The Department of Anthropology Colloquium Series

Thursday March 18^th 2010
3:00 pm in Crawford Hall 115
Reception to Follow

Terry Rambo, Special Professor,
Faculty of Agriculture, Khon Kaen University, Thailand
presents,

Pyramids of Power and Privilege: The Hierarchical Basis of Contemporary Vietnamese Social Organization

Despite more than 150 years of radical societal changes associated with colonialism, socialist revolution, and globalization, Vietnamese culture remains deeply imbued with hierarchical values. This presentation begins by addressing the concept of hierarchical society as a distinctive type of social formation. It then describes the structure and functioning of hierarchical structures in Vietnamese society, relates these structures to an underlying cultural model based on the kinship system, and examines how hierarchical values are reproduced by the socialization process within Vietnamese families. Finally, it looks at the extent to which Vietnam’s hierarchical type of social organization is unique in Southeast Asia.

Terry Rambo received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Hawaii (1972). He has done field work in British Honduras (now Belize), Malaysia, and Vietnam and taught at universities in the U.S., Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, and Thailand. He was a researcher at the East-West Center (1980-2000) before becoming the first foreign professor at Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. After his retirement in 2004 he moved to Thailand where he continues to teach and write. His most recent book is Farming with Fire and Water: The Human Ecology of a Composite Swiddening Community in Vietnam’s Northern Mountains (Kyoto University Press, 2009).

Cosponsored with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies

For further information, please contact Anthropology at anthprog@hawaii.edu.

page last updated March 15, 2010