Ritual and revolution in Viet Nam.

Ritual and Revolution in Viet Nam examines the history of the Vietnamese Communist Party's campaign to reform village ritual in the post-1954 period. Predicated upon the theoretical premise that the ideational domain of the social world is internally contradictory, the dissertation examines the contradictions between indigenous systems of cultural value and Party ideology that informed the history of the reform campaign. Ritual reform was intended to create an egalitarian village fundamentally different from the stratified colonial village. The mechanics of the reform campaign, however, powerfully contradicted indigenous values regarding the proper organization of social relations and moral worth. The interplay of these ideologies illuminates the practical consequences of the reform campaign. The dissertation explores the history of the ritual reform campaign at the national level and at the level of two adjacent villages near Hanoi. The analysis focuses on the reform of public village ritual and domestic family ritual. It explores the Party's ideology of egalitarianism and how it was to be institutionalized through reformed ritual practice. The reform of public ritual examines the hierarchical nature of public ritual in the colonial village and how the reform campaign, conducted during the land reform, sought to remove the material foundation of the former village elites; discredit pre-revolutionary elite culture; and eliminate the village status hierarchy. The analysis of wedding and funeral reform examines the manner in which reform attempted to create relations of equality between and within families by eliminating the 'feudal' practices and symbols of inequality they contained. The reform of wedding and funeral feasts illustrates the new social relations, values and allegiances the Party sought to create. The dissertation argues that the content of the reform campaign contradicted the indigenous system of social relations and moral worth that is reproduced through exchange relations operationalized during life crisis ceremonies. Rituals and feasts reproduce positively-valenced affective bonds between villagers. Through these relations villagers construct and reproduce notions of social rectitude and moral worth. The dissertation argues that the socio-cultural salience of this ideology and its values explains why the reform campaign enjoyed only partial success.PhDAnthropo1ogyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/103812/1/9409760.pdfDescription of 9409760.pdf : Restricted to UM users only