SECTION 2:iii

THE ECOLOGY OF BEING VIETNAMESE

THE CULTURE OF RICE AND FISH

by Hugh M. Lewis

To understand focal patternings of the ecology of being Vietnamese is simply to understand how Vietnamese culture articulates with and is adapted within the web of life particularly in terms of its food getting economies. Described as a Vegetarian Civilization with a 98% vegetarian diet, cotton clothes, wooden and bamboo houses, its vegetarian culture enables many more people to be supported on an acre of cultivated land than could be nourished on a mixed diet. (Gourou 1958:124) Vegetarianism is thus correlated with high population densities. Vietnamese culture has also been referred to as a bamboo culture with the plant having a wide variety of uses from a food source to cooking pot. But most preeminently, Vietnamese culture is a culture of rice. Man ist was Man isst. This is doubly true for the cultures of rice. Rice is the center of focus of Vietnamese cultural ecology: the rice bowl is the heart of its cornucopia.

Compared to the importance of rice, all other features of Vietnamese culture shrink to diminutive importance. Not only has Vietnamese culture been for more than two millennia adapted to the environment principally as a culture of rice, but rice itself has long been ecologically adapted to being cultivated. "An amazingly adaptable plant" rice can be profitably cultivated in a wide diversity of environments "almost unparalleled in the plant kingdom." (Swaminathan Jan. 1984:82) Its adaptability is explained by its efficient system of air passage from shoot to root. The adaptability of the rice plant in turn explains the adaptability of riziculture and of the Vietnamese culture of rice. "Without the magnificent adaptability of rice and its responsiveness to man’s nurturing, certain tropical civilizations….based as they were on riziculture, could never have come into being." (Hanks 1972:23) In general there are four modes of riziculture "eco-types"—gathering, shifting, broadcasting and transplanting. These modes rest upon several cultural ecological factors and represent no necessary order of succession. "Rather than stages in development or evolution, these modes of cultivation are manners of adapting to a changing environment." (Hanks 1972:66) The introduction of a certain technique depends most importantly upon a certain density of population. (Boserup 1965:65)

There are certain important characteristics associated with riziculture, especially wet-rice transplanting. In earth-bound riziculture societies, land attachment is strong because rice, with its high output of food per unit area is a factor of density, with the resulting concentration of many men on little land. As a form of agricultural subsistence, it has an unusually "intensive" character—"it aims at the largest possible output by multiplying harvests, if necessary at the cost of diminishing returns per harvest; with shortage of food always at its elbow the peasant must produce regardless of cost." (Buchanan 1975:69) Wet rice cultivation is demanding of labor intensive capital for relatively short periods of the year. "So heavy are the demands at harvest time that even densely populated areas may find they have no surplus labor. In areas with a highly seasonal rainfall regime and lacking the facilities for dry season irrigation the dry season is a period of enforced inactivity….(Buchanan 1967:71)

Riziculture lends itself to agricultural sendentarism, in a process of intensification that Clifford Geertz has described as agricultural involution—"its marked tendency (and ability) to respond to a rising population through intensification; that is, through absorbing increased numbers of cultivators on a unit of cultivated land." (Geertz 1963:32) 

Either as a result of population pressure, or the concentration of land-holdings within the hands of a few, there occurs a break down of the individual size of proletarian owners land-holdings to a size "completely inadequate to support them at a reasonable level of living." Buchanan 1967:67) The distinctive feature of wet rice land-holdings is their small fragmented size—most under an acre—with a consequence of under nutrition. "Nothing is real to us but hunger." Much land is wasted just on dividing balks and pathways. With the mal-utilization of land there is also a mal-utilization of available labor. 

Rice transplanting calls for heavy inputs of labor at comparatively low per-capita yields only at definite periods of the agricultural cycle, requiring the availability of an excess human labor resource pool which is characterized as "underemployed proletariat" or landless laborers the rest of the year. Rice can produce year after year, sometimes twice a year, "a virtually undiminished yield." Thus with the labor intensive, per unit land area high productivity of rice, there are associations of high population densities, underemployment, poverty and under-nutrition. Peasant income tends to be low, population densities high.

The rice machine is delicately tuned and delicately balanced, in spite of its apparent stability and adaptability and productivity. Its correlation with high population densities, underemployment and poverty and malnutrition is the source of its periodic disruption whenever any unpredictable extrinsic forces affect this balance.

But rice is only part of the story of the ecology of being Vietnamese. In the dialectics of diet both carbohydrates and protein make the complete story, and in the case of traditional Vietnamese ethnoculture, riziculture was necessarily complemented by pisciculture—fish farming. While a good source of readily assimilated protein, rice is lacking in some of the essential amino acids that can only be supplied by meat or fish. For a long time, pisceculture, taking advantage of all the natural and man-made waterways, the flooded paddy fields and ponds, has been a reliable source of income as well as food. Fish is the primary source of essential proteins for the Vietnamese. Rearing of carp in the paddy fields "never results in the reduction of the rice crop." "The Cochin Chinese are great consumers of fish: and their seas, rivers, lakes, canals, and even brooks afford a great supply. The fisheries indeed exhibit almost the only active display of industry which is to be seen among them." (Crawford 1830) Fishing is intensely pursued as a major preoccupation by many Vietnamese people, employing a wide variety of techniques. Then there is a well developed fishing industry.

The Vietnamese have traditionally exploited a very broad range of food resources available in their riziculture environment, and have elaborated their diet to an extreme degree. They especially exploit a very broad range of protein resources, in many ways deemed unpalatable by Western standards and tastes. Chickens, ducks and their eggs abound. Pork, cattle, oxen, buffalo, goats, sheep are common though scarce. They regularly partake of a wider range of animal parts and viscera normally eschewed by Westerners—tongue, tripe, tendon, shank, oxtails, brains, intestines, hearts, ears, maws, uterus, neck bones, hock, feet, of beef and pork all make common complements of rice or soup. Dog meat was highly esteemed, rats, vermin, mice, frogs, lizards, snakes, crocodiles, turtles were commonly eaten. Gourou (1936) cited consumption of insects of all sorts, silk worms, water bugs, grasshoppers, locusts, crickets, mole-crickets, cicada, ephemera, bees, ant eggs, batata worms, bamboo worms, palolo and grubs. What emerged from this pattern of broad based protein subsistence complementary to rice monoculture is an endemic protein malnutrition characteristic of the ecology of being Vietnamese, occurring most prevalently among the poor and the landless. Fish and eggs were highly valued as balanced sources of essential proteins. There occurred a common and widespread culture based chronic deficiency in both protein and fatty materials—diversification of protein sources is an adaptation to population pressure and protein deprivation.

The patterning is not one of starvation or even chronic hunger—but of endemic, pernicious insufficiency of high quality proteins associated with nitrogen requirements, which is a function of balance essential versus nonessential amino acids, and high density versus low density protein sources, and their relative availability. Diversification of dietary protein sources was an adaptive strategy to these imbalances of protein calorie malnutrition, which is common in areas of moisture demanding crops like rice where there is a threat of famine from local overpopulation, drought, flooding, "or years of irregular patterns of precipitation."

"One aspect of a procurement system that may affect the nutritional level of the diet is the diversity of the plants and animals obtained. The greater this diversity is, the greater the chances are of including in the diet the full range of necessary chemical molecules in ratios suitable for optimum nutrition." (Odum 1971:121) 

Mixed diets are preventive or remedial recipes for scarcity of food and malnutrition. Protein calorie malnutrition is clearly associated with population pressure in tropical areas, and afflicts adults as well as children. It is a constantly sapping form of under-nutrition that can occur "as a kind of epidemic among populations under stress." It is also strongly correlated with the occurrence of infectious diseases.

Eaten alone, rice does not provide enough protein for sufficient growth and maintenance of the human body. Practical difficulties arise in consumption of sufficient quantities of low density proteins. The Vietnamese tend to be comparatively small and gracile—never obese—both a reflection of efficient adaptation to nutritional stress and a byproduct of inadequate nutrition. Reduction in body size is a distinctive adaptation to protein deficiency. The body can reutilize protein it stores within, and can adapt to lowered protein intake, after a period of negative nitrogen balance, by restoration of equilibrium at a lower level of intake/loss, through reduced loss and increased absorption and utilization. This level can be reduced repeatedly. Thus it can be seen that there are diminishing returns of efficiency in terms of protein intake. "If rice and its substitutes meet the country’s need in a general way, yet there is no doubt that the production of fatty and nitrogenous materials is altogether insufficient…." (Gourou 1936)

Studies have documented a wide variety of nutritional disorders in Vietnam, especially nitrogen edema and deficiency which early French officials called "Boiffisure d" Annam." Kwashiorkor is the result of a vicious cycle of interrelated factors. The case of relative protein malnutrition is well documented in Vietnam, even in most recent times.

Certain distinctive cultural patternings can be seen as related to this protein deprivation. Protein requirements of pregnant and nursing mother and children are proportionately higher than normal adult needs—thus an increasing population adds to pressure for total protein requirements. Malnutrition, illness, injury, disease can aggravate the protein requirements. "Nutritional requirements of dense concentrations of people usually exceed the carrying capacity of locally available resources…." Pregnant Vietnamese women have their diet severely circumscribed by dietary taboos almost exclusively focused on the prohibition of protein and drugs and medicines, "lest the fetus becomes too heavy" and fall out. "Fish and meat are said to generate poisons in the child." (May 1961:95) These taboos were seen by American observers as precipitating factors in nutritional diseases, resulting in premature infant death and unending misery of many mothers. "If you want food, be prepared to give your husband and children away." Two settlement patterns predominating in Vietnam are related to local availability of food, "the linear growth of settlements along a river and its tributaries, and a dispersed pattern with a regularity of distance between the sites of different size and function."

"Population pressure is a prime cause of a lack disequilibrium in an adapted subsistence system." A society may adopt two strategies in response to resource deprivation, either by diversification through extending its area of exploitation through trade, tribute or taxation, cultivating knowledge "of the fullest expanse of resource alternatives within their territory through alliance, sociability, exchange, or warfare with neighboring groups." (Laughlin, Brody 1978:27) or through decreasing nutrient requirements by introducing population control mechanisms " for stabilizing or reintroducing equilibrium."

In general there exists five levels of population control, distinguished in terms of cost in resources and loss of flexibility. Social and spatial mobilization altering group size and structure through courtship, taboos, marriage regulations, migrations are the least costly and most flexible strategies. Contraception, artificial and natural, sexual taboos, resulting in spacing of children is least costly and flexible. Abortion, infanticide, pregnancy proscriptions increasing frequency of miscarriage and still birth and low birth weight babies who will not survive is costly in terms of nutrient investment of reproduction but flexible "since within months, the female can become pregnant again." Control of growth and socialization , benign neglect resulting in short-for-age or thin-for-height children permit death. This is still more costly in nutrient investment and less flexible in replacement time. Manipulation of longevity and mortality, starvation, disease, warfare, homicide, suicide, senilicide or geronticide is most costly and least flexible "since reproductive capacities are lost as well as productive potentials."

Totemism with food taboos is positively correlated with societies which have relatively low per capita intake of protein and which tend toward food production. Patterns of sexual differential nutrition are more intense in agrarian societies than in hunting gathering societies. It can be seen that the dialectics of diet turns on the issue of uneven availability of protein and unequal status between males and females. The dominant "working" male typically receives the lion’s share of the best protein, often "to the jeopardy of his family". In such a situation women are typically weaker, smaller, lethargic, malnourished, prone to disease and disorder, and shorter-lived. The infants suffer most during the fetal and nursing periods. Abortion was almost universally rejected by Vietnamese, contraception was ignored. Children were desired and the postpartum sexual taboo was only one to three months. Weaning began the first month, and was usually completed within a year, "but may remain on the breast as long as four or five years." Women return to normal work routines within a couple days of birthing. "God created the elephant and he created grass."

Eating is a highly elaborated and focal concern in Vietnamese culture. Vietnamese cuisine is among the best and most varied in the world. Patterns of feasting and social eating help to center and provide a center of balance of basic socialization and social patterning in Vietnamese culture—it can very aptly be described as oral in focal orientation. There is much delight in eating and feasting, all of the time. Taking a meal and breaking bread socially is more than mere nutritional fulfillment or gustatory gratification for Vietnamese. It is a predominant mode of exchange, a leveling mechanism for redistributing basic food resources, a predominant means of social communication and coordination of social relationships. 

Feasting and food sharing is a wide, open ended network of exchange which reduces the social stress of deprivation—hoarding, even under conditions of stress and famine, of food reserves, was never a common pattern in Vietnam. As a result the danger of famine was minimized, except for the "isolated" family unit, for which starvation was "not rare". Food and eating in and of itself takes on central importance in the daily life of the Vietnamese, and accretes much symbolism, becoming a social mechanism for garnering status, creating obligation, a means of reciprocation and solidifying friendships. The social significance surrounding the focal feasting/food sharing patterns lies at the heart of the ritual religious ceremonial complex. For the Vietnamese, eating lies not only at the heart of reality culture that faces subsistence survival, but also becomes the focal concern of value culture that faces entertainment and play activities of the Vietnamese.

Societies faced with recursive and predictable resource deprivation will incorporate into its social structure sanctions, values, norms, beliefs, rituals or a cosmology that defines social cooperation. "The degree to which strategic goods and services flow through the network of interpersonal relationships in the primary social domain of a given population—and which are increasingly attended under more stress." The reciprocal sharing of food has long been recognized as a primary strategy of adaptation to deprivation. Sharing is the "essence of social contract and collective endurance in society." In the face of increased deprivation sharing networks become extended to include many remote persons or groups that are distant. In both times of scarcity and in ordinary circumstances, "the sphere of generalized exchange of food may be even wider than the sphere of generalized exchange for other kinds of things." The universal characteristic of diets is that they are culture specific and sometimes specific to individuals. Nouc mam, or fish water, and soy sauces, "is added to all soups and dishes and is found on all tables at all times….Approximately 50 grams of this substance is consumed per capita per day in Vietnam." It is a ready source of salt and amino acids and is evenly distributed through trade and is a basic component of all meals, just like rice.

In the focus upon feasting/food sharing as a reciprocal exchange network what becomes clear is the particular social economy of being traditional Vietnamese, faced with both the reality of survival and the value of social eating. And social eating patterns inevitably beget cultural patterns of social discourse, with an exclusive and super-ordinate elaboration upon talking as an essential, focal aspect of Vietnamese traditional culture and character. Talking and eating are not mere means to some other diffuse end like nutrition or social cooperation, but these past-time activities are as much an end in themselves as a pleasurable means of entertainment and relaxation.