Helle Rydström

Heterosexual Masculinity in Contemporary Vietnam: Privileges, Pleasures, and Protests

By drawing on ethnographic data collected in two different settings in northern Vietnam, this article considers the ways in which heterosexual masculinity is configured by younger men. The intersection between heterosexuality and masculinity, the article argues, epitomizes a site of contestations between moral ideals, expectations about gendered support, and sexual pleasures disguised as protests. In introducing into a Southeast Asian context, the Latin American term machismo, understood as an expression of male-centered privileges and the ways in which they foster men’s chauvinism against women (or other men), the article explores how local assumptions about the natural quintessential drive of male sexuality as well as a wife’s obligations to comply with his sexual needs together provide men with morally legitimized explanations for the buying of various kinds of female sexual services.

Masculinity and Punishment: Men's Upbringing of Boys in Rural Vietnam

This article examines mens use of physical punishment when interacting with their sons or grandsons in rural Vietnam. By drawing on two periods of anthropological fieldwork in a northern Vietnamese commune, the article analyses the ways in which violence is informed by, while also perpetually reinforcing, a masculine discourse. Vietnam has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child and in this spirit virtually all men in the local community disapprove of the use of physical punishment when bringing up boys. However, a father or grandfather occasionally beats his son or grandson when it is deemed necessary to instil discipline in a boy. The article elucidates the ways in which the contradictions between ideals of nonviolent behaviour and actual corporal punishment have fed the construction of certain codes regarding mens beating of boys.This article examines mens use of physical punishment when interacting with their sons or grandsons in rural Vietnam. By drawing on two periods of anthropological fieldwork in a northern Vietnamese commune, the article analyses the ways in which violence is informed by, while also perpetually reinforcing, a masculine discourse. Vietnam has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child and in this spirit virtually all men in the local community disapprove of the use of physical punishment when bringing up boys. However, a father or grandfather occasionally beats his son or grandson when it is deemed necessary to instil discipline in a boy. The article elucidates the ways in which the contradictions between ideals of nonviolent behaviour and actual corporal punishment have fed the construction of certain codes regarding mens beating of boys.

Having ‘learning difficulties’: the inclusive education of disabled girls and boys in Vietnam

This article examines the ‘inclusive education’ strategy in Vietnam and the extent to which it facilitates learning in students with disabilities. After the introduction of the doi moi (renewal) policy in 1986, Vietnamese society went through a period of rapid transformation, including the educational sector. Debates on teaching means, curricula, learning, and the inclusion of children with disabilities in public school classes increasingly became a focus of concern. Supported by international aid organizations, the Vietnamese government initiated the implementation of an ‘inclusive education’ program which aims at mainstreaming the public school system in order to include all students regardless of disabilities. Even though the partners involved in the introduction of the ‘Inclusive Education’ program into Vietnam usually refer to it as a success, my data indicate that the program tends to amplify already identified problems in the public educational system mainly caused by overloaded and abstract curricula and a pervasive rote-learning tradition. The article shows how girls — disabled girls, in particular — are susceptible to pedagogical setbacks in the public school system.This article examines the ‘inclusive education’ strategy in Vietnam and the extent to which it facilitates learning in students with disabilities. After the introduction of the doi moi (renewal) po...

Contesting heteronormativity: the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition in India and Vietnam

Recent public debates about sexuality in India and Vietnam have brought the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people sharply into focus. Drawing on legal documents, secondary sources and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the urban centres of Delhi and Hanoi, this article shows how the efforts of civil society organisations dedicated to the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights have had different consequences in these two Asian contexts. The paper considers how these organisations navigated government regulations about their formation and activities, as well as the funding priorities of national and international agencies. The HIV epidemic has had devastating consequences for gay men and other men who have sex with men, and has been highly stigmatising. As a sad irony, the epidemic has provided at the same time a strategic entry point for organisations to struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition. This paper examines how the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition has been doubly framed through health-based and rights-based approaches and how the struggle for recognition has positioned lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in India and Vietnam differently.

Politics of Colonial Violence: Gendered Atrocities in French Occupied Vietnam

By drawing on testimonies gathered in rural Vietnam, this article focuses on the violence to which local inhabitants were subjected when Vietnam was under French rule (1883–1954). On a self-imposed ‘civilizing mission’, the control of local bodies was critical for the colonial powers and they became the subject of brutal abuse. Violence was exercised with impunity in the occupied areas and rendered ‘logic’ in accordance with western imaginations about racial superiority. While such ideas informed colonial terror in general, the differentiated registers of terror implemented in regard to women and men disclose how sovereign attempts of reducing local inhabitants to bare life were designed, in addition to race, along the lines of gender and sexuality. Vietnamese testimonies from the French colonial period reveal experiences of a reality of horror which in the article is considered through the prism of four different body typologies; typologies which elucidate the symbolic, physical, and imaginary metamorphoses through which women and men in differentiated ways were being increasingly dehumanized in the encounter with the colonial power.By drawing on testimonies gathered in rural Vietnam, this article focuses on the violence to which local inhabitants were subjected when Vietnam was under French rule (1883–1954). On a self-imposed...

Vietnam Women’s Union and the Politics of Representation: Hegemonic Solidarity and a Heterosexual Family Regime

Proficiently oscillating between its role as a governmental mass organization and a grassroots movement, the Women’s Union in Vietnam emerges as a kaleidoscopic body with a dual representative role. Initiatives taken by the Union revolve around women and their lives as organized in the predominant family constellation in the country; the heterosexual family in either its nuclear or extended form. Construed as a congenital point of departure, this family regime provides a platform from which the Union pursues a hegemonic solidarity with women and their lifeworlds by dealing with female-specific issues such as intimate partner violence, child rearing, and income generating activities. This chapter considers the dual representative role of the Union and the ways in which it has become the voice of a hegemonic solidarity with heterosexual women and their families in Vietnam. The Union’s characteristic politics of representation in particular, the chapter argues, is epitomized with regard to current contestations in Vietnam over the legal recognition of same-sex marriage.

Proximity and Distance: Vietnamese Memories of the War against the USA

By employing an intergenerational perspective, this article examines the ways in which memories about the war between Vietnam and the USA are engraved in the social and individual body in a northern Vietnamese rural community. Throughout the 1990s, Vietnam and the USA attempted to improve their postwar relationship. The current atmosphere of coming to terms with a past of war through coexistence and reconciliation fosters ambivalences and ambiguities in young postwar generations. On the one hand, they have to reconcile themselves to the pain and bitterness caused by the war. On the other, they have to bridge the gap between themselves and their parents and grandparents concerning the extent to which they are able to ‘forget the past and look toward the future’, as one national postwar strategy recommends. The article thus highlights the complex ways in which war and postwar generations in local Vietnam attempt to remember and/or forget brutality, sorrow and anger, in order to come to terms with what in Vietnam is referred to as the American War.By employing an intergenerational perspective, this article examines the ways in which memories about the war between Vietnam and the USA are engraved in the social and individual body in a northern Vietnamese rural community. Throughout the 1990s, Vietnam and the USA attempted to improve their postwar relationship. The current atmosphere of coming to terms with a past of war through coexistence and reconciliation fosters ambivalences and ambiguities in young postwar generations. On the one hand, they have to reconcile themselves to the pain and bitterness caused by the war. On the other, they have to bridge the gap between themselves and their parents and grandparents concerning the extent to which they are able to ‘forget the past and look toward the future’, as one national postwar strategy recommends. The article thus highlights the complex ways in which war and postwar generations in local Vietnam attempt to remember and/or forget brutality, sorrow and anger, in order to come to terms with what in Vi...

A zone of exception: gendered violences of family ‘Happiness’ in Vietnam

Abstract This article examines the ways in which women’s ‘family happiness’ in Vietnam paradoxically, and alarmingly, is rendered compatible with the endurance of what is diminished as ‘minor’ partner violence. Thus focusing on the gendering of ‘happiness’ and the discrepancies between ideals and practices, the article unfolds how intersections between a number of ‘power-geometries’ including violence preventive legislation, an official family discourse, and the patrilineally organized family facilitate the conditions that allow for male-to-female violence in the domestic sphere. The article highlights how Intimate Partner Violence transmutes the ‘happy family’ into a ‘zone of exception’ wherein which the laws prohibiting violence are suspended, the juridico-political status and rights of a woman blurred, and a state of chronic precariousness and crisis generated. Such tendencies are fortified by the ambiguous strategies of the Women’s Union. In maneuvering between violence preventive legislation and family ideals, the Union is criticizing patriarchal family hierarchies while also encouraging women to nurture family happiness by complying with an abusive partner.AbstractThis article examines the ways in which women’s ‘family happiness’ in Vietnam paradoxically, and alarmingly, is rendered compatible with the endurance of what is diminished as ‘minor’ partner violence. Thus focusing on the gendering of ‘happiness’ and the discrepancies between ideals and practices, the article unfolds how intersections between a number of ‘power-geometries’ including violence preventive legislation, an official family discourse, and the patrilineally organized family facilitate the conditions that allow for male-to-female violence in the domestic sphere. The article highlights how Intimate Partner Violence transmutes the ‘happy family’ into a ‘zone of exception’ wherein which the laws prohibiting violence are suspended, the juridico-political status and rights of a woman blurred, and a state of chronic precariousness and crisis generated. Such tendencies are fortified by the ambiguous strategies of the Women’s Union. In maneuvering between violence preventive legislation and famil...

Nordic Gender Studies Conferences: Windows to a Global and Postcolonial World?

The paper discusses two well-organized Nordic gender conferences—one in Bergen and one in Gothenburg—which, however, were remarkably different in character. While the local Norwegian conference opened windows to the world outside the Global North, the windows were kept only ajar at the national Swedish meeting.The paper discusses two well-organized Nordic gender conferences—one in Bergen and one in Gothenburg—which, however, were remarkably different in character. While the local Norwegian conference opened windows to the world outside the Global North, the windows were kept only ajar at the national Swedish meeting.