Introduction

 by Hugh M. Lewis

This work is divided into four chapters, each treating succinctly a particular facet of ethnological comprehension of Vietnamese ethnoculture. Each of these facets is distinctly different, involving a different ethnological model, and yet all are interrelated and inseparable in a holistic comprehension of Vietnamese refugee identity, or, "what it means to be a Vietnamese refugee." In order of presentation, these facets are: 1) Ethnohistory, dealing with prehistoric and historic processes in relation to the Vietnamese people, in order to elucidate a driving dynamic that provides a recursive continuity to our comprehension of ethnohistorical processes; 2) Ethnoculture as a facet of ethnological inquiry that deals primarily with the focal patternings of a cultural orientation of a particular group of people, in terms of its own cultural idiom; 3) Ethnography of existential ethnicity referring to relatively non-ethnocentric description of the emergent being of the ethnic Vietnamese by identity, affiliation, reference, ascription and classification within an American socio-structural context, giving essential comprehension for the commonly shared motivations, evaluations, expectations and purposes of the existential ethnicity of Vietnamese identity; 4) The last facet deals existentially with my own relationships with a small open ended network of Vietnamese families, a piece of the existential fabric of ethnic Vietnamese identity, focusing especially upon my own intimate relationship with a single nuclear family of a single mother and her children. In order to operationalize my key terminology for heuristic purposes, I define ethnology as the study of ethnoculture in relation to a particular grouping of people—past, present and future.

This work deals with several ethnological models attempting to delineate structural interrelationships and symbolism in both an emic and etic manner. Emic refers to subjective evaluations from within a cultural milieu, while etic refers to objective descriptions from outside of a culture. This work recognizes no clear-cut rational boundary between any of the rational dichotomies thus implied-- ideal vs. real, etic vs. emic, objective vs. subjective or description vs. evaluation. It is beyond the immediate scope of this work to elucidate all the problematic philosophical ramifications of the anthropological jargon of etic and emic but only to mention in passing that such rationalistic dichotomization of human reality has no worthwhile place within ethnological comprehension. The only problem is to get out of the habit of doing it.

Vietnameseness refers to "the sense of being Vietnamese." I myself am not a Vietnamese and until just recently had no acquaintance of being Vietnamese whatsoever except for my own preconceptions relating to the American involvement in the Vietnam War. Of course, what is a Vietnamese? He or she is most obviously a human being and so in all naturalness cannot be too different in the barest essentials from you or me, and yet there must be something more as well, something distinct that makes a Vietnamese separate and distinct from a Japanese or a Chinese or a German or even just a plain old American. And yet, as an Vietnamese person will readily warn you, no two Vietnamese are exactly alike, and more often than not quite remarkably dissimilar from one another, and so we must be careful not to be satisfied with a national character stereotype. Now we are put upon the horns of a dilemma. Vietnamese by definition are all the same and yet al different. The objective of this work is to resolve this most basic of human paradoxes.

"Ethno" has many connotations, not the least of which are race, people, pre-literate and primitive. From this root which stems from the ancient Greeks "ethnos" that means nation there are several compound derivatives not the least of which is ethnocentrism, defined as the emotional attitude that one’s own race, nation or culture is superior to all others. The Greek peoples had a simple ethnocentrism, for they did not question the given of their civilization, compared to which all other people’s were barbarian. Ignorance is bliss. Today our ethnocentrism, inherited from the Greeks, is neither so simple nor so innocent. In its sophisticated modern form it has evolved into paradigmatic prejudice we dare not question because to do so would mean repudiation of our own civilization.

Ethnology, another derivative of "ethno," is succinctly defined "the branch of anthropology that deals with the comparative cultures of various peoples, including their distribution, folkways, etc." (Webster’s Dict. 1983) Ethnology is, by inference, a study of ethnocentrism, our own and other peoples, for in order to claim comparative comprehension of difference and similarities between cultures, we must escape by dialectical questioning and answering the attitudes of inherent or cultural superiority. The attitude must commonly associated with the emotion of ethnocentrism is arrogant pride. All human beings take pride in their own heritage, and it is healthy as long as it isn’t attached to attitudes of intrinsic superiority or used comparatively to denigrate others. The hubris of Greek Civilization had its nemesis.

Ethnography, defined as "the branch of anthropology that deals descriptively with specific cultures, especially those of primitive peoples or groups" (Webster’s Dict. 1983), has a seemingly unavoidable connotation of primitiveness as well as a necessary implication of methodological relativism. Primitive is an original ethnocentrism, which, like its ancient precursor barbarian is an expression of differential evaluative distance between others and ourselves. Ethnographic description stands in an uneasy relationship with ethnological comparison in terms of methodological relativism. In order to describe another people’s cultural orientation in terms of its own cultural idiom we must at least temporarily forgo our own ethnocentrism, while to compare different people’s cultural orientation requires some at least tacit standard of group comparison; i.e., value judgments. Such a standard of group comparison must necessarily be one of equality-equally shared by all groups, otherwise the judgment would not be fair, i.e., ethnocentric. In anthropological terminology, we are thus searching for universals of human culture and human nature.

The rationale behind the organization of this work is that in order to achieve an ethnological comprehension of the meaning of being Vietnamese we must necessarily come to terms with the embedded quality of this sense of being in both the past and present contexts of structural and environmental interrelationships which delimit and help to define the particular ethos. (Greek, ethos—and accustomed place or habitation: hence, habit, custom, character, defined as "the characteristic and distinguishing attitudes, habits, etc., of a racial, political, occupational, or other group." Webster’s Dict. 1983)

Ethos and ethnos are the key organizational metaphors behind the mythology of ethnological comprehension that is to be distinguished from the actual reality of being Vietnamese. Ethnology involves a meta-logical form of mythology that enables us to transcend not only the ethnocentrism rooted in our own cultural orientations, but as well the ethnocentrism of the people whom we purport to ethnologically comprehend, through a dialectical synthesis between an etic other and an emic self.

Beyond the attempt to ethnologically comprehend the meaning of Vietnamese ethnoculture, the overarching theme of this work is to attempt to demonstrate to the skeptical-minded reader that there may actually exist an essential most common sense about the reality of being Vietnamese, one that pre-existed independently from, co-exists along side of, and functions in spite of our ethnological comprehension of that reality, with which it may or may not at any particular moment coincide. In its essence it is the focal orientation which gives contextual contiguity to our comprehension of ethnocultural patterning.

There is a living, on-going ethnological understanding behind Vietnamese ethnoculture that provides the Vietnamese people with a sense of coherence and order between the processes of the Past, the patternings of the Present, and the purposes of the Future, approximated through our ethnological comprehension. Synergism is not a formal rational ideal of the superorganic, it is rather the ever changing and on-going existential reality of the moment, a shared symbolic reality common to a grouping of people, made meaningful in relation to the sense of the past, present and future. The synergism of Vietnamese ethnoculture is a synthesis of a cyclical dialectic of contraposed and complementary symbolism that are in essence the male-principle and the female-principle occurring within the primary setting of the family. The family is the key synthetic metaphor of Vietnamese ethnoculture, underlying and structuring its history, culture and existential emergence. To enter into an ethnological comprehension of the reality of Vietnamese ethnoculture is to enter into the great circle of being Vietnamese, between the dialectical extremes of male and female principles and ending and beginning again and again with the metaphor of the Vietnamese family.

The Vietnam conflict still looms large on the ever-receding horizon, connected to the present by a steady stream of boat-people, its living legacy. This war was characteristically Vietnamese with roots much deeper in Vietnamese history and culture than any American reason or rationale or motivation can ever hope to account for. Far too many innocent people did a dirty duty and paid the ultimate sacrifice without the least comprehension of the how and why of Vietnamese ethnoculture. And the game of living and dying goes on, for the Vietnamese as well.