Archives de catégorie : Thèses / PhD

UQÀM : Phi-Vân Évelyne Nguyen, lauréate du prix de la meilleure thèse de doctorat

[ndlr] Félicitations à notre collègue Phi-Vân pour ce prix thèse bien mérité et aux autres personnes sélectionnées pour cette récompense annuelle de la Faculté des sciences humaines de l’Université du Québec à Montréal.

Prix de la meilleure thèse de doctorat

Phi-Vân Évelyne Nguyen (Ph. D. histoire, 2015) a été récompensée pour sa recherche intitulée Les résidus de la guerre: la mobilisation des réfugiés du nord pour un Vietnam non communiste (1954-1965). Sa thèse est l’aboutissement d’une étude patiente et minutieuse l’ayant menée au Vietnam, en France et aux États-Unis, sur les traces des quelque 800 000 personnes qui, en 1954, choisirent de quitter la zone communiste du pays, dans le nord, pour rejoindre ce que l’on désignait à l’époque comme le «monde libre». La chercheuse a étudié le parcours politique et culturel de ces réfugiés, depuis leur arrivée dans le sud du Vietnam, en 1954, jusqu’au déclenchement de la guerre, en 1965. Grâce à deux bourses postdoctorales du CRSH et de la Fondation suisse pour la recherche scientifique, Phi-Vân Évelyne Nguyen poursuit actuellement ses recherches à l’Université Cornell, aux États-Unis.

Source : Actualités UQAM (24/11/2016)

Résumé en anglais :

Phi Vân’s dissertation, “Les résidus de la guerre, La mobilisation des réfugiés du nord pour un Vietnam non-communiste, 1954–1965″ [War Residues: The Mobilization of Northern Refugees for a non-Communist Vietnam, 1954–1965] analyzes the political and cultural consequences of the migration of more than 800,000 Vietnamese who left the North to regroup into South following the 1954 Geneva ceasefire. Using archival documents collected in Vietnam, the United States and France, the dissertation shows that one important consequence of the migration was to radicalize non-Communist nationalism. Many migrants identified as “refugees of Communism” and considered they were personally tied to the fate of the Vietnamese nation since the Geneva partition. As a consequence, the 1954 refugees exhorted everyone within Vietnam and beyond to fight back Communism and reunite the Vietnamese nation.

Sur ce sujet voir : https://indomemoires.hypotheses.org/20609

Esther Horat : Market Transformation and Trade Dynamics in a Peri-urban Village. Reflections from a Vietnamese Marketplace [PhD.]

[ndlr] Annonce de la thèse d’Esther Horat soutenue en mars 2016 à l’Université de Zurich. Nous reproduisons ci-dessous le message de l’anthropologue Kirsten Endres posté sur VSG avec son aimable autorisation.

In March this year, Esther Horat successfully defended her doctoral dissertation entitled “Market Transformation and Trade Dynamics in a Peri-urban Village. Reflections from a Vietnamese Marketplace.” Esther was a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology from 2011-2015. She defended her thesis at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and was awarded a “magna cum laude” (with great praise) by the committee consisting of Peter Finke, Annuska Derks (both University of Zurich), and myself.

Abstract:

Based on twelve months of ethnographic research in the Vietnamese village of Ninh Hiệp, this dissertation offers an account of the various factors that have enabled it to transform into a regional trading hub for clothing and to maintain this position until the present day. The work pays great attention to how traders experience, negotiate, and react to state policies concerning the redevelopment of markets, and, in doing so, how they actively shape the political economy of Vietnam. New modes of governance – consisting of the ambivalent use of socialist and neoliberal ideologies and practices – are a crucial aspect of the study.

This research was conducted against the backdrop of decades of economic reforms initiated in socialist Vietnam in the late 1980s. Ninh Hiệp, a village along the Red River Delta, serves as a site for understanding some of the major structural changes in the region’s formal and informal labor markets and their impact on the lives of traders. In exploring some of the strategies traders employ to cope with the uncertainties of the post-reform period, the dissertation places particular emphasis on the productive side of uncertainties. Not only do traders adapt resourcefully to global capitalist formations and thereby shape the local economy, but they also deepen their social relations when confronted with uncertainties. The dissertation demonstrates how social networks among traders, as well as trust-based relations that shape informal banking and credit systems, are crucial for the functioning of the market. In addition to allowing for transactions without – or at least scarce – capital, social networks ensure the circulation of valuable information and provide access to producers and markets.

Looking closely at the operation and complexities of family businesses, the thesis discusses the dynamics involved in shaping relations and expectations across the gender and generational divide. Rather than analyzing family businesses in terms of efficiency, exploitation, or as an economic strategy of last resort, this dissertation argues in favor of their conception as agents of social change. Finally, this dissertation argues that the notion of morality is central to the lives of traders on three levels: (a) as a strategy for negotiating the boundaries of a moral community, (b) as a government tactic to project a legitimate image of itself and its policies, and (c) serving as an existential function in the face of ambiguities triggered by the socialist and neoliberal economic orders.

Many congratulations to Esther Horat!

Kirsten Endres

Sandrine Hobert : Les animaux dans l’imaginaire et la culture traditionnelle du Cambodge, du début de notre ère à la fin de l’époque angkorienne [thèse]

[ndlr] Annonce de la soutenance de la thèse de Médecine vétérinaire de Sandrine Hobert.

Résumé : Les animaux tiennent une place importante dans la culture cambodgienne, que ce soit dans l’imaginaire, les croyances, les traditions ou la religion. C’est ce que cet essai tente de démontrer, en passant des mythes et légendes les plus anciens, aux rôles des animaux dans la cité d’Angkor dirigée par les rois de l’Empire khmer. Ce travail consistera, après avoir fait une rapide présentation du Cambodge, à étudier d’abord les apparitions et les rôles des animaux dans la mythologie et la littérature khmères, puis dans les croyances ancestrales et les traditions populaires, ainsi que dans la religion. Enfin, dans la dernière partie replace l’animal à l’époque angkorienne où il a une place déterminante.

Hobert_ThèseAnimauxCambodge_2016De l’animal “acteur” dans les fêtes et les traditions populaires aux chimères de la mythologie et de l’imaginaire khmers, cet essai place l’animal au centre de l’histoire du Cambodge et de ses habitants. “Animaux de la mythologie, animaux de la royauté, animaux de guerre ou de travail” (p. 56),  il nous invite à la redécouverte d’un bestiaire riche à la fois peu connu et encore très présent dans la culture cambodgienne.

Thèse d’État de Doctorat Vétérinaire.

Lieu et date de soutenance : Lyon, mardi 12 juillet 2016

Membres du jury :

  • Président : M. le Professeur Philippe Moulin
  • 1er Assesseur : M. le Docteur Denis Grancher
  • 2e Assesseur : Mme le Professeur Denise Rémy
  • Membre invité : M. le Docteur François Guillemot

Image “à la une” : Chars de guerre de la bataille de Lanka, Angkor Vat, galerie Ouest © Photo de l’auteure

Mei Feng Mok: “Negotiating Community and Nation in Chợ Lớn: Nation-building, Community-building and Transnationalism in Everyday Life during the Republic of Việt Nam, 1955-1975”

[ndlr] Présentation par Christoph Giebel de la thèse de Mei Feng Mok sur Cholon et sa population sous la République du Viêt-Nam de 1955 à 1975. Chronique publiée avec l’autorisation de son auteur.

Ref.: Mei Feng Mok, Negotiating Community and Nation in Chợ Lớn: Nation-building, Community-building and Transnationalism in Everyday Life during the Republic of Việt Nam, 1955-1975, University of Washington, History, PhD thesis, Chair: Christoph Giebel, 2016.

It is with great pleasure that I announce to VSG a newly minted Ph.D.

On 8 June 2016, at the History department of the University of Washington, Seattle (USA), Mei Feng Mok successfully defended her dissertation “Negotiating Community and Nation in Chợ Lớn: Nation-building, Community-building and Transnationalism in Everyday Life during the Republic of Việt Nam, 1955-1975.”  The dissertation is based on a variety of sources in Vietnamese, Chinese, French and English, most notably rare and rarely-used Chinese-language newspapers from Chợ Lớn.  Examiners were Laurie Sears, Sasha Welland, and Christoph Giebel (chair);  Moon-ho Jung and Madeleine Dong added guidance at earlier stages of research.  Before coming to UW, Mei Feng Mok earned an MA in History at the National University of Singapore (NUS) with Bruce Lockhart.

Focusing on social life ordered around markets, native place congregations and temples, schools and work places, hospitals and medicinal halls, sports clubs and restaurants, private homes and public leisure places, Mei Feng deftly provides a rich tapestry of Chợ Lớn’s Chinese community, particularly its middle class, and the changes it underwent over time.  She situates Chợ Lớn in multiple relations: as one center of greater Sài Gòn, economic conduit for the southern Vietnamese hinterlands, socio-cultural hub for Chinese communities throughout Indochina, nodal point in transnational Chinese exchanges linking San Francisco, Hong Kong, China, and Singapore, and contributor to Cold War-era and Taiwan/ROC-centric sinophonic articulations.

The dissertation is organized into four main chapters:  

  • 1) Chợ Lớn’s built environment and human geography, its lived and shared spaces;  
  • 2) Education from kindergarten to adult learning between local and transnational networks and the state;  
  • 3) Sports and competitions over disciplining bodies and controlling social time;  
  • and 4) young adulthood, women in the public sphere, and socialization into multi-layered networks through marriage, work, philanthropy, and other ways of accumulating and spending social capital. 

Here Chợ Lớn emerges as a site of contestation between diasporic community interests, a “nation-building” Vietnamese state, and the transnational Chinese world not easily negotiated by individuals and further complicated by war, violence, and ideological divisions.

 Mei Feng’s work is bound to make significant contributions to a variety of fields:  e.g., to social history (and here everyday urban life) of which Việt Nam Studies are still desperately starved, to the growing body of studies on the Republic of Việt Nam (and a rare one where the RVN simply “is” rather than “fails”), to conversations about diasporic/minority communities with multiple identities in Việt Nam (and elsewhere), and to our knowledge of overseas Chinese and the dynamic currents in the Cold War-era transnational Chinese world.  Mei Feng will now take her talents and work to a Post-doctoral Fellowship position at the Asia Research Institute (ARI) in Singapore (NUS) where this important and exciting dissertation may well turn into a marvelous book.

 
Congratulations to Dr. Mei Feng Mok!
 
C. Giebel

UW-Seattle

Source : VSG

Image “à la une” : Le marché de Binh Tây à Cholon en 1960.

Hoang Ngo: Building a New House for the Buddha: Buddhist Social Engagement and Revival in Vietnam, 1927-1951 – PhD

[ndlr] Presentation de Christoph Giebel de la thèse de Hoang Ngo sur le bouddhisme socialement engagé des années 1927-1951, une période rarement considérée. Chronique publiée avec l’autorisation de son auteur.

Ref.: Hoang Ngo, Building a New House for the Buddha: Buddhist Social Engagement and Revival in Vietnam, 1927-1951, Chair: Christoph Giebel.

Now that most of us have begun the new academic year around the world, I am very pleased to make the following announcement:

Recently, in the University of Washington (Seattle) History department, Hoang Ngo successfully defended his dissertation “Building a New House for the Buddha: Buddhist Social Engagement and Revival in Vietnam, 1927-1951.”  The dissertation is based on extensive archival and library research in Viet Nam and France; it was supervised by Laurie Sears, Raymond Jonas, and Christoph Giebel (chair), and earlier also by Professor Emeritus Charles “Biff” Keyes.

The dissertation investigates in particular social engagement of Vietnamese Buddhists, in itself the product of the Buddhist revival emerging in the 1920s. During the revival, Vietnamese Buddhists attempted to remake their religion into a this-worldly Buddhism, establishing Buddhist associations and monastic schools and publishing periodicals to propagate the Dharma. Their goal was to use Buddhism to effectively deal with the colonization of the country by the French and the challenges posed by colonial modernity.

Hoang follows in great detail the debates within and among the emerging Buddhist associations of Cochinchina, Annam, and Tonkin, particularly during the 1930s and early 1940s when new ideas and profound change caused much excitement and activities as well as great anxieties and self-doubt.  What was the best way to propagate the Dharma among the masses?  How could one separate the “true” monk from the “fake”?  What was to be the proper balance between the sangha and the laity?  How could Buddhist associations organize themselves and operate effectively within an all-encompassing colonial order of control?  What role was there for revived Buddhism in the national(ist) struggle?  These and other questions fueled an explosion of intense debates, both in personal interactions as well as in various print media, over doctrinal, organizational and institutional aspects of Buddhism.

Despite personal and institutional rivalries, tensions between leading monks,  newly empowered lay people, and French authority, and persistent regional divisions, the ideal of a unified, all-Vietnamese Buddhist organization remained a long-standing, if elusive goal.  Unity, however, would come about only in the twilight of the colonial empire and the early years of the Cold War, and via the catalyst of the World Buddhist Conference in Sri Lanka.  In an epilogue, Hoang links the (short-lived) moment of unity in 1951 to the Buddhist Struggle Movement in the 1960s Republic, the subject of his earlier, pre-dissertation work.  At the end of a rigorous and vigorous defense, Hoang’s committee urged him to turn this important and richly documented dissertation into a full-fledged book manuscript.

Congratulations to Dr. Hoang Ngo!
C. Giebel

UW-Seattle, USA

Source : VSG

Thèse en ligne (PDF) téléchargeable sur le site de l’Université de Washington : https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/33976

Anthony Heathcote : Remember Forever – Relationships With the Living and the Dead in a Vietnamese Online Memorial Site [2015]

[ndlr] Résumé de la thèse de Anthony Heathcote (University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2015) sur un sujet inédit et passionnant : la mémorialisation en ligne dans le Viêt-Nam contemporain à travers l’étude des interactions des internautes sur un forum dédié aux personnes décédées. Cette recherche ethnographique se déplace à travers le temps, l’espace et les mondes virtuels pour examiner la relation entre les nouvelles technologies des médias et des pratiques commémoratives qui sont souvent culturellement et politiquement controversées” (Christina Schwenkel, VSG).

This thesis is concerned with online memorialisation in contemporary Vietnam. It argues that the experiences of Vietnamese who participate in the online memorial site Nghĩa Trang Online highlight the continuities as well as tensions which exist between online, offline and other world (the world of the dead) communications. At its starting point, this thesis situates Vietnamese online interactions within the cultural practice of ancestor worship in Vietnam, which is the dominant relationship Vietnamese have with the dead. It demonstrates that online interactions with the dead which may seem new and untraditional are profoundly embedded in ancestor worship, and that the practice of ancestor worship itself is one which has transformed, through political, technological, economic and cultural changes.

These examinations also feed into wider socio-political issues in Vietnam, including the online memorialisation of fetuses after an abortion, and the remembering of revolutionary martyrs (liệt sĩ) killed during the American/Vietnam War in contrast to the forgetting of soldiers in the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam/South Vietnamese Army). This thesis also argues that Nghĩa Trang Online engenders a community where Vietnamese can express their emotions relating to loss, continue a relationship with the deceased through comments and online offerings, and give and receive support with fellow members. Such emotional expression is often disenfranchised in Vietnamese society and so online memorialisation becomes a new vehicle for the enfranchisement of grief.

This thesis is based on twelve months’ fieldwork between 2012-2013 in Vietnam within the major cities of Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Da Nang, through online and offline participant observation in the country’s largest online memorial, Nghĩa Trang Online (Cemetery Online). The site is also known as Nhớ Mãi (Remember Forever). Originating in 2008, the website currently has around 60,000 members who use the memorial to create online tombs for the dead, ‘light’ candles and ‘burn’ incense, create online offerings, and remember and communicate with the living and the dead. A number of members also meet in person and participate in death days, cemetery visits, birthdays, weddings, charity events and other social gatherings.

The Internet is burgeoning with spaces dedicated to remembering the dead through social networking sites, blogs, museums, archives, cemeteries and memorials. While there is an expanding body of research contributing to this field, the interactions between the online, offline and the other world in contemporary Vietnam have not been anthropologically researched. This work aims to fill this gap, focusing on the extraordinarily diverse intersection of remembrance, continuing relationships, community, emotion and online memorialisation in contemporary Vietnam.

Mots clés : Nghĩa Trang Online / Nhomai.vn / Anthropology / Ancestor Worship / Death / Ethnography / Vietnam / Online Memorial / Community / Continuing Bonds / Grief / Emotion / Forgetting / Abortion / Revolutionary Martyrs / ARVN / Reflexivity

Source : VSG et Adelaide Research & Scholarship

Image “à la une” : illustration de la page d’accès du site mémoriel Nho Mai © DR

Lucie Labbé : « Danseuses et divinités. Modalités et enjeux de l’apprentissage de la danse de cour cambodgienne » [thèse]

[ndlr] Annonce d’une soutenance de thèse en anthropologie sociale sur le Cambodge.

« Danseuses et divinités. Modalités et enjeux de l’apprentissage de la danse de cour cambodgienne »

Lucie Labbé

Soutenance de thèse de doctorat de l’EHESS (École des hautes études en sciences sociales) en ethnologie – anthropologie sociale sous la direction de Mme Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière

mercredi 6 avril 2016 à Paris

 

Résumé de la thèse :

Cette thèse a pour objet la danse de cour cambodgienne qu’elle aborde non seulement en tant que production sociale mais aussi dans ses aspects esthétiques et techniques. D’origine rituelle et palatine, cette forme de danse également nommée « danse classique khmère » est aujourd’hui enseignée dans un contexte étatique institutionnel. Depuis quelques décennies, la danse de cour est aussi enseignée et pratiquée dans les cadres touristique et humanitaire au sein de groupes de danse constitués, le plus souvent, de jeunes gens issus de milieux défavorisés. Des tournées internationales de troupes professionnelles et des associations créées par des Cambodgiens de la diaspora ont également contribué à l’exporter hors du Cambodge.

Partant de ces observations, les conditions dans lesquelles le « savoir dansé » est aujourd’hui incarné hors de la cour sont examinées afin de mettre en évidence le rôle actuel de la danse et des danseuses. Il s’est avéré que, dans les différents contextes où elle existe, la danse de cour n’apparaissait pas seulement comme un symbole visible de l’identité cambodgienne. En effet, une efficacité rituelle lui est toujours reconnue dans certains cadres, en particulier celui du ministère de la Culture et des Beaux-Arts. Là, l’apprentissage est particulièrement rigoureux et rythmé par des cérémonies qui actualisent le lien entre les générations passées et présentes de maîtresses et d’élèves.

Les danseuses, forgées par la danse à la fois dans leur corps et dans leur esprit, incarnent des modèles de femmes khmères dans un cadre ethnico-national où la royauté demeure un référent social. Certaines  revendiquent par ailleurs un nouveau statut d’artiste en développant une expression personnelle dans la continuité mais aussi, pour quelques-unes, dans une forme de rupture avec les référents monarchiques et étatiques.

Le jury sera composé de :

  • M. Michel ANTELME, professeur, INALCO
  • Mme Bénédicte BRAC DE LA PERRIÈRE, directrice de recherche, CNRS
  • M. Jean-Paul COLLEYN, directeur d’études, CNRS / EHESS
  • M. Michael HOUSEMAN, directeur d’études, CNRS / EPHE
  • Mme Dana RAPPOPORT, chargée de recherche, CNRS / EHESS
  • Mme Ashley THOMPSON, maître de conférence, SOAS (Royaume Uni)

 

Informations pratiques :

La soutenance aura lieu le mercredi 6 avril 2016 à 14h au

Centre Asie du Sud-Est (CASE)

Bâtiment Le France, salle 638 (6ème étage)

190 avenue de France, 75013 Paris

Accès : Métro ligne 6 (station : Quai de la gare) ou bus 89 (arrêt : Bibliothèque François Mitterrand).

Image “à la une” : danse classique khmère dans Reamker, danse avec les dieux, documentaire de Stéphane Lebon, 1993, 58’.