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Standardized Forms of Vietnamese Selfhood: an Ethnographic Genealogy of Documentation

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Standardized Forms of Vietnamese Selfhood: an Ethnographic Genealogy of Documentation ANN MARIE LESHKOWICH College of the Holy Cross Standardized forms of Vietnamese selfhood: An ethnographic genealogy of documentation ABSTRACT s an anthropologist who has conducted life history research in Three standardized forms used to write the self in Vietnam for nearly 20 years, I maintain an abiding interest in Vietnam structure ways of thinking about the the forms through which people narrate their lives. By forms, I relationship between the individual, family, and mean the structure, content, and context around which individ- state; legitimize technical expertise and tools of uals compose their autobiographies. But I am also interested in self-improvement; and promote specific A forms in a more technical sense: as written documents that require individ- configurations of political economy. Two of the uals to submit particular details about themselves for official scrutiny and forms (the lyli´ .ch autobiographical statement and recordkeeping. the “Cultured Family” self-assessment checklist) are Three examples of these literal forms sit on my desk: an autobiographi- closely associated with socialist practices. The third cal statement (lyli´ .ch), a “Cultured Family” self-assesment checklist (bang (social work case file) is best classified as neoliberal. di¯ emˆ tu. chamˆ´ xepˆ´ loa. i“Gia¯d`ınh Van˘ hoa”),´ and a social work case file (hoˆ` Tracing the genealogy of these forms and their sox ah˜ oˆ. i). Key elements in a Vietnamese corpus of technologies of self, ethnographic contexts reveals, however, underlying these standardized forms elicit details that serve as the basis for expert continuities in logics of individual assessment and assessment and classification of a person and his or her family. This as- faith in the application of technical expertise to sessment may prompt intervention—rewards, punishments, strategies of achieve desired development outcomes. It also reformation—intended to enable the individual to become an appropriate demonstrates that the ostensibly more coercive self and the family to forge desired bonds of economy and affect, which, socialist technologies of documentation have together, will advance national political-economic goals. provided narrative frameworks that enable These three forms of individual assessment overlap temporally; all were individuals to represent themselves in other in use in 2010. But they are also iconic of different moments in Vietnam’s re- contexts, whereas the social work case file that aims cent history. The lyli´ .ch (autobiographical statement; Appendix A) is a tool to empower individuals may ultimately render them of revolutionary socialist transformation used to assess individual class sta- passive subjects of transnational expertise. tus and revolutionary commitment. In the southern part of the country, [documentation, case files, expertise, social work, where I conduct research, the lyli´ .ch was used after the end of the war neoliberalism, socialism, Vietnam] in 1975 as an instrument of political and economic reckoning.1 The an- swers it elicited determined disposition of property, access to jobs or edu- cation, sentencing to reeducation camps, or dispatch to barren New Eco- nomic Zones in the tense border region with Cambodia. By the 1990s, ly´ li.ch served primarily as a curriculum vitae required for job applications, university admission, or any kind of official paperwork. AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 143–162, ISSN 0094-0496, online ISSN 1548-1425. C 2014 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/amet.12065 American Ethnologist Volume 41 Number 1 February 2014 Nevertheless, the document’s continued focus on locating and economic unit, and shifting configurations of political the individual and his or her extended family within so- economy. cialist class-ification, and the lingering bitter memories of To explore these issues, I conducted six months of dispossession that such schemes caused for many of the participant-observation with social work students and fac- middle-class urbanites I know, prompted many to continue ulty at a major university in Ho Chi Minh City. I audited to see it as a tool of socialist governmentality. introductory classes with second-year students to under- The self-assessment checklist (Appendix B) is an eval- stand how they perceived the field. I also followed advanced uation tool used during the ubiquitous “Cultured Fam- students as they completed required practicum placements ily” (Giad ¯`ınh Van˘ hoa)´ campaigns of the 1990s–2000s. with local government welfare organizations or domes- Originally associated with agricultural collectivization and, tic and transnational NGOs. The final assignment for the later, with family planning campaigns, the Cultured Family practicum was to submit a case file for one particular client. ideal had by the 1990s been transformed into a model for The result of months of observation and interviewing, com- improving family quality, with benchmarks related to af- pleting the forms and questionnaires in the file would serve fective relationships, material conditions, and civic engage- as the crucial first step in working with individuals and fam- ment. Although the Cultured Family self-assessment check- ilies to resolve their issues. The case file was thus both an list was a tool in a socialist-style campaign, its logic and authoritative assessment of a client’s situation and personal implementation aptly captured a “transitional” moment qualities and proof of the neophyte social worker’s profes- in which socialist mass mobilization practices were being sional expertise. reinvented to serve the needs of the rapidly changing “mar- The other documents on my desk—the lyli´ .ch and Cul- ket economy with socialist orientation” (kinh teˆ´ thi. truong` tured Family self-assessment checklist—stem from my ear- di¯.nh huong´ xah˜ oˆ. ichungh ˜ıa) or, more simply, “market lier research (1994–2010) among women market traders. socialism.”2 Many had found themselves on the losing side of the war, The third form is, in fact, a series of documents that, but by the 1990s they were experiencing an increase in eco- together, construct a social work case file. Unlike the other nomic, if not political, status. Their memories of the con- two, the case file is not a tool for self-assessment. Instead, crete consequences of possessing “bad” lyli´ .ch highlighted it is filled in by an expert: a social worker trained in mod- the stakes of knowledge production about the individual. ern, scientific methods of determining the causes of indi- Even as many of the women I know resisted state-sponsored vidual, family, or community distress. Once completed, the self-assessment forms and campaigns such as the “Cultured form is used to develop a plan of intervention to empower Family” as oppressive, I found that the process of generating the “client” (thanˆ chu) to solve his or her own problems. Al- these documents informed their subjectivities, particularly though social work has a rich history in industrial liberal in terms of how they articulate their pasts and envision their democracies, its promotion in contemporary Vietnam sug- relationships to family, society, and state. gests a trend toward neoliberal development in which val- Three distinct periods. Three separate documents. orized experts “responsibilize” individuals to assume con- Three different approaches to an expert technology of the trol over the circumstances of their lives and livelihoods self. Yet, just as they sit side by side on my desk, they can be (Rose 1999; Rudnyckyj 2010). coincident in people’s lives, provoking consideration of the I encountered case files frequently in 2010–11 as I con- relationship between them. A first set of related questions is ducted fieldwork on the reemergence of the social work pro- ethnographic. How are these forms used? How are the com- fession in Vietnam. Several decades earlier, the government pleting and submitting of such documents also processes had deemed social work a bourgeois “Band-Aid” unnec- of subject formation in which one becomes knowable to essary in a socialist society destined to eliminate the eco- one’s self and others? How might these logics of selfhood be nomic inequality that caused poverty and other forms of in- employed, transposed, or resisted in other contexts? A sec- dividual or family distress. With the development of market ond set of questions is genealogical. What logics gave rise to socialism, however, the government acknowledged that in- these particular forms at particular moments in Vietnamese equality was on the rise and, with it, social problems such as experience? What forms of expertise originating from what poverty, drug addiction, homelessness, and child abandon- sources motivate them? How do these forms relate to each ment. Official attitudes toward social work shifted to view other? Did the lyli´ .ch somehow give rise to the case file? it as a scientific means of addressing dilemmas of modern- Does the newer technology make sense because it draws on ization and industrialization, culminating in the announce- aspects of the older? Or is the newer document a reaction ment in 2010 that the Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social against earlier forms? Affairs planned to train 60,000 cadres in social work by 2020. By attending to both the ethnographic and genealog- The story of Vietnamese social work thus provides a lens ical contexts of documentation, in this article I consider through which to consider connections between changing how the production of new regimes
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