Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

1976

Keywords

Villages, Vietnam, Social conditions, Rural conditions, Vietnamese villages, Mekong River Delta (Vietnam and Cambodia)

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Anthropology

First Advisor

Brian L. Foster

Second Advisor

Richard U. Moench

Third Advisor

Owen M. Lynch

Abstract

In this study, I examine community social organization in the Mekong Delta with particular reference to the nature and consequences of the village’s connections with the wider Vietnamese society. In so doing, my objectives are both ethnographic and theoretical. The latter derive from the fact that, although there is wide agreement among anthropologists that village-nation relations are critical for understanding village social behavior, our understanding of how these relations operate is far from satisfactory. Numerous disparate lines of research into this topic have developed in recent years, but for the most part they remain separate—sometimes parallel, sometimes complementary, and sometimes contradictory. In my analysis I have drawn on several of these bodies of scholarship, with the objective of beginning a synthesis. Since I discuss these writings in greater detail in the next chapter, I will present only a general outline of this synthesis here.

The approach I am trying to formulate borrows ideas, concepts, and hypotheses from a number of areas: role theory, network analysis, “action theory,” studies on patron-client relationships, notions of social exchange, and structural functionalism. It has two major characteristics. First, it views the village in regard to its larger social context, particularly the broader political-economic setting; and it focuses upon those categories and groups of persons who stand between the local community and the larger region or nation. On the one hand, I examine national institutions, such as the government and the market, which reach down into the village and link it with the larger society. Here the focus is on formal roles, resources of funds and personnel, and the rules, regulations, and decrees which these institutions inject into village social life. On the other hand, I am interested in the individuals who fill these roles, control these resources, and implement decisions as well as enforce laws. Most important, I am interested in the relationships these individuals have with others, both within the formal organization and outside it.

The second characteristic of this synthesis is its concern with the behavior of individuals vis-à-vis one another and with the concept of man as an interacting social being capable of manipulating others as well as being manipulated by them (Mitchell 1974:281-282; Boissevain 1973:viii). While it is obvious that an institutional program, such as land reform or taxation, can affect village social behavior, much of my attention is on how those who are responsible for implementing these programs manipulate them and their relationships with others, and how this aspect of institutional articulation affects local social organization. Similarly, villagers need somehow to mitigate the effects of these outside impinging forces (taxes, the draft, laws, etc.). They too are maneuvering and manipulating their material and social resources, and this also affects village social behavior.

The value of this synthesis depends upon how well it elucidates the nature and consequences of village-nation articulations in the Mekong Delta. If it is successful here, then it cannot only resolve some of the difficulties encountered in the study of other Southeast Asian societies but ultimately contribute to the development of a theory of peasant society.

My ethnographic objective in this study is to increase our knowledge and understanding of Vietnamese social organization. It is ironic that despite world attention during the 1960s and 1970s Vietnam is one of the most poorly described societies in Southeast Asia. The most widely read account of village social organization is Gerald Hickey’s monograph, Village in Vietnam, published in 1964 but based primarily on fieldwork conducted in 1958. Given the paucity of works on modern Vietnamese society, naturally almost any new study would make an ethnographic contribution. My aim, however, is not just to present another community study. By focussing upon the articulations between the village and the larger society, an approach only rarely taken in studies of Vietnamese communities, I hope to provide new insights into the nature of Vietnamese society. I plan also to reinterpret much of our present knowledge about Vietnamese village social organization and to present ultimately a more accurate, up-to-date picture of village social life.

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