Kyoto Area Studies on Asia, v. 23. Kyoto: Kyoto University Press; Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press; Portland, OR: International Specialized Book Services [exclusive distributor], 2013. xxii, 229 pp. (Tables, figures, maps, photos.) US$94.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-920-90172-1.
Masako Ito, associate professor of modern Vietnamese history at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies at Kyoto University, traces in excellent detail the consequences of the adoption in the 1960s of a policy to determine the ethnic composition of Vietnam. When the country was reunified in 1979, the government announced that “Vietnam was a multiethnic state” with 54 ethnic groups (1).
Vietnam’s ethnic policy was rooted in Marxist-Leninist theory and modelled on the application of that theory in the Soviet Union and China. Vietnamese ethnologists, most trained in the USSR, were charged with carrying out research to determine who belonged to which dân tộc and, more particularly to which “minority ethnic group” (dân tộc thiểu số), on the basis of language, shared culture, economic status and self-identity. This research led to the recognition of 53 ethnic minorities and the dominant Kinh (ethnic Vietnamese).
As Ito shows, once the list was established, it was reified and became impossible to change. A major reason for this was that new policies aimed at promoting the development of minority ethnic groups instituted subsequent to the ethnic classification of the population resulted in vesting these groups and local districts with significant minority populations with specified benefits (51ff). Ethnic leaders and many local officials thus had no desire to see any changes in the system of ethnic classification.
Many local groups whose ethnic identities were not officially recognized were displeased with their assigned ethnic status and some began to press to expand the list. Their concerns led the government to reopen its inquiry into the ethnic diversity of the country. In 2002 the government asked the Institutes of Ethnology and Linguistics in the National Academy of Social Sciences “to undertake a state-funded project named the Investigation to Determine Ethnic Group Composition in Vietnam” (67). For the next several years this project was undertaken by ethnologists and linguists from these institutes.
A major contribution of Ito’s study is her own research during this same period among some of the problematic groups, that is groups whose leaders had become “vocal” in seeking official recognition of their distinctive identities. In 2004 Ito conducted field research in several provinces in the northeastern corner of Vietnam, where the major ethnic group is identified officially as Sán Chay. This group, numbering about 150,000, is made up of two subgroups, the Cao Lan and Sán Chỉ, which, as Professor Ito found, really are very different, speaking languages belonging to different language families and not sharing a common culture. Despite this, the request to recognize them as separate groups was shelved and “the groundwork is being laid for [the] quiet end” of the request (86).
Professor Ito found a similar reaction to a petition by the approximately 40,000 Nguồn people in Quảng Bình province near the Lao border. At the time of the initial ethnic classification, there was a difference of opinion as to whether these people belonged to the Mưởng ethnic group, or to the Kinh, or were a distinct group (86). In the end, it was decided that they were a subgroup of the Kinh, and thus were not a distinct ethnic minority. “As ‘ethnic self-consciousness’ is counted the most important criterion for ethnic group determination, the Nguồn quite rightly ask why their claim is not accepted.” But their request has also been shelved because “from the state’s point of view the Nguồn’s demand is an issue laden with dangerous factors which could lead to the ‘breakdown’ of the nation” (105).
This perspective also has precluded other groups—such as the Pa Dí, Thu Lao, and Xá Phó, small groups living near the Chinese border in the far northern part of Vietnam among whom Professor Ito also did fieldwork—from gaining acceptance of their petitions for recognition as separate ethnic groups. On the other hand, the Ơ-Đu, a very small group—numbering only several hundred people—living in the mountainous area of Nghệ An province, have retained their distinctive ethnic status first granted them after the first ethnic classification program. Indeed, as Professor Ito demonstrates well, the Ơ-Đu were created by this program.
In the end, despite the conclusions of the new officially mandated inquiry, no group has succeeded in persuading the government to institute any changes in the original ethnic classification scheme. This is because “it remains essential for the preservation of the vested rights of various administrative cadres and a majority of academic cadres to continue to assert that Vietnam is a ‘multiethnic community of 54 ethnic groups’” (187).
Professor Ito has succeeded admirably in juxtaposing her study of official documents, interviews with officials and academics, and the results of her own excellent first-hand field work to demonstrate why ethnic classification in Vietnam has been far more a political than a scientific project. Her book deserves to be read not only by those interested in Vietnam but also by others interested in the politics of ethnicity more generally.
Charles Keyes
University of Washington, Seattle, USA
pp. 892-894