The Diverse Accounts of Anthropology in Viet Nam

The history of the introduction and development of Anthropology in Vietnam crosses and encompasses the history of the twentieth century in a surprising way. Starting from colonial history, then referring to Southeast Asia which is a much larger region that does not overlap, rather includes the present Socialist Republic of Vietnam, then passing through the World Wars times, decolonization, and the Cold War, Vietnam is placed at the center of a complex trajectory of cultural narratives. The patterns adopted by Vietnam to develop its own political representations and ethnographic self-representations are difficult to trace back according to a single and linear history.
The research on the sources of this chapter includes material archives of the cultural institutions founded in colonial times in French Indochina, a period in which anthropology overlaps and intersects with archaeology; in a second phase, sources collect and include the testimonies of the first Vietnamese anthropologists who, although trained in French school, took a great distance from the main nationalist character, particularly in the period of the Indochina War; sources then include the divergent and highly politicized narratives produced during the two decades of the country's division (1955-1975), a complex legacy to reconstruct due to the objective decrease in anthropological research, and the scarcity of digital sources relating to the ethnography of the Soviet period reporting in specific about Northern Vietnam. In all these historical phases, Vietnamese anthropology struggles to assume an independent status, at least at an institutional level, but rarely it evolves from a purely ethnographic-descriptive study. Finally, the contemporary scenario is introduced, in which it is possible to identify a real boom in Vietnamese anthropology thanks to the opening of degree courses, research doctorates, dedicated departments and new ethnographic museums. Such thriving phase indicates the recognition of anthropology as a discipline not only targeted at censusing the many ethnic and linguistic varieties of the country, but rather as a form of knowledge necessary to promote environmental protection, touristic valorisation, and the reconstruction of a complex national history.