Facing The Future Reviving The Past

Download or read book Facing the Future, Reviving the Past written by John Kleinen and published by Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. This book was released on 1999 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Study of Social Change in a Northern Vietnamese Village is based on anthropological fieldwork between 1992 and 1996 in a small Red River delta village. It treats the history of the village since its foundation in the mid-seventeenth century, based on existing French and Vietnamese archival materials. At the same time, the book discusses the essentialist character of the Vietnamese village community. Special interest is devoted to internal politics within the village which enable powerful lineages and groups to (re)gain political and social power within the village. The recent revival of religious activities as a result of the renovation policy is taken into consideration. Since Vietnamese society is changing at a very fast pace, a longitudinal study of this nature provides the reader with a firsthand account of the interplay between the reform under a Marxist regime and local village society.