In Vietnam, especially during times when state power was shifting hands or being challenged, the interests of the state or those seeking state power have often been in conflict with the interests of the family. At other times, the family has provided those in power or revolutionaries seeking power with an effective mode of social organization and a symbol of Vietnamese identity around which to rally people. Similarly, gender roles have often been viewed by the state or revolutionaries as a problem needing to be fixed or a symbol of Vietnam's enduring culture to be preserved and celebrated.

Write an essay addressing the following questions: What effects have official or revolutionary policies, attitudes, and debates about family and gender had on actual families and the men and women who comprise them? How have gender roles or family relationships and duties changed and/or stayed the same? How would you explain these outcomes?

To answer these questions, compare the effects of debates and policies about eitherthe family or gender in two different periods of Vietnam's recent history (prior to French colonialism, French colonialism, post-independence socialism, or contemporary doi moi). For each time period, focus on one main source (Tale of Kieu, Tai's Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution, Jamieson's book or essay on the family, Pham Ban Bich, Marr, or Gammeltoft). Based on the author's account, how would you characterize official attitudes toward families or gender roles, and what were the effects of these attitudes? How do you evaluate the author's argument and its significance? In considering the effects of policies and the strengths and weaknesses of an author's argument, be sure to take into account how differences such as class, region, and place of residence might affect family or gender roles.

Based on your comparison of two time periods, how would you characterize the overall effects on everyday lives of policies, debates, and practices regarding the family or gender by those in power? What is the nature of this relationship? Has it changed over time? Or, has it remained very much the same, despite significant changes in regime?

The key for this essay is to juxtapose analyses about two historical periods in order to formulate your own argument about the relationship between the state and family life or gender roles. While your essay should focus primarily on two authors, feel free to refer to other relevant readings.

TEXT REFERENCES
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NOTES
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REFERENCES CITED
Do not include any publication not cited in the text. References Cited must begin on a new page, and all entries must be double-spaced, listed alphabetically by last name of senior author, and chronologically for two or more titles by the same author(s). The typed layout should conform to the printed layout as follows:

Driver, Harold E.

1956 An Integration of Functional, Evolutionary, and Historical Theory by Means of Correlations. Bloomington: Indiana University Publication in Anthropology and Linguistics, Memoir 12.

1966 Geographical-Historical versus Psycho-Functional Explanations of Kin Avoidances. Current Anthropology 7:131-182.

Miller, George A.

1954 Psycholinguistics. In Handbook of Social Psychology II. Gardner Lindey, ed. Pp. 693-708. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Thibault, John W., and Harold H. Kelley

1959 The Social Psychology of Groups. New York: John Wiley.

 

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