral modification, the role of specialists and the production
of bodies of knowledge about individuals and social groups, I argue
that the ascendance of disciplinary power in Indochina was limited and
incomplete. Finally, I look at how colonial racism and the enduring
influence of pre-colonial modes of domination shaped the distinctive
nature and intensity of disciplinary power in Indochina.
Eunuch Mandarins, Effeminate "Boys", and "Soldats
Mamzelles": The Annamite as Androgyne
Frank Proschan, Indiana University
During their decades of colonial domination of Indochina, the French
constructed images of the genders and sexualities of the "subject
peoples." In their broad patterns, these constructions coincide
with the familiar processes of colonialism, exoticizing, and Orientalism:
the Asian male is typically effeminized, the Asian female typically
eroticized. Yet in their sociohistorical specificity, the images of
the Indochinese constructed by French colonials resist simplistic characterization
as the predictable or inevitable products of a universal, monolithic,
and uniform process of Orientalism. Indochinese males were both desexualized
(effeminized, emasculated, literally castrated) and hypersexualized
(hypervirile, eroticized, and lascivious, both heterosexually and homosexually).
Indochinese females were both the sensuous foci of lustful (heterosexual)
"amour exotique," and disgustingly repellent syphilitics who
impelled otherwise-innocent Frenchmen to pederastic activity. Focusing
here on one aspect of this larger discourse, I consider the French conception
of the Vietnamese male body as androgynous and sexless. The colonial
construction of the effeminized or desexualized body had important implications
both for the interpersonal relations of Frenchmen with their "boys"
and for the institutional responses of the French administration to
the Vietnamese court and military. This examination of the French colonial
era in Indochina seeks to contribute to an ongoing effort to put the
erotic back in the exotic and to critique the heteronormative thrust
of most counter-Orientalist discourse.
Deviant Bodies and Dynamics of Displacement of Homoerotic Desire
in Vietnamese Literature
Vinh Quoc Nguyen, Harvard University
This paper takes an exploratory look at the largely uncharted terrain
of homoerotic desire, considering it as an archetypal example of deviance
at the intersection of sociality and sexuality in Vietnamese culture.
Despite a high incidence of same-sex socialization among the Vietnamese,
there is a marked reticence, if not exactly a taboo, with regard to
same-sex desire. The ethnographic and historical dimensions of this
question are only beginning to be explored, but it is nonetheless possible
to undertake a substantial literary critical excavation of textual traces
in support of the argument that representations of homoerotic desire
in Vietnamese literature display a dynamic of displacement and marginalization.
The range of deviant bodies onto which same-sex desire can be mapped-and
thereby displaced from the normative sexual symbolic-is rather diverse,
as this paper will hope to demonstrate by examining such examples as:
diseased bodies, both physical and psychical; outcast bodies lying at
the fringes of or even beyond legal and social bounds; disciplined bodies
subjected to surveillance and/or deprivation in such spaces as the prison,
military camps, monasteries, schools, the clinic, brothels, and cruising
grounds; sexually ambiguous and deceptive bodies, be they corporeal
such as those of eunuchs and hermaphrodites, or performative such as
those of thespians and transvestites; racially defamiliarized bodies
of foreigners and metis; and allegorically transmuted and surrealistically
transmogrified bestial bodies and spectral/oneiric presences, among
others drawn from 20th-century Vietnamese language prose and poetry.
Session 123: Vietnamese Politics in Transition: New Conceptions and
Inter-Disciplinary Approaches, Part One (See Session 146)
Organizer: Daniel Goodkind, University of Michigan Chair: Thaveeporn
Vasakavul, Australian National University
Discussants: David W. P. Elliott, Pomona College; Hy Van Luong, University
of Toronto
Research on Vietnamese politics and its recent transformations continues
to broaden as new sources of information become available. Among the
central questions of interest are: (1) the extent to which political
transformations towards socialism were successful since the 1940s and
1950s; and (2) the interplay between the more recent free market reforms
beginning in the 1980s, political processes, and the changing distribution
of influence. Our panel was designed to bring together a variety of
disciplinary perspectives and approaches to the study of Vietnamese
politics. Collectively, our back-to-back panel extends from the eras
of socialist transformations in Vietnam to the present. Papers address
the causes, consequences, and structure of Vietnamese political transformations
at a variety of levels: the highest echelons of political power (Thayer);
local or intermediate associations, legal and business institutions
(Vasakavul, Sidel, Stromseth); and ordinary Vietnamese citizens and
their families at home and abroad (Goodkind, Bousquet). Several papers
also explicitly try to link changes across such levels.
The first panel is focused more on micro-level issues set against a
wide temporal panorama since the 1950s. These papers are concerned with
postmarital residence patterns as indicators of changes in political
economy (Goodkind), hidden influences on and contending approaches to
the role of law (Sidel), and recent renegotiations of political space
between local and central governments (Vasakavul). The second panel
concentrates more on macro-level or contemporary political shifts. These
papers address continuity and change in the membership of the Party's
Central Committee since 1976 (Thayer), the increasing variety of business
organizations and their participation in the political process (Stromseth),
and narratives of Viet Kieu returning to their homeland as well as related
implications for Vietnam joining the global market economy (Bousquet).
Postmarital Residence Patterns Amidst Socialist Transformations
in a Northern Province of Vietnam, 1948-1993
Daniel Goodkind and Tom Fricke, University of Michigan
We explore the determinants of postmarital residence in Hai Hung,
a Northern province of Vietnam. Field survey data collected during 1993
reveal a dominant patrilocal norm (e.g. residence in the home of the
grooms' family) over the past 45 years, as well as two notable dips
in that norm. Ironically, each dip occurred in the wake of opposing
changes in political economy-the Socialist Marriage and Family Law of
1960 and the free market reforms during the 1980s-but for different
reasons in each case. Powerful changes in marital characteristics in
the wake of the 1960 Law (as well as during the war of reunification)
inadvertently contributed to the first dip in patrilocality. The second
dip following the free market reforms was associated with a rise in
wealth that allowed newlyweds the resources with which to reside on
their own.
More generally, as modernization perspectives would suggest, we found
that social circumstances and marital patterns associated with contemporary
life (e.g. later age at marriage, mate choice independent of parents'
wishes, and urban location) were negatively associated with patrilocality.
On the other hand, patrilocality was also negatively associated with
some traditional prenuptial divination and gift-giving practices. We
hazard two explanations for this latter finding, one more economic,
the other more normative. First, these practices likely depended on
family wealth, and such wealth in turn was associated with independent
residence. Second, this association is plausible once we consider which
specific practices the socialist state did, and did not, attempt to
label as deviant.
Contending Approaches to the Role of Law in Vietnam, 1954-1995
Mark Sidel, University of Iowa
For several decades, foreign (and many Vietnamese) scholars have
treated Vietnamese legal development as a simple matter of Party instrumentalism.
And in the five decades since 1945, a unified Party leadership has often
looked with near unanimity on law entirely as a mechanism of Party rule.
But throughout the 1954-1995 period there have also been different,
sometimes important shadings of emphasis on the relative autonomy the
legal sector might enjoy. Those differences reflected the views of key
Party leaders and of key legal researchers, who emerged from different
French and Soviet streams of legal training. And those different emphases
have never been clarified or understood outside Vietnam. In addition,
there has at times been significant and direct, if episodic, opposition
to the instrumentalist theory and policy itself, both from within the
party and from without.
This paper seeks to disinter those buried shadings of thought and that
sometime opposition, analyzing contending approaches both within and
outside the Vietnamese Party toward the role of law in Vietnam between
1954 and 1995.
Renegotiating the Political Space: Local Territory and Central Power
in Post-Socialist Vietnam
Thaveeporn Vasakavul, Australian National University
Writing on Vietnamese politics has tended to treat the Vietnamese
state as monolithic. In fact, during the pre-reform period, the relationship
between the central and local state (trung uong va dia phuong) had to
be constantly negotiated. The transition from central planning to a
market economy that took place in the 1980s weakened the socialist period,
while strengthening horizontal ties among state agencies and between
state and non-state sectors. The rise of local autonomy was often characterized
by such terms as "departmentalism," "mandarinism,"
"bossism" and "provincialism."
This paper examines the breakdown of organized hierarchies during the
transition to a market economy and the responses of the Vietnamese Communist
Party and the central government to these developments. Specifically,
it discusses increasing local autonomy in regulating and executing economic
and cultural policies; debates over the authority and power of local
government agencies at the municipal/provincial, precinct/district,
and quarter/commune levels; and the implications of these processes
for the nature of the post-socialist state and state-society relations.
The paper highlights the discourses on "legality," "modernization,"
and "national interests" as mechanisms used by different parties
in the process of negotiating political space.
Session 146: Vietnamese Politics in Transition: New Conceptions and
Inter-Disciplinary Approaches, Part Two (See Session 123)
Organizer: Daniel Goodkind, University of Michigan
Chair: Carlyle A. Thayer, University of New South Wales
Discussants: Dorothy R. Avery, U.S. Department of State; William S.
Turley, Southern Illinois University
The Regularization of Politics Revisited: Continuity and Change
in the Party's Central Committee, 1976-1996
Carlyle A. Thayer, University of New South Wales
This paper revisits the issue of "the regularization of politics"
in Vietnam by analyzing leadership change on the party's Central Committee
from the Unification Congress of 1976 (Fourth Congress) until the Eighth
National Congress held in 1996 by employing the same methodology adopted
by the author in an earlier study. Members of the Central Committee
are classified by longevity of appointment, dated from their first selection
to national office. Retention and promotion rates are examined. Members
are also classified into sectoral categories-senior party, central party-state,
military and provincial. Changes in these categories over time are also
analyzed.
The paper notes that the regular convening of national party congresses
every five years in accord with party statutes sets Vietnam's political
calendar. There is intense lobbying for leadership positions by individuals
and sectors representing Vietnamese society. The paper notes that the
process of generational change has been accelerated and that there have
been marked changes in the sectoral composition of the Central Committee
as well. During 1976-86 as economic reforms were set in motion, local
provincial-level officials rose to prominence. As Vietnam began to consolidate
and slow the pace of change, a tendency towards recentralization became
evident. The paper concludes that "the regularization of politics"
has become institutionalized at the expense of stable collegial decision-making.
Business Associations and Politics in Vietnam
Jonathan R. Stromseth, Columbia University
Doi Moi has resulted in significant changes in the organizational
life of Vietnam. A wide spectrum of "socio-economic" groups
exist and the number is growing. At the top of the spectrum are the
old mass organizations, such as the General Confederation of Labor and
the National Peasants' Association, which have been the subject of an
officially-sponsored renovation campaign since the late 1980s. At the
bottom of the spectrum are a growing number of small-scale non-governmental
groups, such as shrimp-grower and beekeeper associations in the countryside
and charity and research groups in the cities. Somewhere between these
two extremes, various kinds of business associations are making their
presence known. One prominent example is the Chamber of Commerce and
Industry of Vietnam. A more localized example is the Union of Associated
Industrialists of Ho Chih Minh City. This paper will profile these business
associations and examine the extent to which they are participating
in policymaking processes of the government and representing emerging
business interests.
Broken Mirrors, Shattered Lives: Analyzing the Narratives of the
Returning Viet Kieu (Overseas Vietnamese) to Vietnam
Gisele Bousquet, California State University, Fresno
This paper examines how the returning Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese)
are negotiating their role and identity in contemporary Vietnamese society.
There are about two million Vietnamese living in the diaspora. Most
tourists visiting Vietnam every year are Viet Kieu returning from exile
to find meaning to their turmoil and fragmented lives. They survived
the wars, separations, and the alienation of the diaspora. They are
returning to reconcile with the ones who stayed behind and to share
their pains of decades of violence and suffering. At Ton Son Nhat airport
in Ho Chi Minh city, they arrive with tears in their eyes desperately
searching for familiar faces in the thick crowd of relatives. Regardless
of their political loyalties, they hug and cry, and laugh at each others'
gray hair.
For almost twenty years, Vietnam was a war zone in the collective memory
and then simply a forgotten country. Today, it is the latest business
frontier, with its 72 million consumers and a cheap, educated labor
force. Under Doi Moi, the new economic reforms, the Viet Kieu have become
key players in Vietnam's open-door economic policies, forging partnerships
with never-migrated Vietnamese to meet the state's desire for joint
ventures. Thus, it is crucial to consider that the cultural politics
of return take place within an economic context. This paper discusses
the role of the Viet Kieu in their homeland during their return for
reconciliation and healing while Vietnam joins the global market economy.
Session 169: The Construction of Usable Pasts in Dai Viet
Organizer and Chair: Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Harvard University
Discussant: Peter K. Bol, Harvard University
Histories written after Dai Viet became free of Chinese rule in the
10th century exhibit an increasingly localized perspective. This trend
coincided with the growing influence of Chinese historiographical practices
and, in particular, of Sima Guang's history.
In Hue-Tam Ho Tai's opinion, these histories displayed a new understanding
of the past as being arranged along linear time rather than spatially
dispersed. The new interest in temporality was reflected in the histories'
focus on chronology and royal genealogies. It also led to a concern
with endowing Dai Viet with origins that were as ancient as that of
China. But while the myth of the Hung kings located the roots of Dai
Viet in the period before Han rule, Dai Viet's polity and culture were
also shaped during the long centuries of Chinese rule. Keith Taylor
explores the role of the Tang envoy Kao Pien/Cao Bien in promoting what
became viewed as Vietnamese culture and assesses his place in local
historical memory. In so doing, he calls into question the modern conceit
of nationalized culture. This theme is pursued also in Stephen O'Harrow's
paper on Nguyen Trai's biography of Le Loi, the founder of the Later
Le dynasty. In order to explain the striking parallels between Le Loi's
biography and that of Liu Pang, founder of the Han dynasty, O'Harrow
points to the multiple audiences (both in China and Dai Viet) for whom
it was written.
The panel thus goes beyond conventional presentations of early Vietnamese
historiography as a patriotic project to focus on the problems involved
in using Chinese historiographical practices and cultural categories
to construct local pasts while also affirming Dai Viet's continuing
membership in a China-centered universal culture.
Kao Pien/Cao Bien and the Vicissitudes of Being Remembered in Vietnam
Keith Weller Taylor, Cornell University
Kao Pien, the Tang general who led armies into An Nam in the 860s,
was remembered as Cao Bien, a king, by generations of Vietnamese. His
interest in sorcery and geomancy left a legacy that associated famous
local spirits and local geographical knowledge with him. He was thought
to have elicited manifestations of supernatural powers with his personal
potency, and his reputation as a ruler and builder was taken as a model
by later Vietnamese kings. I am interested in the place of works attributed
to him within the landscape of Vietnamese cultural practice, and I am
also interested in how a biographical image of him was constructed,
transmitted and changed from generation to generation of erudite Vietnamese.
I would like to take the case of Cao Bien as an example from which to
consider alternatives to the modern conceit of nationalized culture.
Reading Vietnamese texts about Cao Bien or attributed to him lead us
to imagine a political and cultural space that has been eradicated by
the fence-builders of modern nationalism. Cao Bien has been positioned
and used by Vietnamese in several ways; as a magician and sorcerer,
a patron and worshipper of deities, a surveyor and engineer, a military
strategist, the builder of a city, a ruler, a geographer, a scholar
of the classics, and a poet. He has been given a role in nearly every
category of elite endeavor among Vietnamese, which suggests memories
of him being used to orient a cultural field.
Foundational History: The Vietnamese Myth of Genesis and the Construction
of the Past
Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Harvard University
Officially commissioned dynastic histories and unofficial compilations
of "wild" histories of Dai Viet began appearing in the 12th
century. The first dateable official history (1272) located the beginnings
of Dai Viet in the 3rd century BC. The Dai Viet Su Ky, written one century
later, pushes these origins back 24 centuries by transferring the myth
of the Hung kings from the wild histories into its dynastic framework.
The dynastic histories and their incorporation of the myth of the Hung
kings reflect two related themes. The first is the influence of Chinese
historiographical thought with its concern with both temporal continuity
and antiquity, an influence which led Dai Viet rulers to claim, on behalf
of their realm and their subjects, genealogical parity with their northern
neighbors. The second is a shift from a sense of the past as something
dispersed through the landscape and apprehended through ritual performance
to one that is arranged along linear time through the written word.
The merger of wild and dynastic histories can be interpreted as an example
of postcolonial strategy by Dai Viet historians to carve for Dai Viet
a rightful place in a cultural universe dominated by China while appropriating
the language and thought processes of their Chinese counterparts. The
paper also seeks to highlight the different understandings of the past
held by premodern Vietnamese, and the role of historical writing in
not only recollecting but also constructing that past and putting it
at the service of dynastic power.
Parallel Foundations: Nguyen Trai's Biography of Le Loi
Stephen O'Harrow, University of Hawaii
This paper considers the structure, content, and circumstances surrounding
the creation of the Lam Son Thuc Luc by Nguyen Trai (1380-1442) circa
1430, in the aftermath of the Vietnamese recovery of independence from
the Ming. This officially authorized biography of Le Loi (1382-1432),
founder of the Later Le dynasty (1428-1788?), contains striking parallels
to the biography of Liu Bang, the founder of the Han dynasty, which
is contained in the Shi Ji. The paper explores the reasons behind these
parallels and examines the role played by the Lam Son Thuc Luc in the
effort to create a distinct Vietnamese polity with rights of place within
a sinitic weltanschauung shared by the author and the audience for his
writing both in China and Vietnam.
Session 183: The Impacts of Global Restructuring on Labor Relations
in Textile and Garment Industries in Southeast Asia: Cases of Vietnam,
Indonesia, and the Philippines
Organizer: Angie Ngoc Tran, California State University, Monterey Bay
Chair: Irene Norlund, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Denmark
Discussants: Frederic C. Deyo, State University of New York, Brockport;
Irene Norlund, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Denmark
This comparative panel focuses on two major inter-related issues in
countries with a fairly recent export orientation: the role and development
of the textile and garment industries, and the impacts of this development
on the labor force as well as the possibilities for labor organization.
It analyzes similarities and differences regarding these issues in the
three Southeast Asian countries-Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines-which
have taken over some parts of production from the East Asian NICs (such
as South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore).
The panelists will discuss different historical contexts of these three
countries. The Philippines started their textile and garment exports
in the 1970s with a less coherent strategy of industrialization and
internal political problems. Indonesia's industrialization started in
the 1980s with both textile and garment products as being important
for export. Vietnam has recently entered into the world market in the
1990s with garment export playing a significant role in the total export,
and continued exporting to the former Socialist countries.
The expansion of textile and garment production results in a growing
labor force. Due to the labor-intensive character of these industries,
the tendency is to employ low-skilled and low-paid labor, often migrants
and young women. One of the characteristics of the East Asian NICs'
export-oriented industries is the development of a "hyper-proletatiat"
which did not have a strong bargaining power vis-à-vis the employers.
However, this system of exclusion of labor changed during the 1970s,
and new modes of labor control were developed in which labor organizations
and unions were regarded more positively by the state as a means to
include labor through corporatist arrangements and paternalistic relations.
The panelists will examine the extent to which these tendencies have
emerged in the three Southeast Asian countries in the process of global
restructuring.
Reorganizing the "Rag Trade" in Southeast Asia: Comparative
Perspectives on Capital and Labor in Apparel Production
David A. Smith, University of California, Irvine
The textile and garment industries are extremely interesting cases
of global economic restructuring. This paper illustrates the factors
promoting the shift of apparel production (and other light industries)
away from core and semiperipheral regions in the world economy; illuminates
some of the complexities and nuances of that process; and discusses
the implications of this for the regional division of labor in East
Asia. In the East Asian NICs (particularly South Korea, Hong Kong, and
Taiwan), apparel manufacturing helped propel "economic miracles"
during the 1970s and 1980s, but it now faces an uncertain future due
to escalating wages and severe labor shortages. This forces NIC-based
garment makers to seek "offshore" production sites. Southeast
Asia, along with Central America and the Caribbean, became attractive
targets for this type of apparel investment. In the 1980s, Indonesia,
with its cheap and abundant labor and a state eager to welcome foreign
investment, was a powerful magnet for garment capital from Korean and
the other Asian NICs. Despite some recent wage pressure and labor unrest,
this country (along with China) seems well-positioned to continue as
a major global "sourcing" area. More recently, Vietnam, with
a nominally Communist regime pushing a policy of "market liberalization"
and gradually improving relations with its old enemy the United States,
appears poised to become a big player in world apparel production. Garment
manufacturers from the NICs and elsewhere have begun to set up factories
in Indonesia and Vietnam to take advantage of these countries' large,
industrious, and extremely cheap labor forces. Dealing with a rapidly
changing global apparel production and marketing system presents special
challenges to the states, local capital, and workers through this region.
Impacts of Global Restructuring on Manufacturing and Labor Relations
in the Vietnamese Textile and Garment Industries
Angie Ngoc Tran, California State University, Monterey Bay
This paper explores the opportunities as well as challenges arising
from greater integration into the world economy and responses of domestic
actors to this process in the case of the Vietnamese Textile and Garment
Industries (VTGI).
The first part of this paper outlines the evolution of the VTGI from
the command economy to a more market-oriented system since the mid 1980s,
and how these industries provide an impetus to economic development,
just as they led the way for the East Asian NICs in the 1960s and 1970s.
In particular, this paper presents major structural issues of the VTGI
such as production, exports, ownership, labor force (textile and garment
workers in general, and women workers in particular), as well as the
relationship between domestic integration and performance of domestic
firms in the VTGI (or value-added).
The second part of this paper examines responses of the main domestic
actors to global restructuring the state (via labor policies) and the
labor unions. While the market-oriented economy creates more employment
in both public and private sectors, it also engenders many challenges
such as job fluctuation due to the nature of subcontracting, poor working
and living conditions of workers (especially women workers from rural
areas). Moreover, many new labor laws have been passed and implemented
since the early 1990s such as the labor union law, the law concerning
workers in firms with foreign investment, the law on labor contract,
and the new labor code effective since the beginning of 1995 legalizing
labor strikes among other protection for workers. This paper examines
how these labor laws are implemented and their effects on welfare of
workers in VTGI. It also examines the changing roles of labor unions,
which are still the only trade union in Vietnam and under government
control, and their response to global restructuring.