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Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 1999
Session 18: Gender, Household, and Family in Northern Vietnam:
New Studies
Organizer and Chair: Jayne Werner, Long Island University
Discussants: David Marr, Australian National University; Jayne Werner,
Long Island University
For the first time in several decades, long-term fieldwork is being
carried out in Hanoi and the villages in the Red River delta. Much of
this new work focuses on gender and the family. Data are being generated
about the nature of the family, the structure and economic basis of
the household, conceptions about gender and intergenerational relations,
and sexuality. These new studies are providing insights into processes
of social and cultural change as they are occurring under the impact
of doi moi or economic renovation. Three aspects of recent concern will
be explored: changing household structure and work-related mobility,
single women and the family, and premarital abortion and sexuality.
Methodologies include household surveys, intensive interviews, and long-term
residence in the areas studied.
Composition and Recomposition of Rural Households in the Red River
Delta
Nelly Krowolski and Nguyen Tung, LASEMA, CNRS-France
Over the course of 1990-1998 we have worked in several villages in the
Red River delta. This paper is primarily based on the rural village
of Ta Thanh Oai, located in a peri-urban zone (15 km from Hanoi) and
an analysis of the household register held by the commune. The register
currently includes more than 800 households. We focus on the structure
of the household and the status of its diverse members in terms of their
relationship with the head of the household. Our analysis is also based
on intensive interviews conducted in the village in 1998, with a focus
on around twelve families chosen at random from the register (with equal
representation from the commune's hamlets). These interviews focused
on household members' mobility from the standpoint of the issue of migration
between the commune and the nearby urban center. Finally, the data from
Ta Thanh Oai is analyzed from a comparative perspective with two other
villages in the Red River delta where we have worked. The first is Mong
Phu (Ha Tay province) at the edge of the "middle" region of
the delta where we lived in 1990, 1991, and 1992, and the second is
Mo Trach (Hai Duong) in the lower delta (studied in 1997 and 1998).
Never-Married Women in Rural North Vietnam: Two Case Studies
Danièle Bélanger, University of Western Ontario; Khuât
Thu Hong, National Center for Social Sciences and Humanities
In Vietnam, as in other Asian countries, recent demographic data suggest
that an increasing proportion of women will never marry. Most research
on never-married women focuses on urban areas and stresses long-term
education, work, and the reluctance to marry "downward" as
the factors linked to this increase. This study, based on four months
of fieldwork in 1998, addresses the issue of female singlehood in two
rural villages located 15 kilometers from Hanoi (Ninh Hiep and Lien
Mac). An ethnographic approach was used to explore the lives of 25 never-married
women between the ages of 30 and 60. We interviewed these women and
their parents, as well as key informants in the community such as the
elderly and local leaders, about the status and role of never-married
women. Most single women live with their natal families and many of
them become caregivers for children and the elderly. Those who become
independent have the financial resources to do so only when their parents
are no longer alive. Results show that the community attributes the
increase in singlehood to changes in the family, namely the decline
of polygamy and arranged marriage. The marriage squeeze caused by the
deficit of males following the American war has also contributed to
the increase in singlehood in Vietnam.
Virginity and the Irony of Cultural Change: Exploring Female Sexuality
in Urban Northern Vietnam
Tine Gammeltoft, University of Copenhagen
Whereas family and gender studies in Vietnam often tend to reify and
essentialize cultural categories such as 'woman' or 'the family,' this
paper aims to understand the social and cultural processes through which
such categories are made. Due to its turbulent history and complex cultural
dynamics, Vietnam seems a particularly privileged place for the study
of such processes.
In Vietnam today, urban youth as a social group are particularly exposed
to cultural and social change. Living in rapidly-changing urban environments
while also undergoing the transformative personal changes involved in
initiations into adulthood, young women and men are struggling with
the exigencies of life, striving to find their own place and orientation
in the world. Based on a four-month anthropological study of premarital
abortion and sexuality conducted in Hanoi in the spring of 1998, the
paper examines perceptions of virginity and experiences of virginity
loss among Hanoian youth. The paper pursues two different arguments.
First, it argues that the cultural tensions, with which the issue of
virginity is fraught, index competing and contradictory perceptions
of womanhood in Vietnamese history and culture. Second, it argues that
young women today are both the agents and the victims of current cultural
transformations as their bodies become a terrain where cultural conflicts
are played out.
Session 22: Lips and Teeth: Border Relations Between China and Vietnam
from 1945 to the Present
Organizer and Chair: Brantly Womack, University of Virginia
Discussants: William S. Turley, Southern Illinois University; Alexander
Woodside, University of British Columbia
Although relations between China and Vietnam are usually discussed
in terms of diplomacy and security, the most tangible effects of the
relationship-whether friendly, hostile, or normal-are felt at the border.
This panel will cover the range of border relations between China and
Vietnam since the Second World War, beginning with commercial relations
in the late 1940s, then considering the effects on border areas of China's
patronage in the 1960s, hostility in the 1980s and the reemergence of
border trade in the 1990s. The final paper will consider current efforts
at cooperative border projects. All three papers are based on unusual
access to relevant sources.
Since the papers will provide a long empirical thread, the commentators
will be asked to draw general lessons concerning the relationship between
China and Vietnam before turning to audience discussion. There are few
scholars as appropriate for this task as William Turley and Alexander
Woodside.
Before Recognition: Reflections on the DRV's Early Wartime Trade
with China (1945-1950)
Christopher Goscha, Ecole des Hautes Etudes
If most studies of 20th century Sino-Vietnamese border relations take
as their starting point the People's Republic of China's diplomatic
recognition of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in 1950, in
this paper I would like to show that the economics of the Franco-Vietnamese
war had already forced the DRV to renew its ancient trading contacts
with southern China since 1945.
Focusing on the 1945-1950 period, my paper is divided into three parts.
First, I place this commerce in the context of political and military
developments in China and the war between the French and the Vietnamese
in Indochina. I then focus in greater detail on the geography and the
structures of this Sino-Vietnamese war trade-the major trading zones,
the diverse traders, the routes, the markets, the products and some
tonnages. Lastly, I highlight the possible merits of analyzing the DRV's
clandestine trade with southern China in terms of a regional perspective
by comparing this northern commerce to the DRV's internal trade with
French-controlled zones and overseas Chinese (Hua Qiao) markets and
in comparison with southern Vietnamese external exchanges with Southeast
Asian markets. This paper draws upon Vietnamese and French sources.
The Effects of Changing Sino-Vietnamese Relations on the Economy
of Vietnam's Border Provinces, 1960-1990
Christopher Roper, University of Virginia
From closest of allies in the 1960s, the Sino-Vietnamese relationship
deteriorated to a limited war by the end of the 1970s. After a decade
of mutual suspicion and hostility, the two countries tentatively re-established
political and economic ties at the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s.
The consequences of this changing relationship are not merely political
but are clearly evident at the local level. This paper examines the
effects of the evolving Sino-Vietnamese relationship on the local economies
of Vietnam's northern border provinces. Given their immediate proximity
to China, these provinces should be the most sensitive to changes in
the two countries' relationship. The paper explores the regional economy
of Vietnam's northernmost provinces from the 1960s into the 1990s in
light of its relations with China, using national data to establish
a trend and local data of one border province in particular, Lai Chau,
for specific examples.
Border Cooperation Between China and Vietnam in the 1990s
Gu Xiaosong, Guangxi Academy of Social Science
Based on a review of cooperative projects between China and Vietnam,
especially those between the cities of Dongxing and Mong Cai, this paper
will explore the interests, incentives and difficulties of border cooperation.
Is cooperation driven by national policy, or does national policy constrain
local enthusiasm? To what extent does the availability of third-party
capital provide an incentive? What are the similarities and differences
in interests and policies between China and Vietnam?
Besides being one of China's top experts on Vietnam's political economy,
Professor Gu was the Vice-Director of the Dongxing Economic Development
Zone for three years.
Session 116: INDIVIDUAL PAPERS: Marginal Figures
Organizer and Chair: Mary M. Steedly, Harvard University
The Vietnamese Catholics During the War of Independence (1945-1954)
Between the Colonial Reconquest and the Communist Resistance
Thi Liên Tran, Institute Etudes Politiques de Paris
The national feeling of the Vietnamese Catholics became all the
more violent in 1945 as it had been denied before; so that some of the
clergy didn't hesitate to launch straight into political and military
action. This need of political involvement in the fight for independence
could be explained by the desire to put an end to the accusation of
"traitors to their homeland" (they were accused to be at the
origin of the French conquest). The Catholics soon faced a dilemma:
the keenest fighters for independence were communists and their project
of society was far from their aspirations. Between the minority that
chose to rally the Viet Minh, and the one that collaborated with the
French, a major trend rose, refusing both the French reconquest and
the communist hegemony in the resistance to the French.
From 1945 to 1949, the theme of the fight for independence prevailed,
then from 1950 to 1954, the theme of fight against communism took over,
without suppressing the nationalist ideas. The experience of living
under Viet Minh power and international events (communist China, Korean
War) caused a progressive rallying of the Catholics to the Bao Dai's
solution. Far from raising enthusiasm (the Bao Dai government was completely
independent from the French), this alternative was the only one left.
It was not by chance that the Catholic politician Ngo Dinh Diem came
out at the Conference at Geneva, as the nationalist alternative in South
Vietnam, to face the communist regime in the North.
"To Counter the Terror of Uncertain Signs": Mythologizing
Vietnam in Interiors
Jennifer Way, University of North Texas
How can we make sense of American art world involvement in and representations
of Southeast Asia during the 1950s? One response involves reconstituting
the meaning and significance representations of Vietnamese peoples held
for the American State Department, press, and middle class.
In 1955, the State Department's new International Cooperation Association
hired industrial designer Russel Wright to tour Southeast Asia (November
1955-February 1956). The article Wright subsequently published in the
art world's Interiors magazine (August 1956) metonymically represented
South Vietnam by emphasizing peoples who had moved there between 1954-55.
The State Department and press considered their status problematic.
They'd fled the Viet Minh but might be swayed to communism by southern
guerrilla forces.
I argue that Wright's article supports this view. Further, I demonstrate
how especially the photographs diffuse anxiety about the refugees' vulnerability
to ways of life Americans perceived to threaten their (and a global)
political economy and middle-class lifestyle. Using semiotic analyses
Roland Barthes applied to the mass media during this period, I discuss
how the refugees function not only as an "uncertain sign"
in the photographs in Wright's article, but also as "mythology."
I conclude that the peoples Wright deems "The Refugee Problem"
thus appear ready for salvage, and I show how Wright's article accommodates
their visual representations to American discourses of work. As fears
about communism spreading in Southeast Asia increased, the American
art world maintained the hegemony of some American priorities.
Colonialsim and the Collaborationist Agenda: Pham Quynh, France,
and the Invention of a Neo-Confucian Vietnam
Sarah Womack, University of Michigan
Considered by many Vietnamese revolutionaries (and Western historians)
to be the arch-collaborator of the colonial period, Pham Quynh-translator,
author, editor, philologist, minister, and "traditional" conservative-was
an extraordinary figure who nonetheless typifies many aspects of the
complex and largely overlooked category of indigenous collaborators
with colonial regimes. Although viewed as traitor and lackey to French
colonial ambition, Pham Quynh saw himself as a patriot, a visionary,
and a social revolutionary. Arguing that we must see collaboration as
inside an actor's agenda, this paper is a preliminary analysis of Pham
Quynh's articulation of his own project within the context of the French
colonial state in Vietnam.
My study is founded on the premise that "collaboration" and
"collaborators" can offer students of colonial history subjects
and frameworks of analysis that are lacking in the simple colonizer/colonized
dichotomy. Collaboration, if seen as the active engagement with colonial
policy and administration by indigenous agents, can also destabilize
the illusion of overwhelming and unitary power of colonial regimes.
It opens a space for the consideration of the possibilities of a colonial
hegemonic project by focusing not only on what sort of consent was manufactured
among "native colonialists" and by whom, but on a corresponding
effort by indigenous agents towards the state itself. The new possibilities
and realities created by the colonial state were a laboratory for both
colonizers and colonized, and in that context of experimentation there
is much to be learned about visions of the colonial and post-colonial
future.
Session 153: Initiative and Response: Vietnamese Actors in the Introduction
of European Medical and Technical Systems to Vietnam
Organizer and Chair: Michele Thompson, Southern Connecticut State University
Discussant: Lewis Pyenson, University of Southwestern Louisiana
Recently Asia has played an important part in widening the fields of
medical and scientific history beyond the thematic and theoretical factors
which located these disciplines firmly in Europe and North America.
It can also be said that familiarity with history of science and medicine
has provided new avenues of investigation for scholars whose geographic
focus lies within Asia. Too often however, there is an intellectual
divide between those who study traditional Asian systems of medicine
or technology and those who study western technology and medicine in
its Asian context. This panel will focus on the Vietnamese players in
technical and medical endeavors which combined French and Vietnamese
practical and theoretical perspectives. David Biggs looks at Vietnamese
and French hydrological works in the Mekong Delta and at the environmental
changes wrought by them. Michele Thompson discusses a French doctor's
work with the Nguyen royal medical service and their importation of
smallpox vaccine to Vietnam. Annick Guénel's work as a biologist
informs her examination of Vietnamese theoretical constructs concerning
malaria and their contribution to the evolution of malaria control programs.
Laurence Monnais-Rosselot will argue that a blending of local practices
and Western medicine formatted current Vietnamese national health policy.
Lewis Pyenson's knowledge of French colonial scientific programs will
inform his comments on our individual papers and on issues raised by
members of the audience.
French and Vietnamese Civilizing Missions in the Mekong Delta
David Biggs, University of Washington
From 1858-1930, the French colonial regime in Vietnam directed a series
of canal dredging projects that led to over 1300 kilometers of new waterways,
transforming the Mekong Delta into an agricultural center of Southeast
Asia. Colonial governors referred to these 'public works' as evidence
of the 'benevolence' and superiority of French civilization and technology.
However, the French were not the first to cultivate and dredge the Mekong
Delta. Since the 1750s the Vietnamese royal court had encouraged intensive
settlement on their southern frontier with Cambodia. Vietnamese soldiers
and laborers built garrisons and dug large canals in the 1800s. The
physical transformations brought on by both the Vietnamese and French
regimes included efforts to survey the land and to pacify local resistance-in
sum these were two civilizing missions. This essay looks at these missions
and the environmental changes brought on by them in the late 1800s.
Both Vietnamese pioneers and French colonizers sought to build systems
of land tenure and infrastructure on the frontier. The end results were
the creation of a hybrid culture not entirely French or Vietnamese but
one born of futuristic visions and local contingencies.
A Medical Mission: The Vietnamese Quest for Smallpox Vaccine
Michele Thompson, Southern Connecticut State University
1820 was a momentous year for the four men at the Nguyen court who enacted
an independent Vietnamese expedition to obtain smallpox vaccine. Gia
Long, the reigning emperor at the beginning of the year, died on January
25 and his son Minh Mang inherited the throne. Two of Gia Long's courtiers,
Philippe Vannier and Jean Marie Despiau, were involved in Gia Long's
initial acquisition of information on vaccination for smallpox. They
also served Minh Mang by planning and carrying out an expedition to
Macao to bring vaccine back to the court in Hue, thus completing one
of the projects left unfinished by Gia Long when he died. Despiau successfully
transported live vaccine from Macao to Hue for the immediate objective
of vaccinating Minh Mang's children. The expedition also succeeded in
transferring smallpox vaccine on a potentially long term basis to the
royal medical service. Five months after the mission to Macao, Despiau
still had active vaccine on hand in Hue and he had trained ten Vietnamese
physicians to vaccinate. For the Nguyen medical service to have kept
vaccine going for so long indicates that Despiau and the Vietnamese
doctors he worked with understood very clearly how to maintain the live
vaccine. The details of the mission, as examined in this paper, will
reveal what a notable accomplishment this feat of medical cooperation
was.
Malaria Control, Land Occupation, and Scientific Developments in
Vietnam
Annick Guénel, CNRS-INSERM, Paris
Long before the French colonial era, malaria was a major factor in the
struggle for land occupation in Vietnam. This is illustrated by the
land distribution among the different ethnic groups in Vietnam before
the colonial era. To this land distribution were linked popular beliefs
about the disease etiology of malaria among the dominant group-the Viet
or Kinh. In the nineteenth century, Europeans considered all of Indochina
as lands propitious for malarial fevers. This view was supported by
hospital statistics which ranked malaria as the first cause of morbidity
among the Vietnamese. These statistics in turn supported the need for
a State-sponsored prophylactic measure-wide-range distribution of quinine.
The first epidemiological data emphasized the specific distribution
of endemic areas which were more systematically explored during the
1930s. By that time, the Pasteur Institutes had set up a service for
"scientific malaria control." Since the end of the Indochina
Wars, changes have taken place, not only in regard to the stakes involved,
but also with respect to the actors implicated in malaria control in
Vietnam. This paper will include a history of malaria control in Vietnam
during the twentieth century, and will focus on the particularities
of malaria history in Vietnam, the contributions of local knowledge
and techniques in the evolution of control measures, and on the structure
of relationships among different local communities in Vietnam affected
by malaria control measures.
The Development of Health Care in Vietnam: In the Shadow of the Colonial
Hospital (1860-1939)
Laurence Monnais-Rosselot, University of Montreal
In 1864 the first non-religious French hospital for Vietnamese people
opened in Choquan (Cochinchina). By 1936 nearly a thousand health facilities
served the regions of Cochinchina, Tonkin, and Annam. There was a continuity
in French public health policy in which institutions such as hospitals
and vaccination programs were considered to be the most effective way
to fight disease. French colonial urban hospitals and rural clinics
and infirmaries supplied people with medicines and launched education
programs on hygiene and disease prevention. Colonial doctors were also
engaged in medical research. This paper traces the history of western
medicine in Vietnam from 1860 to 1939 and shows how medical institutions
were shaped by French colonialism. I will argue that this was not simply
a basic transfer of Western techniques onto Vietnamese society, but
rather that it was a slow blending of Western medicine into local practices.
For example, in the 1920s, French administrators and doctors who understood
the financial advantages of "traditional medicine" for their
patients began to use it in their own clinics along with Western medical
practices. These practices were to set the foundations of current post
colonial Vietnamese national health policy.
Session 188: Designing Women: The Use of Fashion to Construct International
Modernity, National Tradition, and Gender in Indonesia, Vietnam, and
Within the South Asian Diaspora
Organizer and Chair: Ann Marie Leshkowich, Harvard University
Discussant: Penelope Van Esterik, York University
Amidst rapid cultural and economic globalization, South and Southeast
Asian women are using fashion to construct and challenge visions of
modernity, nationalism, internationalism, and gender. This panel explores
how specific Indonesian, Vietnamese, and diasporic South Asian women
consciously draw on international styles to craft clothing items as
markers of various identities and as commodities whose development,
circulation, and use can offer social and economic advantage.
Sandra Niessen's paper examines how female Batak weavers in North Sumatra
adapt pattern innovations in an attempt to reconcile their history with
their future. Carla Jones analyzes how middle class women enrolled in
manners and wardrobe classes in Yogyakarta transform international styles
for proper "Indonesian women." Ann Marie Leshkowich's paper
examines how female merchants draw on diasporic kin to reinterpret Vietnam's
traditional costume as an amalgam of national heritage and international
style. Parminder Bhachu explores how British South Asian female entrepreneurs
use their multi-national identities and networks to develop a hybrid
style with "couture" appeal. Discussant Penny van Esterik
brings to the panel an extensive background of scholarship in gender,
development, and material culture in Southeast Asia.
These papers suggest two ways in which fashion has become transnational:
first, through the concrete circulation of items, ideas, and individuals
within diaspora; second, through incorporating these styles into local
products which tangibly represent an envisioned relationship to a global
community. By focusing on the agency and intentions of individual designers,
sellers, and consumers, the panel hopes to spark inter-area discussion
of the processes shaping fashion's meanings and uses.
Big Families in a Small World: How Female Entrepreneurs Use International
Kin Networks to Shape Vietnam's National Costume
Ann Marie Leshkowich, Harvard University
While economic and cultural globalization can threaten local producers
and traditions, this paper suggests that it can also create opportunities
for female entrepreneurs. Specifically, I examine how female designers
and sellers of áo dài in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam use
knowledge acquired through diasporic kin networks to craft and promote
a garment which symbolizes both national tradition and international
modernity.
In September 1995, the Miss International Pageant in Tokyo awarded Miss
Vietnam "Best National Costume" for her blue and white brocade
áo dài-a long, close-fitting tunic worn over loose pants.
For many in Vietnam, this award both affirmed the value of Vietnam's
traditions and signified its incorporation into the modern global community.
International recognition also boosted the áo dài's domestic
appeal. Within days, stalls and shops throughout Ho Chi Minh City had
posted pictures of the winner with signs promising áo dài
"just like Miss Vietnam's."
This paper argues that the Miss Vietnam advertisements are part of Vietnamese
designers' and sellers' ongoing efforts to market the áo dài
as an amalgam of local and global influences. For advice about international
fashion trends, these entrepreneurs-most of them women-regularly turn
to their relatives overseas. They then use this information to develop
new áo dài styles. In this way, Vietnamese women's traditional
role as maintainers of kin relations now gives many of them access to
global fashion influences. Incorporating these touches into their designs
helps female entrepreneurs make Vietnam's "national costume"
attractive to today's cosmopolitan consumers.
Session 207: Reform and Resistance in State/Society Relations in South
East Asia
Organizer: Carlyle A. Thayer, University of New South Wales
Chair: Laura J. Summers, University of Hull
Discussants: Vincent K. Pollard, University of Hawaii, Manoa; Carlyle
A. Thayer, University of New South Wales
The study of state systems has been challenged in recent years by scholarly
focus on 'non-state' political processes. Although scholars are now
more aware that the state cannot be regarded as the natural focus of
political and historical analysis, states remain a most complex and
expansive form of human organization.
This panel seeks to explore relationships between, on the one hand,
power systems and ideologies promoted by state elites and, on the other,
the concerns and priorities of the people over whom states claim authority.
It will focus on points of intersection and resistance, exploring the
complex processes by which political cultures and systems of power are
continually contested by dissent and opposition, giving rise to altered
conceptions of authority and community. A particular focus will be the
extent to which popular concerns both constrain the development of state-sponsored
ideologies and engender their transformation.
The panel will bring together scholars from history, political science,
and anthropology, presenting diverse case studies such as the importance
of semangat in nineteenth-century Sarawak and contests over ideology
and state power in contemporary Vietnam. Participants will draw on a
number of methodological approaches in their analyses.
The panel aims in this way to contribute to the understanding of political
community and legitimacy in Southeast Asia.
Public Spaces/Public Disgraces?: Crowds and the State in Vietnam
Mandy Thomas, University of Western Sydney
This paper argues that a semantic shift in the crowd in Vietnam
over the last decade has allowed public space to become a site through
which transgressive ideologies and desires may have an outlet. At a
time of accelerating social change, the state has effectively delimited
public criticism yet a fragile but assertive form of Vietnamese democratic
practice has arisen in public space, at the margins of official society,
in sites previously equated with state control. Official state functions
attract only small audiences, and rather than celebrating the dominance
of the party, reveal the disengagement of the populace in the party's
activities. Where crowds were always a component of state(stage)-managed
events, now public spaces are attracting large numbers of people for
supposedly non-political activities which may become transgressive acts
condemned by the regime. In support of the notion that crowding is an
opening up of the possibility of more subversive political actions,
the paper presents an analysis of recent crowd formation and the state's
reaction to them. These events include religious festivals, street celebrations
after football matches, public gatherings outside law courts, and the
massing of the public at the funeral of a popular young actor. The analysis
reveals the modalities through which popular culture has provided the
public with the means to transcend the constraints of official, authorized,
and legitimate codes of behaviour in public space. Changes in the use
of public space, it is argued, map the sets of relations between the
public and the state, making these transforming relationships visible,
although fraught with contradictions and anomalies.