The Complexity of Morality: Being a 'Good Child' in Vietnam?
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| Title: | The Complexity of Morality: Being a 'Good Child' in Vietnam? |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Burr, Rachel |
| Source: | Journal of Moral Education. 2014 43(2):156-168. |
| Availability: | Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 13 |
| Publication Date: | 2014 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Evaluative |
| Descriptors: | Foreign Countries, Moral Values, Social Systems, Males, Cultural Influences, Family Structure, Siblings, Financial Support, Residential Institutions, Gender Differences, Child Rearing, Social Responsibility, Family Relationship, Sex Fairness, Confucianism, Interviews, International Organizations, Nongovernmental Organizations |
| Geographic Terms: | Vietnam |
| DOI: | 10.1080/03057240.2014.893421 |
| ISSN: | 0305-7240 |
| Abstract: | In this article I examine what it means to be a good child in Vietnam. Throughout the country ancestral worship is widely practiced. This traditionally places emphasis on the need for a boy child to continue the practice of worship into the next generation. Because of this, while the high value placed on the boy child has been tempered by the influence of communist rule and modernity, the eldest boy still often holds preferential status. Under such circumstances the good child is one who accepts his or her position within the hierarchical structure of the family and is also willing to subjugate his or her individual needs to the greater collective good. This might manifest itself in a child's "choice" to work on the streets so that their earnings can be sent home to support other siblings through their schooling. Or it might show itself in the practice of children accepting and apparently supporting that fact that they have been sent to an orphanage or "hidden" so that a parent can try for more male children. It would be naive though to conclude from this that boys and girls are automatically raised within separate moral frameworks. Instead this article proposes that at the local level what it means to be a good child is even more complex because the notion of the good, moral and filial child is shaped as much by family circumstances and expectation as it is by the mores and values of the wider society. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Number of References: | 21 |
| Entry Date: | 2014 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1026135 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwF0mWq8pxinDxePdd4fyRl1AAAA4jCB3wYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHRMIHOAgEAMIHIBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDMrGkKAh14DTf0Ba_AIBEICBmo_DjJLfgHIsjy6rNPPNUXxLM2webMLxUp3LNU34BId_8g4SKCZ2javgaVAIdO3DHKLQ0VIZ7xMAz1CJmXhAKS0yFl--9QKXimiYsEbZtldyFEPm3c3k1hbXpeNSANqC1TlzLVIeJCm4ipuD-N-RGzNpKCvi_2DVOg4fHE-6dzwhASDBWKt9Nfa9nKcw0vsYsnv_WHvpvjCCCdY= Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0096068054;moe01jun.14;2019Mar14.12:28;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0096068054-1">The complexity of morality: Being a ‘good child’ in Vietnam? </title> <p>In this article I examine what it means to be a good child in Vietnam. Throughout the country ancestral worship is widely practiced. This traditionally places emphasis on the need for a boy child to continue the practice of worship into the next generation. Because of this, while the high value placed on the boy child has been tempered by the influence of communist rule and modernity, the eldest boy still often holds preferential status. Under such circumstances the good child is one who accepts his or her position within the hierarchical structure of the family and is also willing to subjugate his or her individual needs to the greater collective good. This might manifest itself in a child's 'choice' to work on the streets so that their earnings can be sent home to support other siblings through their schooling. Or it might show itself in the practice of children accepting and apparently supporting that fact that they have been sent to an orphanage or 'hidden' so that a parent can try for more male children. It would be naive though to conclude from this that boys and girls are automatically raised within separate moral frameworks. Instead this article proposes that at the local level what it means to be a good child is even more complex because the notion of the good, moral and filial child is shaped as much by family circumstances and expectation as it is by the mores and values of the wider society.</p> <p>Keywords: good child; Vietnam; anthropology</p> <hd id="AN0096068054-2">Introduction: the Vietnamese context</hd> <p>The aim of this article is to highlight the tension that exists for children growing up in a society where the state has gone out of its way to marginalise traditional beliefs and practices. Traditional practices still hold sway despite the state machine suppressing such beliefs, first by embracing Communist rhetoric and more recently by supporting organisations within the international community in their support of a child rights discourse. My work shows that traditional beliefs continue to hold sway and that localised Vietnamese resilience has remained strong. The article also challenges the validity of the view that there is an apparent shift away from the values introduced under communism towards a fledging free-market economy and shows that while Vietnam continues to operate under one-party rule in which the state apparatus holds sway the general population will continue to covertly embrace family led rather than state established value systems.</p> <p>In this article I draw upon my fieldwork experiences gained primarily in Hanoi. I spent most of my time there doing participatory observation among children: I lived with children in a Vietnamese household, went out onto the streets to spend time among the children who worked there and spent time among children in an orphanage and among those who were serving time in a detention centre for working illegally. The moral codes by which these children lived were complex. Dung Hue Doan has suggested that there are two different systems of morality existing in Vietnamese society—traditional morality and socialist morality ([<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref1">6</reflink>], p. 451). I found something similar during the time I spent among children in Hanoi where the choices they made created a tension between what was expected of them as children living under a one-party authoritarian state where, for example, they were legally obliged to live in their province of birth, what might be expected of them as filial children (filial piety or respect for elders being one of the prime tenets of Confucianism), and what they expected of themselves and each other as children who were often more immediately dependent upon their peers than the adults who surrounded them.</p> <p>Outside Vietnam there is a tendency to assume that it is on a similar socio-economic trajectory to that of China. In fact Vietnam's recent history and experience as a nation-state is quite different. For example adoption of communism was taken for more pragmatic and less idealistic reasons: thus Ho Chi Minh only approached the Soviet Union for help towards independence from France after having been rejected by the USA. This alliance was further strengthened in the aftermath of China's attempt to invade Vietnam after the end of the America/Vietnam war. This pragmatic response of the Vietnamese to political change and rhetoric is reflected in current responses to their state machine. From the Vietnamese perspective there is little evidence to suggest that socialism is the thing of the past that Westerners would believe it to be. Indeed, the economist Melanie Beresford made a similar point about the continuing influence of the Communist party in Vietnam when she wrote that 'few non-Vietnamese observers appear to think that socialism is any longer relevant to the Vietnamese case...within Vietnam however the debate seems much more complicated' ([<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref2">3</reflink>], p. 222). Like me she has also observed that 'the Communist party wishes to retain its ability to influence long-term structural change' ([<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref3">3</reflink>], p. 226). At the conclusion of her article she also predicts that Vietnam will continue to develop with the Communist party at the helm and with their encouragement of foreign investors combining with the domestic non-state sector but with cronyism as the leading force. This final point is one that resonates with my work, primarily because the current climate in Vietnam where the state acts as if traditional pre-Communist practices have long been banished has resulted in such practices being robustly supported within the private domain of the family.</p> <p>It is in this quite complex setting where Confucianism and Communism are uneasy bedfellows that I examine what it means to be a 'good' child and make the point that children, like other members of most societies, are often simultaneously considered good by one sector of their community and deviant by another because different value systems co-exist alongside each other. In common with other similar regimes, the communist government of Vietnam set out to marginalise pre-existing belief systems. Pham Duy Nghia explains that traditional practices in Vietnam were suppressed once the Communists were in charge: 'Once in power.... Confucianism was essentially destroyed' ([<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref4">18</reflink>], p. 83). I disagree with this final point and instead suggest that a state led ban on traditional practices has created a society in which a number of conflicting expectations of people co-exist and create tensions. And despite Pham's assertion above that Communism destroyed Confucianism in Vietnam, it was clear from my own observations that although the Communist government endeavoured to eradicate traditional practices, the most dominant notion of goodness is still bound by the traditional Confucian practice of filial piety and collective endeavour. This is not a post socialist society: it is an example of the usual Vietnamese skill, demonstrated over many years of colonial and post colonial rule, at surviving and adapting under these pressures to continue to thrive under their own (often unstated) terms and beliefs. Although there is still one-party rule under a communist banner, a largely foreign owned industrial private sector is nonetheless actively encouraged by the party, on their own terms.</p> <p>In this context, as with any other, being a good child cannot be investigated without a consideration of the cultural world in which each child is situated. My work draws upon the experiences of Vietnamese children and young people to show the impact for them of living in a society in which small communities and the family unit embrace traditional values while the state makes a formal pretence that such ideas and values are a thing of the past. The anthropologist Ruth Benedict notes that 'The concept of the normal is properly a variant of the concept of the good. It is that which society has approved' ([<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref5">2</reflink>], p. 266). In other words from her position as a cultural relativist it can be conceivably argued that the good child can only be recognised via a thorough and proper understanding of the child within the values embedded in its immediate community. Yet as Howell has pointed out what it means to be 'good' means a multitude of things 'Values are continually changing and adapting through actual choices and practices, while, at the same time, they continue to inform and shape choices and practices' (Howell, [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref6">12</reflink>], p. 4).</p> <p>Contemporary Vietnam is a country in flux as its populace attempts to make sense of conflicting messages from an evolving value system. On the one hand it is still a one party state in which being a member of the communist party garners significant status and where particular cultural and societal demands are placed upon its citizens. On the other it is a country that has re-established relations with the West and in doing so at least superficially embraced western influenced ideas through the media and internationally led agendas, such as those of the United Nations.</p> <p> However, for the purpose of this article the most significant of the communist party rules is lack of freedom to live freely where one chooses, as Brennan et al. point out 'The Vietnamese Government implements a household registration system which limits the movement of migrants to the cities. Most migrants, more than 90%, are classified as temporary and hence restricted in accessing public services such as education and health care' (Brennan et al., [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref7">4</reflink>], p. 3). This policy largely prevents families in rural areas from enjoying the same level of opportunity as their counterparts born, and legally established, in urban areas. It has a direct impact on the manner in which rural-urban migration takes place and influences the pattern of migration to the city. This limitation on internal movement partly explains why such a significant number of the children I knew had travelled alone to the city on a short term basis to earn money to send home to family in the countryside (the majority of whose members could not leave because to do so would result in a loss of access to necessary services).</p> <hd id="AN0096068054-3">The historical context of Confucianism</hd> <p>China's various colonial rules over Vietnam from as long ago as the first century ad is key to understanding some of the influences that continue to shape the country's belief systems. Hirschman and Loi have gathered evidence showing that the Vietnamese adapted the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucious and amalgamated it into their existing social practice ([<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref8">1</reflink>]). Although it was officially illegal to do so most Vietnamese people adhered to their traditional beliefs during the transition from the colonial period and while many of the Vietnamese traditions relating to filial piety and gendered relations were suppressed under the strict communism of the 1970s and 1980s there is increasing recognition that values relating to filial piety and collectivist identities never really went away (Burr [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref9">6</reflink>]). Pham Duy Nghi argues similarly that 'the Confucian tradition may have changed in appearance but the substance is still important in modern Vietnamese life'. ([<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref10">18</reflink>], p. 84). Likewise Helle Rydstrom ([<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref11">20</reflink>]) points out that in Northern Vietnam it is not state ideology that dictates the 'good' i.e. (conforming) behaviour of (young people), but their concern about not hurting the feelings of their parents and making them lose face within the community (Heintz, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref12">11</reflink>], p. 16). This is a classic example of filial piety in practice.</p> <p>Today these beliefs and traditions continue to form an integral and important part of Vietnamese society and some knowledge of their importance is essential to gain any sort of understanding of the people's behaviour and attitudes.</p> <p>It could also be argued that Vietnam's longstanding practice of ancestral worship has contributed to the continuing existence of the one party state. From the Confucian perspective relationships within the family are always hierarchical. The person in the position of superiority should guide, love and care for inferiors, while those who are inferior should always obey their superiors. Confucius taught that order and peace within each family are prerequisites to a well-run country. Because of this, particular weight has been attached to teachings about family life. And many of the idealised principles of communism chime with these long held beliefs, allowing it to flourish.</p> <hd id="AN0096068054-4">The importance of Confucius to understanding 'goodness'</hd> <p>While the teachings of Confucius became more influential, from the fifteenth century the dominant Vietnamese belief system was an amalgamation of four main influences: Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and Christianity. Over the centuries these beliefs have fused with popular Chinese beliefs and ancient Vietnamese animism to form what is collectively known as Tam Giao ('triple religion'). If asked their religion the Vietnamese people are most likely to say Buddhist or Catholic, but when it comes to family or civic duties they are most likely to follow Confucianism while turning to Taoist conceptions in their understanding of the cosmos. Perhaps because of this, individual children I knew in Hanoi found it difficult to pinpoint what their spiritual beliefs were. On the face of it ancestral worship is central to the Vietnamese belief system. It is commonplace for each household to retain a table positioned high up in the corner of a central room on which fresh water and fruit, and other appealing items are left as offerings, most commonly to deceased members of the patriarchal family.</p> <p>This practice of ancestral worship stems from Confucian philosophy but in practice has been incorporated into a number of different co-existing religious practices. One child I spent time with told me that he was Buddhist and that his ancestral worship table was very important to him. In one of the orphanages where I did fieldwork an ancestral worship table had been introduced for the children who wished to remember and honour family members whom had died and who they had been particularly close to, perhaps to a deceased mother, father or grandparent. This was an unusual step for the orphanage to have taken, particularly because ancestral tables are always placed in the family home and to place them elsewhere might mean that the ancestors could become confused or lost or perhaps torn between the original family table and the one that had been set up in the orphanage. My friend Hoa had spent a considerable amount of time persuading other members of staff in the orphanage to break with tradition and introduce an ancestral worship table and she now felt that it was the introduction of the table which had brought the most significant comfort to some of the children particularly because it created an environment in which a personal loss could be worked through in both a traditional and very familiar way.</p> <p>The Confucian family works within a hierarchy with particular value attached to the men of the household. In terms of accepted 'goodness' the wife obeys her husband, the son and daughter obey their parents, younger siblings obey older ones. This understanding of the other places great emphasis on the collective good of the family. Confucianism holds that the firstborn boy has higher status than any boys who follow. The eldest boy is sometimes given a particular name to signify his importance and the name 'Son' or 'Mountain' was one that I frequently came across as a signifier of prestige bestowed on the eldest boy of a family. It is also the eldest son who traditionally continues to live with his parents after marriage and who will be expected to take over the practice of maintaining the family ancestral worship table after they die. So the 'good' and 'filial' eldest boy is one who accepts this level of responsibility and does not stray far from home once he is an adult. While this is purported to be a position of privilege some of the second born boys who I spoke to about filial duty spoke with relief about not being the first born. Their more lowly position within the family allowed them greater freedom and less responsibility and the terms under which they were considered 'good' were therefore less onerous.</p> <p>Thus from a traditional perspective being good is as much about accepting one's position within the family hierarchy as it is about generally obeying one's parents and elders so that a collective identity and goodness is maintained and the family does not lose 'face' or honour. In contrast within wider society and from a government perspective a good child might simply refer to any child who has achieved the status of being a communist and young pioneer and class representative of the party.</p> <hd id="AN0096068054-5">What it means to be a good child</hd> <p>In these circumstances tension is likely to exist in relation to what it means to be a good Vietnamese child. Among some of the children who were part of my ethnography a 'filial and obedient child' would be recognised as 'good' by immediate family even when being filial required that a child gave up school, illegally moved to the city and earned money on the streets. The same group of children would be treated as deviant by the city police because, as state workers, they were expected to uphold central government policy: that no one could leave their birthplace without the required approval at commune level. This meant that working children were being forcibly returned home or locked up in a re-education centre to stop them working for a living (Burr, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref13">6</reflink>]).</p> <p>Children I worked amongst were either working for a living or placed in a detention centre after being arrested and this type of childhood did not sit easily with the global child rights model. Most importantly it meant that child rights advocates who came into contact with the children I knew and worked with did not recognise the value or 'goodness' in what they were doing.</p> <p>For children being good, or being considered good, is often key to garnering approval from adults and sometimes envy or annoyance from friends. So the question of being good (however that might manifest itself) is ever present in the lives of most children and so a notion of 'goodness' is often associated with behaving in an acceptable manner as defined by wider society. The children who were forcibly returned home to their provincial commune returned to Hanoi with even more determination to hide from the authorities and because a child rights non-governmental organisation (NGO) had been involved in their 'repatriation' they also told me that they were going out of their way to avoid the aid workers who were doing outreach work on the streets. They had lost confidence in their position on the streets and only garnered status from their parents' belief in them. With the best of intentions the NGO had intervened in these children's lives and left them with less self-worth than they had previously felt. Repatriation to their province of origin had not removed the children's need to work but it had tarnished the status that they previously gained from working independently for a living.</p> <p>In this context there existed at least two contradictory notions of the 'good' child. The first one represented a highly political understanding of the 'good' communist child. The second was reflected in that of the responsible and hardworking child, who was willing to work to contribute to the household income, or to support themselves. This idea of the 'good' and responsible child is one that is found across the Southern hemisphere, in countries where the standard of living is such that it is essential that all members of the household work. However it is a perspective on the position of children that clashes with the expectations of international non-profit organisations, which work with children under the umbrella of child rights. So the child is at once good and deviant when they are found working on the streets.</p> <hd id="AN0096068054-6">Goodness among children in a re-education centre</hd> <p>One of the fieldwork sites in which I spent two years during my time in Hanoi, was a children's re-education centre. North Vietnam's government introduced legislation in 1961 providing for detention without trial for the purpose of political re-education. The majority of children living in the detention centre had been arrested as a result of illegally working on the streets and then been placed in the government run re-education centre ostensibly to learn how to be 'good members of the communist party'.</p> <p>As Lifton reported from China, '...in dealing with the criminals there shall be regularly adopted measures of corrective study... to wipe out criminal thoughts and establish a new moral code' ([<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref14">16</reflink>], p. 17). My findings mirror what Lifton also found in China at the height of Communism. The very term 're-educated' was loaded with particular and highly political expectation, implying as it is did that these children were in need of correction and indoctrination into the communist belief system. So from the perspective of the guards who ran the prison these children could only be considered 'good' members of the state once they accepted that working for a living as illegal workers was wrong. They also needed to accept their rightful position in society and return to the villages where they had been born rather than live in the city without the government permits, which permitted them to do so.</p> <p>Yet both the children and some of their guards recognised how unrealistic this understanding and expectation of the children was. Like myself they recognised the need for the children to continue working on leaving the detention centre when their two-year sentences had come to an end. Their collusion in and recognition of more complex levels of need among these children manifested itself in their support of a training programme, which on request of the young people, would provide them with the skills to work as air-conditioning engineers and as motorbike mechanics. Thus they were complicit in their recognition that these young people needed to work in order to support their families and for their own survival.</p> <p>I spent two years with the boys in the detention centre visiting them twice a week. From their perspective the most satisfying achievement while living there was that at their request they were able to embark on a skilled training programme set up by an NGO to provide continuing apprenticeships for the children once they left the detention centre. As Trieu, who was 11-years-old, told me 'now I can run a motorbike mechanic's business from outside my grandma's home and we will never be hungry again'. He had cried with relief on learning that he had an apprenticeship because as he went on to explain 'I can now work legally, I can have a profession'.</p> <p>From his grandmother's perspective, Trieu was a highly responsible and very good and honourable filial boy who had always been thus. He had only been in the re-education centre because of his illegal work cleaning shoes for passers-by on the streets, and he had been locked up because he and his grandmother had not had the connections, or money for a bribe, to keep him from entering prison. The filial values that he and his grandmother held dear were those of Confucius that the needs of the family are of more importance than the needs of the individual. Trieu might have chosen to move away and fend for himself without sharing his earnings with his grandmother, but looking after and honouring her was central to his identity. In that environment and culture this was a form of good behaviour that I found repeatedly among the majority of children and young people that I came to know well. Trieu's level of responsibility was further enhanced by him being the only grandson. His mother had died and his father had left the area. His status as the only male was something that he referred to in our discussions. It added to the sense of duty that he already felt.</p> <p>Once I realised how significant the first-born male child was, despite 20 years of Communism and apparent equality between the sexes, I became interested in finding out how many first-born sons were represented among the detention centre children or among the populations of the other institutions where I was doing fieldwork. Not surprisingly the boys who were the eldest were most likely to be found among the group who sported a 't' tattoo: the symbol of the group who informally ran the prison. Both the leaders of this group referred with pride to the work that they had been caught doing prior to being placed in the detention centre. As Thanh explained 'my father died, I had no choice but to work to support my mum, and when we had no work I stole...but what else could I do, no one was going to help a widow.' In a country without a welfare state and in which unattached women were particularly vulnerable Thanh's mother had been proud of what her son had been doing to support her.</p> <p>This tension between the state and family expectation of the child who subjugates his needs to the greater good was repeatedly visible. The traditional values of subservience and fitting in within a hierarchy have remained consistent despite the influences of communism. They are even used to challenge the government's central policy on family size as highlighted by my findings in a state run orphanage.</p> <hd id="AN0096068054-7">The treatment of girls and gender equality</hd> <p>While boys dominated the re-education centre the orphanage where I did fieldwork consisted of two-thirds girls and one-third boys. While sitting in the compound I would watch as older girls looked after and mothered the younger children. Within Vietnam a person is considered an orphan if they have only one parent and so because most of the children at the orphanage had only one living parent they referred to themselves in this way.</p> <p>This notion of the orphan as incomplete finds its origins in traditional values, but in their case the background to why they, as girls were most likely to be in an orphanage, was also directly shaped by the two-child policy that the government introduced in the 1960s and then relaxed in 2003. These girls were usually the eldest or second born girl and victims both of the two-child policy and the traditionally informed pressure on women to produce a son. In some cases the girls were the result of a first marriage that had either ended in divorce or death of a parent.</p> <p>Yet among the group of girls who shared this information with me none outwardly showed any sign of bitterness and this might have been in part to preserve loss of face and honour, but there was more to it than that. Instead as Hoa explained they had sympathy with the lack of choices that their mothers had available to them. Hoa told me that she went home to see her mother every other weekend and that her mother's second marriage had enabled her wider family to lead a less impoverished life. She was acting as the good filial daughter who had absorbed both traditional tensions that existed for women who found themselves alone and also contemporary government policy, which further hindered their chances of having and raising all of their children. Their acceptance of their circumstances seemed genuine and pragmatic, made all the stronger by the 'mother' of the orphanage who praised the girls for their filial loyalty and spoke quite openly about the sacrifice that these girls had made for their mothers or fathers. So in this world being good was once more rendered visible by the acceptance of familial duty and the everyday reminder repeated by the 'mother' of the home that these girls had done the right thing. Hoa, who was a young girl living as an orphan at the orphanage, despite having a mother whom she visited, was technically an orphan because her father was dead. The woman who ran the orphanage was referred to as 'mother' by the children who lived there. It was also another example of Vietnamese people seemingly bending the laws of the state so that long standing traditions about family structure were upheld, children maintained familial ties and in these cases mothers were not forced to abandon their older children for the sake of their immediate futures.</p> <p>Strict Confucian philosophy dictates that upon marrying, a woman will honour her husband's family above her own 'to be happy after death, the dead person should have children (preferably one father should have one son) to comply with funeral rites and to practice the cult of the parents' (Nguyen, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref15">19</reflink>], p. 121). But in the context of contemporary Vietnam if no son has been born the eldest daughter is also able to bring her ancestors to the table to ensure that they do not become lost spirits. This worshipping of the past three generations prevents the wandering of lost souls.</p> <p>Whilst I clearly encountered circumstances in which the boy child was more revered than the girl child, and while some of the girls were 'hidden' away in the orphanage because their mother's felt under pressure to have a son, it was also true that some members of Vietnamese society were more willing to adapt traditional values to their particular circumstances. So in some instances little distinction was made between the status of boys and girls. During my stay in Hanoi I became friends with a woman who was a similar age to me and who tended her family ancestral table alongside her mother.</p> <p>Luong found similar levels of familial-based equality among the sexes in the northern villages where he did fieldwork: 'the affinal ties in the village were by no means insignificant...at the wedding of any of her children, ancestral offerings were made not only to her husband's family but also to the ancestors of her own father and mother' ([<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref16">17</reflink>], p. 61).</p> <p>The willingness to show a virtue or respect for one's parents, elders and ancestors is central to any notion of the good child whether that be with high status attached to being the first born son, or as a second son or daughter. This caused difficulties for Hoa who was a 16-year-old girl I had first struck up conversation with on the street because she was doing far better at school than her older male cousin. It caused Hoa enormous upset that none of her grandparents recognised her achievements; she felt very strongly that they did not feel they could do so because this would place her male cousin in a poor light. Instead she was expected to be submissive specifically because of her gender. In this instance being a girl meant remaining passive and humble.</p> <hd id="AN0096068054-8">Morality and goodness and the influence of international aid agencies</hd> <p>International NGOs, which supported United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), also reacted to these children in a particular way. I interviewed and spent time with NGO workers and during one such meeting with the director of an international NGO focused on child rights. I learnt that they were working with the local police on child repatriation or forced migration programme because they believed that it was better that a child live with their family rather than out on the streets. But this 'repatriation' programme ignored the complex reasons outlined above for children moving away in the first place and little seemed to have been done in the way of addressing the cultural tradition of working on the streets for a few years or in other cases the abuses that had led to children finding the streets a preferable location. The NGO wished both to protect the child and reunite each child back into its family. Meanwhile the police were expected to uphold a different and more simplistic understanding of the children as criminals who had illegally moved to the city without the authority and approval to do so.</p> <p>When two of the boys I knew who worked near the main lake cleaning shoes disappeared but did not reappear in the re-education centre which I visited I realised that they had been part of the repatriation or forcible return home programme. Two weeks later they were back on the streets, underfed, exhausted and full of anger and frustration explaining that their families needed them to keep on working and that neither could face working in the fields. From their perspective working on the streets was infinitely preferable because they earned money to send home and also to support attending evening classes in the city. None of this was recognised by the NGO that was complicit in their enforced repatriation.</p> <hd id="AN0096068054-9">Conclusion</hd> <p>This brings us back to the question of what is meant by morality and goodness. I have shown in this article that the Vietnamese ideals are framed by two opposing political and religious belief sets, which in many respects seem quite different from those found in the West. But we all live under such apparent anomalistic rules; and Vietnam is just an extreme example of this dichotomy. Should individuals or society determine morality and how can we as researchers (or outsiders) examine other peoples' morality without resorting to our own normative judgments as a frame of reference? (Heintz, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref17">11</reflink>]).</p> <p>This very question is echoed by Haidt when he suggests that there are essentially five moral frameworks each of which can be associated with either conservative or liberal political systems. For the purpose of my argument application of his model suggests that the Communist party operates within a moral framework of authority/subversion in which those lower down the societal hierarchy (in this case children who are also non-party members) are made to behave 'properly' by being locked up or physically removed from the streets.</p> <p>Meanwhile members of the international aid community are most likely to align themselves with a liberal 'care/harm' framework, which Haidt suggests evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of caring for vulnerable children (Haidt, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref18">10</reflink>], p. 20). However, while this desire to care for and rescue children might be at the forefront of aid agency thinking, application of the UNCRC based rights can create an unintentional shift in morality. In some instances where a desire to protect children is combined with a rigid belief in universalistic ideals the shift has been towards an authoritarian/subversion model of intervention. This is exactly what happened when the aforementioned child rights international aid agency went into partnership with the Vietnamese government to forcibly repatriate working children off the streets. Fundamentally confused outcomes, such as these, exist when child rights activists introduce an international child rights agenda without being adequately aware of internal tensions that already exist between the state and a general population, which embraces alternative belief systems.</p> <p>Such fundamentally confused outcomes exist because an international child rights perspective supports a global model of childhood and recognises value in supporting a universal value system, which is given priority over cultural norms on the ground. A central theme of Sitharaman Kakarala ([<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref19">15</reflink>]) is that universalist arguments are generally against tradition and strongly favour modernity[<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref20">15</reflink>] Universalists have often ignored the diversity of social and cultural formations in the South, and this in turn has provoked the elites of the South to create other forms of human rights agendas that often clash with the tenets of the West, thus introducing further ambiguities and opportunities for misunderstanding (1996).</p> <p>Within this global understanding a good childhood will be one in which a child has the right to participate in and make autonomous choices. This understanding of childhood has been well documented and problematised, partly because of the tension that exists between a well-meaning desire to protect children while expecting that they will take advantage of full participatory rights as outlined in the UNCRC (Gillis [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref21">9</reflink>]; Prout &amp; James, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref22">13</reflink>]; Jenks, [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref23">14</reflink>]). The emphasis here has been on young people as becoming, and as incomplete, as Schlegel and Barry ([<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref24">21</reflink>]) point out and as such is grounded in developmental psychology and each person as separate and autonomous individuals. This Western informed understanding of children and young people is dominated by a question about 'how society affects the individual'. This individualised notion of selfhood is central to the global rights movement. It is 'I' who has rights.</p> <p>While filial piety represents only one aspect of the Vietnamese belief system, it is nevertheless a very significant one and one which results in some very particular and culturally bound sets of behaviour which create an environment in which the good and morally bound child accepts his or her position within the family for the greater good of the collective. It is important to recognise that such anomalies exist and co-exist alongside conflicting doctrines: Vietnam thrives on pragmatism. Morality is relative.</p> <p>As for the children of Vietnam, within their world there were sacrifices to be made and a time-honoured goodness to be achieved both of which eclipsed expectations enforced by the state or an international human rights agenda. </p> <ref id="AN0096068054-10"> <title> References </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref8" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> Alston, P. (1994). The best interests of the child: Reconciling culture and human rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref5" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> Benedict, R. (1939). Patterns of culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib3" idref="ref2" type="bt">3</bibl> <bibtext> Beresford, M. (2008). Doi moi in review: The challenge of building market socialism in Vietnam. The Journal of Contemporary Asia, 38: 221–243.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib4" idref="ref7" type="bt">4</bibl> <bibtext> Brennan, D., Petersen, E., Que, N., and Vanzetti, D. (2012). Rural-urban migration and Vietnamese agriculture. Contributed paper at the 56th AARES Annual Conference, Fremantle, Western Australia, 7–10th February 2012.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib5" type="bt">5</bibl> <bibtext> Burr, R. (2002). Global and local approaches to children's rights in Vietnam. Childhood, 9, 49–61.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib6" idref="ref1" type="bt">6</bibl> <bibtext> Burr, R. (2006). Vietnam's Children in a Changing World. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib7" type="bt">7</bibl> <bibtext> Burr, R., &amp; Montgomery, H. (2003). Children and rights. In M. Woodhead, &amp; H. Montgomery (Eds.), Understanding childhood: an interdisciplinary approach (pp. 135–178). Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib8" type="bt">8</bibl> <bibtext> Doan, D. H. (2006). Moral education or political education in the Vietnamese educational system. Journal of Moral Education, 34, 451–463.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib9" idref="ref21" type="bt">9</bibl> <bibtext> Gillis, J. R. (1996). A world of their own making. Oxford: University Press.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New York: Pantheon Books.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Heintz, M. (Ed.). (2009). The anthropology of moralities. Oxford: Berghahn.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Howell, S. (Ed.). (1997). The ethnography of moralities. London: Routledge.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> James, A., &amp; Prout, A. (Eds.). (2003). Constructing and reconstructing childhoods (2nd ed.), Falmer Press. Newletter 1(3).</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Jenks, C. (2005). Childhood (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Kakarala, S. (1996). Universality versus relativity: a reappraisal of the debate. Student Human Rights Newsletter, 1, 22–28.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Lifton, R. (1961). Thought reform and the psychology of totalitarianism: A study of brainwashing in china. New York: V.W. Norton.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Luong, H. Y. V. (1992). Revolution in the village: Tradition and transformation in north vietnam. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Nghia, P. D. (2005). Confucianism and the conception of the law in Vietnam. In J. Gillespie, &amp; P. Nicholson (Eds.), Asian socialism and legal change: The Dynamics and Vietnamese and Chinese Reform. Canberra, Australia: ANUE Press and Asian Pacific Press.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Nguyen, K. (1987). Vietnam: A long history. Hanoi: The Goi Press.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Rydstrom, H. (2006). Masculinity and punishment: Men's upbringing of boys in rural Vietnam. Childhood, 13, 329–348.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Schelegel, A., &amp; Barry, H. (1991). Adolescence: An anthropological enquiry. New York. USA: The Free Press Macmillan.</bibtext> </blist> </ref> <aug> <p>By Rachel Burr</p> <p>Reported by Author</p> </aug> <nolink nlid="nl1" bibid="bib18" firstref="ref4"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl2" bibid="bib12" firstref="ref6"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl3" bibid="bib20" firstref="ref11"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl4" bibid="bib11" firstref="ref12"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl5" bibid="bib16" firstref="ref14"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl6" bibid="bib19" firstref="ref15"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl7" bibid="bib17" firstref="ref16"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl8" bibid="bib10" firstref="ref18"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl9" bibid="bib15" firstref="ref19"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl10" bibid="bib13" firstref="ref22"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl11" bibid="bib14" firstref="ref23"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl12" bibid="bib21" firstref="ref24"></nolink> |
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| Items | – Name: Title Label: Title Group: Ti Data: The Complexity of Morality: Being a 'Good Child' in Vietnam? – Name: Language Label: Language Group: Lang Data: English – Name: Author Label: Authors Group: Au Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Burr%2C+Rachel%22">Burr, Rachel</searchLink> – Name: TitleSource Label: Source Group: Src Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Journal+of+Moral+Education%22"><i>Journal of Moral Education</i></searchLink>. 2014 43(2):156-168. – Name: Avail Label: Availability Group: Avail Data: Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals – Name: PeerReviewed Label: Peer Reviewed Group: SrcInfo Data: Y – Name: Pages Label: Page Count Group: Src Data: 13 – Name: DatePubCY Label: Publication Date Group: Date Data: 2014 – Name: TypeDocument Label: Document Type Group: TypDoc Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Evaluative – Name: Subject Label: Descriptors Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Foreign+Countries%22">Foreign Countries</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Moral+Values%22">Moral Values</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Social+Systems%22">Social Systems</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Males%22">Males</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Cultural+Influences%22">Cultural Influences</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Family+Structure%22">Family Structure</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Siblings%22">Siblings</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Financial+Support%22">Financial Support</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Residential+Institutions%22">Residential Institutions</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Gender+Differences%22">Gender Differences</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Child+Rearing%22">Child Rearing</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Social+Responsibility%22">Social Responsibility</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Family+Relationship%22">Family Relationship</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Sex+Fairness%22">Sex Fairness</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Confucianism%22">Confucianism</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Interviews%22">Interviews</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22International+Organizations%22">International Organizations</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Nongovernmental+Organizations%22">Nongovernmental Organizations</searchLink> – Name: Subject Label: Geographic Terms Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Vietnam%22">Vietnam</searchLink> – Name: DOI Label: DOI Group: ID Data: 10.1080/03057240.2014.893421 – Name: ISSN Label: ISSN Group: ISSN Data: 0305-7240 – Name: Abstract Label: Abstract Group: Ab Data: In this article I examine what it means to be a good child in Vietnam. Throughout the country ancestral worship is widely practiced. This traditionally places emphasis on the need for a boy child to continue the practice of worship into the next generation. Because of this, while the high value placed on the boy child has been tempered by the influence of communist rule and modernity, the eldest boy still often holds preferential status. Under such circumstances the good child is one who accepts his or her position within the hierarchical structure of the family and is also willing to subjugate his or her individual needs to the greater collective good. This might manifest itself in a child's "choice" to work on the streets so that their earnings can be sent home to support other siblings through their schooling. Or it might show itself in the practice of children accepting and apparently supporting that fact that they have been sent to an orphanage or "hidden" so that a parent can try for more male children. It would be naive though to conclude from this that boys and girls are automatically raised within separate moral frameworks. Instead this article proposes that at the local level what it means to be a good child is even more complex because the notion of the good, moral and filial child is shaped as much by family circumstances and expectation as it is by the mores and values of the wider society. – Name: AbstractInfo Label: Abstractor Group: Ab Data: As Provided – Name: Ref Label: Number of References Group: RefInfo Data: 21 – Name: DateEntry Label: Entry Date Group: Date Data: 2014 – Name: AN Label: Accession Number Group: ID Data: EJ1026135 |
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| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Identifiers: – Type: doi Value: 10.1080/03057240.2014.893421 Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 13 StartPage: 156 Subjects: – SubjectFull: Foreign Countries Type: general – SubjectFull: Moral Values Type: general – SubjectFull: Social Systems Type: general – SubjectFull: Males Type: general – SubjectFull: Cultural Influences Type: general – SubjectFull: Family Structure Type: general – SubjectFull: Siblings Type: general – SubjectFull: Financial Support Type: general – SubjectFull: Residential Institutions Type: general – SubjectFull: Gender Differences Type: general – SubjectFull: Child Rearing Type: general – SubjectFull: Social Responsibility Type: general – SubjectFull: Family Relationship Type: general – SubjectFull: Sex Fairness Type: general – SubjectFull: Confucianism Type: general – SubjectFull: Interviews Type: general – SubjectFull: International Organizations Type: general – SubjectFull: Nongovernmental Organizations Type: general – SubjectFull: Vietnam Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: The Complexity of Morality: Being a 'Good Child' in Vietnam? Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Burr, Rachel IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 01 Type: published Y: 2014 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 0305-7240 Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 43 – Type: issue Value: 2 Titles: – TitleFull: Journal of Moral Education Type: main |
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