Readings: **Hy Van Luong, Revolution in the Village, 96-232

1) Review Hy Van Luong's overview (in the introduction) of different approaches to understanding revolution and agrarian unrest. These include Mill, Popkin, Wallerstein, and Scott. How does Luong use these accounts and his ethnography of revolution in Son Duong to explore the relationship between self-interest, Western capitalist imperialism, and indigenous sociocultural frameworks in shaping revolutionary support in Vietnam?

2) In talking about his revolutionary participation and imprisonment, Bang makes repeated references to his relationship with his senior mother. How would you characterize this relationship? Based on our earlier readings about kinship, can you explain why this relationship is so meaningful to Bang and his senior mother?

3) Recalling our discussions about traditional village political life last week, why do you think that scholar-elites were so important to the revolutionary movement? What does this suggest to you about the relationship between Confucianism and communism?

4) How did the Viet Minh and the later Marxist government attempt to weaken the hierarchical structure of village life and strengthen its collectivist tendencies? To what extent were they successful? How can you account for the outcomes?

5) In class last week you played the role of a villager. How would your villager have been affected by the various stages of land reform (from rent reduction...to collectivization)? Would she or he have been better off before or after the land reform (and after correction of errors)? Why and to what extent?

6) Hy Van Luong describes the kinds of organizations and ceremonies which existed before and after land reform in North Vietnamese villages. How did they change from 1945-1985? How did family and village life change during this period?

7) How was the socio-economic revolution envisioned by the state undermined or enhanced by war? What other factors might have worked for or against the socio-economic revolution?

 

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