Everywhere incense burning: Remembering ancestors in Doi Moi Vietnam

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

Volumn 38, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 467-492

  Jellema, Kate ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANCESTRY; CULTURAL IDENTITY; CULTURAL TRADITION; MORALITY; REFORM PROCESS; WOMENS STATUS;

ASIA; EURASIA; RED RIVER DELTA; SOUTHEAST ASIA; VIET NAM;

EID: 35948947776     PISSN: 00224634     EISSN: 14740680     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022463407000227     Document Type: Article

References (77)

1. Nguyen Thanh Huyen, 'Ancestor worship: A typical characteristic of the Vietnamese people's psychic life', Vietnamese Studies, n.s. 43, 3 (1994): 27-53.
2. Thích Thanh Duê, Quàng Tuê and Tuê Nhä, Dâng hu'o'ang. Tap tuc và nghi le [Offering incense: Customs and rites] (Hanoi: Vän hoá Thông tin, 1995), p. 5.
3. On religious revival in Doi Mói Vietnam, see for example, Modernity and re-enchantment: Religion in post-revolutionary Vietnam, ed. Philip Taylor (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, in press);
4. Taylor, Goddess on the rise: Pilgrimage and popular religion in Vietnam (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004);
5. Shaun Kingsley Malarney, Culture, religion and revolution in Vietnam (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), pp. 189-207;
6. John Klemen, Facing the future, reviving the past (Singapore: 1nstitute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1999), pp. 161-89;
7. and Kirsten W. Endres, 'Culturalizing politics: Doi Mói and the restructuring of ritual in contemporary rural Vietnam', in Vietnamese villages in transition: Background and consequences of reform politics in rural Vietnam, ed. Bernard Dahm and Vincent J. Houben (Passau: Passau University Southeast Asian Studies Centre, 1999), pp. 197-222.
8. In this article I have assigned pseudonyms to people like Mrs Thúy and my host family whom I met in informal, private settings, while I have retained the real names of officials and lineage leaders who operate in the public sphere and spoke with me on the record. Due to their unique histories and their current prominence in the media, as well as their leaders' interest in raising their international visibility, village and lineage names have not been changed.
9. Nguyen Dňg Duy, Vǎn hóa Tâm linh [Spiritual culture] (Hanoi: Vǎn hoá Thông tin, 2001), p. 204.
10. Hy Van Luong, 'Vietnamese kinship: Structural principles and the socialist transformation in northern Vietnam', Journal of Asian Studies, 28, 4 (1989): 741-56;
11. Insun Yu, 'Bilateral social pattern and the status of women in traditional Vietnam', South East Asia Research, 7, 2 (1999): 215-31;
12. John K. Whitmore, 'Social organization and Confucian thought in Vietnam', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 15, 2 (1984): 296-306;
13. Ta Van Tai, 'The status of women in traditional Vietnam: A comparison of the code of the Le Dynasty (1428-1788) with the Chinese codes', Journal of Asian History, 15, 2 (1981): 97-143;
14. Nguyen Tu Chi, 'Preliminary notes on the family of the Viet', in Sociological studies on the Vietnamese family, ed. Rita Liljestrom and Lai Tuong (Hanoi: Social Science Publishing House, 1991), pp. 57-68.
15. Helle Rydstrom, Embodying morality: Girls' socialization in a north Vietnamese commune (Linkoping, Sweden: Linkoping University, 1998);
16. Phan Van Bich, The Vietnamese family in change: The case of the Red River Delta (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1999);
17. Shaun K. Malarney, 'Ritual and revolution in Viet Nam' (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1993), pp. 58-68;
18. John Bryant, 'Patrilines, patrilocality and fertility decline in Viet Nam', Asia-Pacific Population Journal, 17, 2 (2002): 111-28.
19. For comparative perspectives on women's psychocultural roles in contemporary societies within the 'Confucian core' (China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Singapore), see Confucianism and the family ed. Walter H. Slote and George A. DeVos (Albany, NY: SUNY Albany Press, 1998).
20. It should also be noted that in Vietnam maternal ancestors are often worshipped on domestic altars and as we will see with regards to the Nguyen Thac, are sometimes included in official lineage histories (Malarney, 'Ritual and revolution', p. 55; Yu, 'Bilateral social pattern').
21. The idea of intergenerational moral debt has wide currency throughout the Sinic world. For a thorough discussion of the meanings and practices mobilised by moral debt in mid-century Japan, see Ruth Benedict's classic ethnography, The chrysanthemum and the sword (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1954). In the rural Hakka community in post-Mao China studied by Ellen Oxfeld, attention to moral debt continues to 'encompass' the pursuit of social status as the main concern shaping mourning rites; Ellen Oxfeld, "'When you drink water, think of its source": Morality, status, and reinvention in rural Chinese funerals', Journal of Asian Studies, 63, 4 (2004): 961-90.
22. Toan Ánh, Phong tuc Viet Nam: Thò cúng to tiên [Vietnamese customs: Worshipping ancestors], reprint edn (Hanoi: Khoa hoc Xǎ hôi, 1991), pp. 19-20.
23. Toan Ánh was born in 1915 and was an avid researcher and prolific writer on matters of Vietnamese culture for several decades.
24. Nguyen Vǎn Khoan, 'Essai sur le dinh et le culte du génie tutélaire des villages an Tonkin', Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 30, 1-2 (1930): 107-39.
25. Nguyen Khac Vien, 'About the cult of ancestors', Vietnamese Studies n.s. 43, 3 (1994): 7-11.
26. On the concept of 'thieng' see Nguyen Dǎng Duy, Vǎn hoá tâm linh, pp. 190-5;
27. Nola Cooke, 'The myth of the restoration: Dang-Trong influences in the spiritual life of the early Nguyen Dynasty (1802-47)', in The last stand of Asian autonomies: Responses to modernity in the diverse states of Southeast Asia and Korea, 1750-1900, ed. Anthony Reid (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), pp. 275-8;
28. and Huyen Giang, 'Tho cúng to tiên, mot nét dep trong dòi song tâm linh ngu'òi Viet' [Ancestor worship: A beautiful feature in the spiritual life of the Viet people], in Nhũng vân & tâm lý va vàn hóa hiên dai [Issues in modern psychology and culture], ed. Dǎng Phu'o'ng Kiêt (Hanoi: Vǎn hóa Thông tin, 2000), pp. 450-62.
29. See Nguyen Vǎn Huyen, Ancient civilization of Vietnam (Hanoi: The gó'i, 1995), pp. 60-1.
30. Ironically, Thúy's dependence on sensory evidence to 'prove' the existence of ancestral spirits is actually in keeping with the state promotion of a scientific, materialist approach - what Tine Gammeltoft terms an 'epistemology of seeing' which 'privileges the optic as the basis for reason and knowledge, considering only the materially existing and visible "real"'. Armed with sensory evidence including portents in the physical world, visions and voices from beyond, many villagers would take issue with the idea that ancestral acts should be classified as what Shaun Malarney labels 'non-empirically verifiable'. See Tine Gammeltoft, 'Abortion conventionalized, abortion ritualized: Competing perceptions of fetal life in contemporary Vietnam', paper presented to the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Chicago, 2001;
31. and Malarney, Culture, ritual and revolution, pp. 79-107.
32. Nguyen Khac Vien, 'About the cult of ancestors'.
33. Thúy's assertions are striking given that traditionally white has been the colour of mourning in Vietnam. Hue-Tam Ho Tai has developed a typology based on the public commemorations of Ho Chí Minh found in Hanoi's Ba Dình Square. By selecting the monumental Soviet-built mausoleum as her symbolic touchstone, Thúy evokes not the warm-hearted familial 'Uncle Ho' but rather 'Chairman Ho Chí Minh', the national leader and international Communist statesman. See Hue-Tam Ho Tai, 'Monumental ambiguity: The state commemoration of Ho Chi Minh', in Essays into Vietnamese Posts, ed. K.W. Taylor and John K. Whitmore (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1995), pp. 272-88.
34. In a recent survey, 86 per cent of Vietnamese respondents said a woman needs to have children to fulfil her role; Russell J. Dalton et al. 'Social relations and social capital in Vietnam: The 2001 world values survey (Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 2005, published online at www.worldvaluessurvey.org/upload/ 104_social_relations_vietnam.pdf).
35. One of several lineages in the village, the Nguyen Thac of Dình Bång count approximately 1,000 members, or around one-tenth of the total village population. For a detailed account of the ideal type lineage organisation in pre-revolutionary Vietnam, including explanations of the leadership structure, see Nguyen Vǎn Huyen, Ancient civilization, pp. 20-6.
36. On the gia pha as treasured and protected heirloom, see Nguyen Trieu Dan, A Vietnamese family chronicle: Twelve generations on the banks of the Hat River (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 1991).
37. There is now a booming trade in how-to books to help families write or recreate their gia pha; see, for example, Pham Côn Son and Truoug Sĩ Thǎng, Gia pha [Family annals] (Hanoi: Vǎn hóa Dân toc, 1999).
38. All male members of this lineage have the family name Nguyen and the 'middle name' Thac. They are thus referred to as either the 'Nguyen Thac' or 'Thac' lineage.
39. Originating with an account in the gia pha, the story of Ngoc Long and Trinh Kiem cannot be corroborated by less partial historical sources, and several details call into question its veracity. Although Trinh Kiem did travel north of Hanoi in 1559-60, his base was then in Thanh Hóa province, not Thǎng Long as Sung implies. Thǎng Long was at that time in the hands of the Mac, a rival family. (Thanks to Bruce Lockhart for calling these facts to my attention.) Trinh Kiem's own life story resonates in fascinating ways with the tale of Cǎn and Ngoc Long: Like Ngoc Long, Kiem married 'up' from a peasant background into a powerful political family; he initially impressed his patron with his bravery; his wife's name was Ngoc Bao, very similar to 'Ngoc Long' and also to the names of Nguyen Thac Cǎn's two wives, Ngoc Menh and Ngoc Thu'o'ng; and as in the Nguyen Thac tale, both a famous geomancer (Nguyen Binh Khiêm) and a brother-sister pair (Ngoc Bao and her brother Nguyen Hoàng) feature prominently in Trinh Kiem's life story.
40. On the intimate relationship between lineages and their buildings, see Emily Martin Ahern, The cult of the dead in a Chinese village (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973), ch. 6.
41. Pierre Gourou, Les paysans du delta tonkinois: Étude de géographie humaine (Paris: Les Éditions d'Art et d'Histoire, 1936), pp. 294-5.
42. See also Dào Hùng, 'Nhà co o Dình Bang' [Old houses in Dình Bang], Xu'a và Nay, 95 (2001): 16-18. The folk saying is 'Thúr nhat là dình Dông Khang, thúr nhì Dình Bang, ve vang dình Diem' [First is Dông Khang's dình, next is Dình Bang's and the glorious dình of Diem]. The note next to this saying on a placard in Dình Bang's communal hall does not fail to mention that the first of these three, in the village of Dông Khang, has been destroyed, leaving little doubt as to which is the most notable extant dình in the country.
43. On the impact of the land reform on lineage holdings, see Nguyen Tuan Anh, 'Social capital and kinship relation in a Northern Vietnamese village since economic reform' (unpublished paper); Nguyen Trieu Dan, Vietnamese family chronicle;
44. and Klemen, Facing the future.
45. Viet Ha, 'Japanese project to save Vietnam's architectural past', Vietnam News, 3 Apr. 2001;
46. 'Japan steps in to help preserve traditional wooden houses', Vietnam News, 1 June 2000.
47. UNESCO Bangkok Office, 'Vietnamese traditional folk houses win award of merit in the 2004 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards', UNESCO News 24 Jan. 2005.
48. Huyen Giang, 'Tho cúng to tiên'; Nguyen Khac Vien, 'About the cult of ancestors'; Mai Huy Bich, 'A distinctive feature in the meaning of reproduction in Confucian family tradition in the Red River Delta', in Sociological studies on the Vietnamese family, ed. Liljestrom and Tuong Lai;
49. James W. Trullinger, Village at war: An account of conflict in Vietnam (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 6-8;
50. Nguyen Vǎn Huyen, Ancient civilization of Vietnam, pp. 51-3;
51. Ann Helen Unger and Walter Unger, Pagodas, gods and spirits of Vietnam (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997), p. 15;
52. and Nguyen Dǎng Duy, Vǎn hóa Tâm linh, p. 186.
53. Kate Jellema, 'Returning home: Ancestor veneration and the nationalism of Doi Mói Vietnam', in Modernity and re-enchantment.
54. Anthropologist Yunxiang Yan makes a similar case about the privatisation of the family during the Mao era in China, noting that under collectivisation many of the public functions of the family were appropriated by the state, resulting in the privatisation of the familial realm. However, in contrast to the revitalisation of the lineage as a major public player in Vietnam, in post-collectivised China the familial mode of social organisation has not been restored and the family has continued as a private realm; Yunxiang Yan, Private life under socialism: Love, intimacy, and family change in a Chinese village, 1949-1999 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).
55. Jun Jing, The temple of memories: History, power, and morality in a Chinese village (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996);
56. Gregory A. Ruf, Cadres and kin: Making a socialist village in west China, 1921-1991 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998);
57. Trullinger, Village at war.
58. Nguyen Tuan Anh, 'Social capital';
59. see also Daniele Belanger, 'Regional differences in household structure and family formation patterns in Vietnam', Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 31, 2 (2000): 171-89;
60. Dalton et al., 'Social relations and social capital';
61. and Malarney, Culture, ritual and revolution, pp. 100-2. Nguyen Thanh Huyen ('Ancestor worship') makes a similar point from the other way around, tracing the revival of ancestor worship to the 'restoration of the individual' enabled by the atrophy of the state.
62. Xin Liu, In one's own shadow: An ethnographic account of the condition of post-reform rural China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), p. 153;
63. Helen Siu, 'Recycling rituals: Politics and popular culture in contemporary rural China', in Unofficial China: Essays in popular culture and thought, ed. Richard Madsen, Perry Link and Paul Pickowicz (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989), pp. 121-37.
64. Ian Reader and George Tanabe, Practically religious: Worldly benefits and the common religion of Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998).
65. Malarney, Culture, ritual and revolution, pp. 92-5;
66. Charlotte Ikels, 'Serving the ancestors, serving the state: Filial piety and death ritual in contemporary Guangzhou', in Filial piety: practice and discourse in contemporary East Asia, ed. Charlotte Ikels (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 102-4. Malarneys informants in northern Vietnam told him the ancestors are the most likely of any type of spirit to punish the living for moral transgressions.
67. Thích Thanh Due et al., Dáng hu'o'ng, p. 13.
68. Neil Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 28-37.
69. On remoralising wealth in 'new Asian capitalisms', see Robert Hefner, Market cultures: Society and morality in the new Asian capitalisms (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997).
70. Kate Jellema, 'Making good on debt: The remoralisation of wealth in post-revolutionary Vietnam', Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 6, 3 (2005): 231-48.
71. Ahern, Cult of the dead.
72. There is a long history in Vietnam of inscribing the names of temple donors on honour rolls called 'bang ghí công'. Traditionally, however, each bang ghí công comprised many names and was posted on a specially designated plaque which served to record contributions made to a common fund used to construct and maintain a structure belonging, effectively, to the community at large. In current practice, sometimes an individual fronts all the money for some specific part of the whole, essentially 'buying' that part of the building, and in return gets his or her name carved into that pillar, gate or spirit palanquin as its private 'sponsor'.
73. Yan, Private life, pp. 217-36.
74. For elaboration of the cultural meanings of tinh cam, see Malarney, 'Ritual and revolution', ch. 4
75. and Rydstrom, Embodying morality, pp. 95-130.
76. Nguyen Khac Vien, 'Enlarged family, lineage, cult of ancestors', Vietnamese Studies, n.s. 43, 3 (1994): 15-16.
77. Bernard S. Cohn, 'The pasts of an Indian village', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 3, 2 (1961): 241-8.