Embodying Morality: Growing up in Rural Northern Vietnam

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This anthropological study, based on extensive fieldwork in Vietnam, examines child-rearing in a rural Red River delta commune. It explores how a male descent-based family system influences the moral upbringing of girls and boys. In Vietnamese culture, boys are responsible for perpetuating the patrilineal family line, embodying the morality and honor of their father's lineage. Girls, seen as blank slates, must compensate by embodying tinh cam (sensitivity). These cultural attitudes significantly shape the upbringing of children and their understanding of their bodies. The author provides fresh data from various sources, including audiotapes, videotapes, and observations, to illustrate the transformation of local and educational constructions of gender and morality into body styles. The study highlights how daily life performances produce and challenge northern Vietnamese ideals of femininity and masculinity. By applying post-structuralist theory, the author integrates epistemology, practice, body, and socialization theories with feminist analysis, proposing the body as an analytic category. This approach moves feminist theory beyond the traditional sex-gender opposition, showcasing how cultural elaborations of corporeality are learned and experienced in contemporary rural Vietnam.