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"The Princess of the Flaming Womb," the Javanese legend that introduces this pioneering study, symbolizes the many ambiguities attached to femaleness in Southeast Asian societies. Yet despite these ambiguities, the relatively egalitarian nature of male–female relations in Southeast Asia is central to arguments claiming a coherent identity for the region. This challenging work by senior scholar Barbara Watson Andaya considers such contradictions while offering a thought-provoking view of Southeast Asian history that focuses on women’s roles and perceptions. Andaya explores the broad themes of the early modern era (1500–1800)—the introduction of new religions, major economic shifts, ch...
This collection focuses on one of Asias fastest growing economies Vietnam - from its mythical origins to the rising economic power it has become today. Readers will be able to explore Vietnam's unique cultural identity, as seen in the diverse material cultures that developed over the past 2,500 years. This rich legacy is the result of different cultural influences, which were absorbed and adapted. The advanced bronze technology of the Dong Son culture of northern Vietnam some 2,500 years ago, shared similarities with Chinese traditions and was also exported to other parts of Southeast Asia. The Viet culture of the northern Red River region, was heavily influenced by China during the first 1,...
What is a national medicine? What does it mean for a medicine to be traditional and scientific at the same time? How could a specifically Vietnamese medicine emerge out of the medical practices and treatments that have flourished and waned during key socio-cultural encounters in Vietnam? This book answers these questions by examining the making of Vietnamese medicine from a historical and contemporary perspective. Ever since its fourteenth century emergence out of the traditions and practices of the much more globally celebrated Chinese medicine, Vietnamese medicine has been engaged in a constant effort to define, guard and more recently, revive itself. In this collection of empirically-rich...
Yvonne Combs will take you through these pages along the two-thousand-year history of her motherland, Vietnam, from the legendary and historic origins when she studied in primary school and high school. Legend establishes the first Viet kingdom in what is now Vietnam. Lac Long Quan, the first Vietnamese king, was descendant of a line of Chinese divine rulers. He marries Au Co, the daughter of the Chinese emperor whose forces he drove out of Vietnam. This union produced one hundred sons. The king and queen separated dividing their sons between them. The king went south, and the queen went north into the mountains near Hanoi. From the Ding Dynasty (968-980), the Ly Dynasty (1009-1225), the Tra...
This book examines gender in post-revolutionary Vietnam, focusing on gender relations in the family and state since the onset of economic reform in 1986. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources (including surveys, interviews, and responses to film screenings), Jayne Werner demonstrates that despite the formal institution of public gender equality in Vietnam, in practice women do not hold a great deal of power, continuing to defer to men in both the family and the wider community. Contrary to conventional analyses equating liberalisation and decentralisation with a reduced role for the state over social relations, this book argues that gender relations continued to bear the imprint of stat...
Provides the interested researcher with background on this small but important country. A detailed introduction describes the cultural and societal background of native Vietnamese and Vietnamese-Americans. Chapters provide annotations classified in categories such as history, culture and art, language and literature, business and economics, contemporary Vietnam, and the war with America
New nations require new histories of their struggles for nationhood. Postcolonial Vietnam takes us back to the 1950s to see how official Vietnamese historians and others rethought what counted as history, what producing history entailed, and who should be included as participants and agents in the story. Beginning with government-appointed historians’ first publications in 1954 and following their efforts over the next thirty years, Patricia M. Pelley surveys this daunting process and, in doing so, opens a wide window on the historical forces and tensions that have gone into shaping the new nation of Vietnam. Although she considers a variety of sources—government directives, census repor...
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