Fictive Kinship as a Technique of Governance in Contemporary Vietnam: Hung Kings and the Global Economy

• In Event: Harnessing Foundational Myths: Hùng Kings in Three Vietnams, 1965-2015 - Sponsored by the Vietnam Studies Group

Abstract

Legends and folk beliefs about Hùng kings being the emblem of common ancestry for Vietnamese provide a fictive kinship that paradoxically both hampers and sustains the ruling regime’s effort “to build socialism.” On the one hand, the sense of unity among all Vietnamese, both in Vietnam and throughout the global diaspora, facilitates integration into the international capitalist economy. On the other hand, the regime’s conceit of being the authentic voice of the Hùng king tradition strengthens its efforts to maintain a bulwark against this global economy by privileging state-owned and privileged privately-owned domestic enterprises. The point of stress in this paradox is how to interpret the “flesh and blood” relationship, i.e. a sense of ethnic identity symbolized by the Hùng kings, between Vietnamese in Vietnam who submit to a regime espousing socialism and Vietnamese abroad who aim to promote a capitalist economy that contradicts the aims of socialism. The regime aims to resolve this paradox by indoctrinating the Vietnamese diaspora to accept the authority of a Hùng king “flesh and blood” connection that legitimizes state authority and the socialist system that it espouses. By emphasizing the Hùng kings as the common ancestors of all Vietnamese, the regime endeavors to enmesh the diaspora in a sense of ethnic identity stronger than the neoliberal impulses that animate the global economy. The paper is based on newspaper publications between 2000 and 2015 and fieldwork materials I collected in 2014.

Author

• Phúc Anh Nguyễn, Harvard Yenching Institute