Danièle Bélanger - Reconfiguring Families in Contemporary Vietnam

SERIES ON Contemporary Issues in Asia and the Pacific

SERIES CO-EDITORS
John T. Sidel, London School of Economics
Geoffrey M. White, East - West Center
and University of Hawaii

EDITORIAL BOARD
Kellee S. Tsai, Johns Hopkins University
Sheila A. Smith, Council on Foreign Relations
Peter Xenos, East - West Center

John T. Sidel and Geoffrey M. White, Series Co-Editors

A collaborative effort by Stanford University Press and the East-West Center, this series focuses on issues of contemporary significance in the Asia Pacific region, most notably political, social, cultural, and economic change. The series seeks books that focus on topics of regional importance, on problems that cross disciplinary boundaries, and that have the capacity to reach academic and other interested audiences.

The East-West Center is an education and research organization established by the U.S. Congress in 1960 to strengthen relations and understanding among the peoples and nations of Asia, the Pacific, and the United States. The Center contributes to a peaceful, prosperous, and just Asia Pacific community by serving as a vigorous hub for cooperative research, education, and dialogue on critical issues of common concern to the Asia Pacific region and the United States. Funding for the Center comes from the U.S. government, with additional support provided by private agencies, individuals, foundations, corporations, and the governments of the region.

Stanford University Press
Stanford, California

2009 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reconfiguring families in contemporary Vietnam / edited by Magali
Barbieri and Danile Blanger.
p. cm.(Contemporary issues in Asia and the Pacific)
Includes bibliographical references and index.

9780804771122

1. FamilyEconomic aspectsVietnamCongresses. 2. Vietnam
Economic policy1975Congresses. 3. Family policyVietnam
Congresses. 4. Social changeVietnamCongresses. I. Barbieri,
Magali. II. Blanger, Danile. III. Series.
HQ674.5.R43 2009
306.850959709045dc22
2008042352

Typeset by Thompson Type in 9.75/13.5 Janson

This volume brings together some of the presentations given at a conference titled Post-transitional Vietnamese Families: Exploring the Legacy of Doi Moi, held in Paris, France, October 2123, 2004. Generous financial support for the conference was provided by the Institut NationaldEtudes Dmographiques, France, by the University of Western Ontario (Research Services and the Faculty of Social Science), Canada, and by the French Consulate in Hanoi. Subsequent funding for editorial expenses was provided by the Institut National dtudes Dmographiques and by the University of Western Ontario.

We wish to take this opportunity to thank all the conference participants, including those whose presentations are absent from this volume. We extend our gratitude to the discussants of the conference sessions, namely Isabelle Attane, Elizabeth Croll, Dang Nguyen Anh, John Kleinen, and Ccile Lefvre, for their insightful and intellectually stimulating contributions. We are particularly grateful to the authors of this volume who patiently revised their chapters through the multiple-round review process. Remarkable editorial work was carried out by Gale Cassidy and Catriona Dutreuilh, whose behindthe-scene edits and recommendations helped stitch the chapters into a seamless whole. We extend our thanks to Belinda Hammoud who helped with the preparation of the final manuscript. Finally, we greatly benefited from the careful reading and thoughtful and constructive criticism of two anonymous readers during the several stages of revision.

In addition, we wish to express here our gratitude to George Alter for his unfailing encouragement and support during the early stages of this project. We also thank the three Vietnamese artists who exhibited paintings and drawings about families and women at the conference and who helped to make the initial scientific meeting a memorable event. The exhibition of works by these three internationally known Vietnamese artists, Pham Cam Thuong, Dinh Thi Tham, and Le Quoc Viet, was made possible by the unconditional support and dedicated work of Susan Lecht, Director of Art Vietnam, a beautiful art gallery located in Hanoi. Susan Lecht brought their works to Paris herself and gave a presentation on Vietnamese contemporary art to our conference participants. The author and journalist Dana Sachs also contributed her perspective on Vietnamese families by reading significant excerpts from her book The House on Dream Street: Memoir of an American Woman in Vietnam, which recounts her experience of living with Vietnamese families in the early 1990s in Hanoi.

Last but not least, we are indebted to the editorial committees at the East-West Center and at Stanford University Press who made the production of this book a smooth process, and we have been fortunate to work with Elisa Johnston, Jessica Walsh, and Stacy Wagner.

Magali Barbieri is a researcher for the Institut national dtudes dmographiques in Paris, France. She is the head of the Population and Development Division there. Her Vietnamese experience began in 1993 when she worked as an expert on a number of projects in Hanoi for the United Nations. She is the author of numerous publications on the demographic situation in Vietnam.

Danile Blanger is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Population, Gender and Development at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. Her research focuses on population, migration, gender, development, family, and reproductive health in Vietnam and other Asian countries. After coediting the book Gender, Household, State: Doi Moi in Viet Nam, published by Cornell University in 2002, she is currently working on a manuscript titled Building Happy Families. Son Preference and Fertility Decline in Vietnam.

Anil Deolalikar is Professor of Economics and Director of the Public Policy Initiative at the University of California, Riverside. His area of research specialization is economic development. He has published more than fifty articles and three books in the areas of poverty, health, education, and social protection in developing countries. He is coeditor of the Journal of Asian and African Studies and the Journal of Developing Societies, and is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Rukmalie Jayakody is Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, Sociology, and Demography at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Jayakodys international research focuses on Vietnam. She is affiliated with the Institute of Sociology in Hanoi, where she currently collaborates with colleagues on a survey of Vietnamese families in the north and south to examine how recent social changes have affected family life.