Cultural Situation of Vietnamese Refugees : A Review of the Studies in the U.S. and a Case in Kobe

ベトナム ナンミン ケンキュウ ノ シテン ガッシュウコク ノ ケンキュウ ジレイ ト シンサイゴ ノ コウベ ノ バアイ

スミムラ, ヨシノリ

Sumimura, Yoshinori

オオサカ ダイガク ニンゲン カガクブ シャカイガク ニンゲンガク ジンルイガク ケンキュウシツ

English

文化状況

転置

家族

エスニシティ

Vietnamese Refugees

Cultural Situation

Displacement

Family

Ethnicity

This paper discusses the cultural situation of Vietnamese refugees. After "representation" became problematic in studies of culture, anthropologists started to think of culture as a negotiated, present process rather than an organically unified or traditionally continuous entity. However, Vietnamese refugees are still objectified based on the essentialist concept of culture, under the influence of discourses invented about Vietnamese "nationalism" or "communism." As a result, studies have overlooked some aspects of Vietnamese refugees' cultural situation, particularly intra- ethnic diversity. It's important to see that Vietnamese refugees negotiate their culture not only with host societies but also among themselves. In this paper, first, I will briefly survey a historical process in the latter half of the twentieth century in which the discourses about "Vietnam" have been produced. Next, I point out some problems about the concepts of "displacement," "family" and .ethnicity" of the social science studies in the United States, which have been deeply involved in the historical process. And then I refer to a case of Vietnamese refugees in Kobe after the Great Hanshin Earthquake to understand the cultural situation now in process among them.

English