Archives de catégorie : Thèses / PhD

Thérèse Guyot-Becker : La servitude pour dette au Campa du sud au XVIIIe siècle [thèse]

[ndlr] Message d’Oscar Salemink à VSG que nous publions avec son aimable autorisation.

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Thérèse Guyot-Becker with the successful defense of her doctoral thesis ’La servitude pour dette au Campa du sud au XVIIIe siècle: Étude des archives légales du “Panduranga-Campa” de la Société Asiatique de Paris’ [Serfdom for debt in 18th Centyury southern Champa : A study of the legal archives of Panduranga-Champa at the Société Asiatique de Paris]. Ms. Guyot defended at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) of the Sorbonne in Paris.

The dissertation constitutes a meticulous and detailed empirical study of a collection of legal documents – mostly contracts about transactions – held at the Société Asiatique in Paris. The provenance of the collection is most likely the ‘trésor des roi chams’ described by Durand and Parmentier (1905). It consists of legal documents in three languages: Cham, Hán, and Hán-Nôm; the smaller section of documents in Hán and Hán-Nôm have been translated into modern Vietnamese by Vietnamese collaborators of Ms. Guyot, who translated the Cham language records which constitute the vast majority of the collection. By making this collection available for scholarship Ms Guyot has made an important contribution to our knowledge of Cham society in the 18th Century, under the tutelage of the Nguyễn Lords.

A Champa manuscript recounting the social culture of the Cham community of the early 18th century © Wikipedia
A Champa manuscript recounting the social culture of the Cham community of the early 18th century © 2009 Wikipedia / Gryffindor

The thesis is divided up in five chapters. The first chapter contains a description of the collection; of the various types of legal documents; of the styles in which they were written up; and of the various actors involved in the transaction. Not much else is known about 18th Century Cham  society, so the description of the monetary value of the transactions, of the places mentioned and especially of the dates of the contracts required a painstaking, pioneering labor on the part of Ms. Guyot who devised a system by which the Cham dates could be rendered in the Gregorian calendar. From this chapter it is clear that it took an enormous effort to make the collection accessible for scholarly description and analysis.

The subsequent four chapters engage the collection of legal documents from different vantage points. The methodological strategy of Ms Guyot is to see the collection as a quantifiable database which enables her to enumerate and calculate specific aspects, detect patterns and correspondences, and make these insights visible in a large number of tables (‘tableaux’) and charts (‘grafiques’). The author convincingly isolates and describes the terms of her statistical calculations, which is oftentimes a problem in quantitative research.

Chapter II describes the documents as sales documents, mostly concerning the selling of persons, either as definitive sale or as redeemable sale. It calculates the (monetary) value of the transactions and the average value of individual persons. And it compares the transactions involving three categories of people: villagers; notables and dignitaries; and the Po Taray (Cham princes).

Chapter III describes loans and debts – which are usually the precursor for the sale of persons. It describes loans with and without interest, and loans with collateral. It describes the various interest rates and types of collateral – oftentimes persons – and their distribution over various types of loans and their actors. And finally, it distinguishes again the transactions according to the category of the contractors – villagers, notables and dignitaries.

Chapter IV discusses the various types of redemption of debts, which might involve donations by third parties. It discusses legal procedures and legal cases when the pay-back was defaulted. And finally it discusses the various types and registers of redemption in Cham society of the time.

The final Chapter V engages the vernacular category of the person as property – halun – and asks the question whether halun constitute slaves or servants. It distinguishes between various categories of halun according to the reasons for their status as property: given up by others (‘aliénés’); endebted; or at fault in juridical terms. The chapter reviews the various rights and responsibilities of both masters and halun, and establishes that halun are not absolute property – i.e. reduced to objects – but remain subjects with the legal right to complain and seek justice. Finally, the chapter distinguishes between various types of halun, in the sense of their attachment to various types of ‘masters’ – e.g. villagers, notables, the prince, temples.

In the absence of much other knowledge of southern Cham society at the time, Dr Guyot-Becker made the philological choice to narrowly focus on this collection of Cham legal documents and make those documents accessible to contemporary scholarship, which in itself constitutes a veritable monk’s labor. That choice was presented as an effort to let herself be guided by the sources only, rather than by comparative insights derived from other sources and contexts. This choice may have prevented her from filling in the lines between the dots and offering a more coherent historical narrative, which hopefully will be developed in the time to come.

Ms Guyot-Becker’s thesis received the highest distinction from the jury (consisting of Philippe Papin [supervisor], Andrew Hardy, Eric Bourdonneau, and myself). The world has another scholar fluent in ancient Cham!

Oscar Salemink (11/02/2014)

Nguyen Thuy Phuong : L’école française au Vietnam de 1945 à 1975 [thèse en ligne]

Nguyen Thuy Phuong a soutenu sa thèse de doctorat en Sciences de l’éducation le 20 septembre 2013 à l’Université Paris Descartes. Sa thèse est désormais en ligne sur le site de Paris Descartes. Elle peut être téléchargée en cliquant sur le titre :

L’école française au Vietnam de 1945 à 1975

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logoUniversitéParisDescartes_SHSanté

L’école française au Vietnam de 1945 à 1975. De la mission civilisatrice à la diplomatie culturelle

Résumé en français :

Ce travail de recherche historique retrace l’évolution de l’école française au Vietnam de 1945 à 1975, en s’appuyant à la fois sur les archives et sur les témoignages d’anciens élèves et professeurs. Dans l’Indochine coloniale, sous couvert de la « mission civilisatrice », les Français instaurent un système éducatif destiné à produire des subalternes, leur crainte étant de créer des « déclassés » menaçants pour l’ordre colonial. Pourtant, en dépit des résistances officielles, les élites vietnamiennes font entrer leurs enfants dans les lycées français réservés en principe aux Européens, s’appropriant en partie ces établissements.

Après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, le Vietnam s’engage dans la voie de l’indépendance, obligeant les Français à repenser leur doctrine scolaire, qui, après avoir cru un moment que la France resterait « l’éducatrice de l’Indochine », se résolvent à un rôle d’accompagnement via la création d’une mission culturelle. Il n’est plus question de limiter l’accès des Vietnamiens aux lycées français mais au contraire de leur ouvrir les portes pour leur proposer un enseignement de haut niveau. La défaite française de Điện Biên Phủ en 1954, qui voit la France se désengager du Vietnam, accélère la mutation de l’ancien système éducatif colonial. En passant sous la tutelle des Affaires étrangères, l’enseignement français au Vietnam devient un instrument de la diplomatie culturelle. Les Français espèrent qu’une présence culturelle assurée notamment par leurs prestigieux lycées leur garantira une influence déterminante. Au Nord, dans la République Démocratique du Vietnam pro-soviétique, le Lycée Albert-Sarraut devient la seule école occidentale à fonctionner dans un État du bloc communiste, et permet aux Français de conserver en pleine Guerre froide un lien privilégié avec un pays considéré en Occident comme un ennemi. Cette expérience unique s’achève en 1965 faute d’entente entre Français et Nord-Vietnamiens sur la nature du lycée. Au Sud, dans la République du Vietnam nationaliste et pro-américaine, la situation reste plus longtemps favorable aux Français. Les élites vietnamiennes se pressent aux portes des lycées français, gages d’un enseignement de qualité et d’un meilleur avenir pour leurs enfants dans un pays en guerre. Pour les Français, cette attirance pour leurs écoles et pour la culture française leur permet de contrer l’influence grandissante des États-Unis, qui investissent lourdement dans la réforme de l’État sud-vietnamien et notamment dans celle du système éducatif. Cependant, les gouvernements sud-vietnamiens, pour des raisons politiques, décrètent à la fin des années 1960 la nationalisation progressive de ces écoles. Après la réunification en avril 1975, tous les établissements français sont rendus au Vietnam. Telle qu’il est raconté par l’histoire « officielle » des archives, le parcours du système d’enseignement français au Vietnam se termine donc par un échec. Au Nord comme au Sud, les satisfactions qu’en retirent les dirigeants français sont minimales. Les élites vietnamiennes ne se sont pas ralliées aux positions françaises. Culturellement, la francophonie au Vietnam régresse dès les années 1950.

En revanche, pour la centaine d’anciens élèves que nous avons interrogés sur cette période de leur vie, le système d’enseignement français est décrit comme un véritable succès, en dépit de parcours familiaux et scolaires particulièrement tourmentés. Leur perception de l’école française est unanimement positive. Ils ont étudié au sein de ces établissements dans une ambiance pacifique, studieuse et égalitaire. Ils reconnaissent à l’école française un rôle fondamental dans la construction de leur personnalité, ainsi que dans leur réussite personnelle au cours de leur existence. C’est grâce à cette école qu’ils sont devenus des êtres « complets », riches de leur double culture. De leur point de vue, l’école française au Vietnam après la colonisation est une réussite. On voit ici, au travers de cette comparaison entre l’interprétation historique et l’interprétation mémorielle de l’école française au Vietnam entre 1945 et 1975, combien histoire et mémoire sont complémentaires dans notre compréhension du passé.

Mots clés : Vietnam, Indochine, France, diplomatie culturelle, école, lycée, enseignement secondaire, politiques éducatives, colonisation, décolonisation

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Résumé en anglais :

 

The French schools in Vietnam from 1945 to 1975: from the civilizing mission to cultural diplomacy

 

Thuy Phuong NGUYEN

PhD on Educational Sciences, University Paris Descartes

Abstract 

This historical research traces the evolution of the French schools in Vietnam from 1945 to 1975, drawing from archives and interviews with former students and teachers. In colonial Indochina, under the guise of the “civilizing mission”, the French established an educational system designed to produce only subordinates, as they feared that a better education would create individuals likely to threaten the colonial order. Yet, in spite of the resistance of colonial authorities, Vietnamese elites always managed to send their children to the local French schools that were, in principle, open only to Europeans.

After World War II, Vietnam embarked on the path of independence, forcing the French to rethink their educational policy in a country that was no longer a colony. After believing for a while that France would remain “the educator of Indochina”, the French accepted to play a supporting role in Vietnamese education through the creation of a cultural mission. There was no longer question of limiting access to French schools: rather, those schools opened their doors wide to Vietnamese students to offer them a high-quality education. The French defeat of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, which resulted in France’s political withdrawal from Vietnam, accelerated the transformation of the former colonial education system. Passing under the tutelage of Foreign Affairs, the French schools in Vietnam became an instrument of cultural diplomacy. The French hoped that their continuing cultural presence, and particularly their prestigious lycées, would grant them a decisive influence in Vietnamese affairs. In the North, in the pro-Soviet Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Lycée Albert Sarraut became the only western school to operate in a communist nation, allowing the French to maintain a special relationship with a country that the West considered as an enemy. This unique experience was terminated in 1965 due to lack of agreement between the French and the North Vietnamese on the nature of the school. In the South, in the nationalist, pro-American Republic of Vietnam, the situation remained favorable to the French. Vietnamese elites rushed the gates of French schools, which promise them a quality education and a better future for their children in a war-torn country. For the French, the attractiveness of their schools and of French culture allowed them to counter the growing influence of the United States, who were then pushing ahead with reform, especially in the Vietnamese educational system. Nevertheless, the South Vietnamese government, for political reasons, decreed in the late 1960s the gradual nationalization of the French school system. After the Reunification of April 1975, all French schools were returned to the Vietnamese state. As told by the “official” history described in the archives, the story of the French educational system in Vietnam ends in failure. In both North and South Vietnam, French efforts in cultural diplomacy in Vietnam came to naught. Not only the Vietnamese elites did not concur with the French political positions, but the prominence of French language and culture actually decreased in Vietnam from the 1950s onwards.

However, the hundred or so alumni we have interviewed about this period of their lives have described the French school system as a success. Their perception of the French schools is overwhelmingly positive, in spite of all of the personal difficulties and travails caused by the wars. They enjoyed the peaceful, studious and egalitarian atmosphere of the lycées. Today, they praise the fundamental role that these schools played in the construction of their personality and in their lifetime achievements. This schooling made them fully realized human beings, possessors of a rich dual culture. From their point of view, the French schools in postcolonial Vietnam were successful. Through this comparison between the historical and memorial perception of the French educational system in Vietnam between 1945 and 1975, we see how history and memory complement each other for our better understanding of the past.

Keywords : Vietnam, Indochina, France, cultural diplomacy, school, high school, secondary education, educational policies, colonization, decolonization

Profil de Nguyen Thuy Phuong

Notice SUDOC : http://www.sudoc.fr/175621691

Isabelle Tracol-Huynh : Entre ordre colonial et santé publique, la prostitution au Tonkin de 1885 à 1954 [thèse]

Université Lumière Lyon 2

École doctorale 483 ScSo

Faculté GHHAT

Département d’histoire

Institut d’Asie Orientale

 

Entre ordre colonial et santé publique, la prostitution au Tonkin de 1885 à 1954

Isabelle TRACOL-HUYNH

Groupe de prostituées dans les années 1950. © Archives personnelles de RTV.
Groupe de prostituées dans les années 1950. © Archives personnelles de RTV. 

Thèse pour l’obtention du titre de docteur en Histoire de l’Université de Lyon délivré par l’Université Lumière Lyon 2

Sous la direction de Christian HENRIOT

 

Présentée et soutenue publiquement le jeudi 12 décembre 2013

ENS de Lyon, IAO, à 14h en salle R66, 15 parvis René Descartes, Lyon

Devant un jury composé de :

Sylvie CHAPERON – professeure à l’Université Toulouse 2 le Mirail

Christopher GOSCHA – professeur à l’Université du Québec à Montréal

Christian HENRIOT – professeur à l’Université Lumière Lyon 2

Dominique KALIFA – professeur à l’Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Philippe PAPIN – professeur à l’École Pratique des Hautes Études

 

Résumé :

Entre ordre colonial et santé publique, la prostitution au Tonkin de 1885 à 1954

L’étude de la prostitution au Tonkin pendant la colonisation française est celle d’un monde en mutation. Le développement de la prostitution est à relier directement avec les changements socio-économiques que connaît le Tonkin. La mobilité croissante des populations à l’époque coloniale a pour conséquence une urbanisation importante accompagnée d’une transformation radicale de la société urbaine. Ces changements favorisent une expansion à la fois quantitative et qualitative de la prostitution car de nouvelles formes apparaissent (chanteuses, danseuses, etc.).

Fenêtre ouverte sur un monde urbain en transformation, le monde prostitutionnel permet également de rendre compte de la complexité de la société coloniale dont il est le microcosme puisqu’il en reprend la hiérarchie raciale, les rapports de domination, de tension et de sympathie réciproque. Ce microcosme est placé sous le signe de la rencontre des genres et, surtout, des races, ce qui, en situation coloniale, ne va pas sans poser problème. La gestion de la prostitution par les autorités s’insère directement dans la politique de maintien de l’ordre mise en place par l’État colonial, puisqu’elle s’efforce de recréer au sein du monde prostitutionnel la hiérarchie, à la fois genrée et raciale, régissant l’ensemble de la société coloniale.

Le second volet de l’administration de la prostitution est sanitaire car c’est au nom de la santé publique que la prostitution est réglementée. Le but est de lutter contre les maladies vénériennes, péril pour l’individu et la nation. L’histoire de la prostitution au Tonkin est celle d’une tension entre une administration tentant de contrôler un monde prostitutionnel mouvant et multiforme et les acteurs du monde prostitutionnel qui mettent en place des stratégies de contournement et d’évitement.

Ce travail entend analyser à la fois le système mis en place par les autorités et la réalité du monde prostitutionnel en s’intéressant à ses acteurs et à ses lieux.

Mots-clés : Vietnam ; Tonkin ; colonisation ; prostitution ; santé publique ; péril vénérien ; police ; culture urbaine ; problème public ; rôle de la presse

Isabelle Tracol-Huynh: Between Colonial Order and Public Health – Prostitution in Tonkin (1885-1954) [PhD Thesis]

Isabelle Tracol-Huynh:

Between Colonial Order and Public Health – Prostitution in Tonkin

(1885-1954)

[PhD Thesis]

Groupe de prostituées dans les années 1950. © Archives personnelles de RTV.
Groupe de prostituées dans les années 1950. © Archives personnelles de RTV. 

 

Abstract:

Between Colonial Order and Public Health: Prostitution in Tonkin (1885-1954)

During French colonization, the world of prostitution in Tonkin evolved as the result of the numerous social and economic changes that were occurring at the time. The increasing mobility of the population led to rapid, significant urbanization: consequently, the city changed in form and in culture. Prostitution hence became increasingly visible. Its expansion was both quantitative and qualitative in the sense that prostitutes were no longer confined within the so-called spaces of “legal” brothels and were no longer perceived as being the only women capable of providing sexual services. In this regard, the world of prostitution  is a critical vantage point which permits a far-reaching study of these global changes as well as a unique vantage point onto the complexity of colonization itself.

This world was a microcosm of  colonial society with its latent notions of racial hierarchy, inherent domination, and intimacy for colonization, and these all represent an intimate yet politically charged encounter. The racial boundaries delineated at the very foundations of the colonial order were therefore blurred and had to be redrawn and sharpened. The regulation of prostitution was one of the means used by authorities to control the interaction between the colonizers and the colonized because it reproduced the racial distinctions of the colonial society.

The second dimension of the administration of prostitution was medical: because of venereal diseases, prostitution was perceived to be a threat to individuals and the nation as a whole. The regulation of prostitution thus was part and parcel of the policing strategies set up by the authorities to insure colonial order and public health. Nonetheless, its application proved to be difficult because prostitution, which was understood as construing both actors and places, resisted the police and medical frameworks that sought to confine them. Authorities’ attempts clashed with the evasive strategies of prostitutes, madams, clients, and others as well.

In light of these issues, this study offers a thorough examination of the official frameworks and the reality of prostitution as it existed in colonial Tonkin.

Keywords: Vietnam; Tonkin; prostitution; colonization; public health; venereal diseases; police; urban culture; social problem; newspapers influence

Richard Owens: Measuring smallholder land investments in Northwest Vietnam: A cross-cultural study of three highland villages… [PhD] – presented by Jean Michaud

[ndlr] Message de Jean Michaud paru initialement sur VSG et reproduit sur Mémoires d’Indochine avec son aimable autorisation.

Richard Owens with Hmong farmers during harvest season for dry rice in Thuan Chau district, Son La Province, Northwest Vietnam.
Richard Owens with Hmong farmers during harvest season for dry rice in Thuan Chau district, Son La Province, Northwest Vietnam.

This to congratulate Richard Owens who has recently defended successfully his PhD dissertation in social anthropology at University of Georgia (USA) titled “Measuring smallholder land investments in Northwest Vietnam: A cross-cultural study of three highland villages in Phỏng Lái commune, Sơn La province.”

His abstract states:

“In this dissertation, I investigate the connection between land tenure and the conservation of natural resources in the northwestern uplands of Vietnam (Son La province) through a focus on the political and economic forces that shape smallholder investment practices. Within a historically-informed context, I analyze and compare smallholder land use decisions among Kinh, Hmong, and Thai groups considering identity, cultural practices, and household economics.  Recently, Vietnam has banned swidden agriculture in favor of the intensification of upland agriculture. To that purpose, it has provided technology, subsidies, and extension services targeted to lowland majority development models.

During the course of this dissertation, I analyze soil conservation activities in three villages (between and within designs) and across the commune at the household level.  Results from investment activities (short-term, long-term and household rate categories) show that smallholders’ long-term investments are significantly smaller in relation to household investments. I contend that there are a number of social, economic, and environmental reasons for why Hmong, Thai and Kinh are not making significant soil conservation investments. State polices aimed at suppressing swidden agriculture have been replaced with intensive upland farming, leading to increased erosion and land degradation. Traditional swidden systems do not require inputs, hence they are not receiving long-term investments. Upland farming is possible through the use of inorganic fertilizers that are necessary for HYV maize production. Examining the failure of the property rights to conserve natural resources this research makes a significant contribution to the theory of property rights This study considers the socio-cultural and economics dynamics of land title and natural resource management. “

What I would also like to stress about Richard’s work is that he finds that ethnicity matters when locals get to assess economic opportunities and make strategic choices. The Hmông and Thái ways, he finds, are distinct from the Kinh’s and express different views on modernity, identity and aspirations. His research thus dovetails nicely with other recent dissertations based in rural communities of the northern highlands stressing that these non-Kinh societies show creativity and pro-activity in the course of their social and symbolic reproduction, such as (among others) Jennifer Sowerwine (Berkeley 2004), Bent Jørgensen (Göteborg 2006), Tran Hong Hanh (Freie U. Berlin 2006), Christine Bonnin (McGill 2011), Achariya Choowonglert (Chiang Mai 2012), Ho Ngoc Son (ANU 2012), and O’Briain (Sheffield 2012).

Jean Michaud
Département d’Anthropologie / Université Laval (Québec)

Paul Sorrentino’s PhD Thesis presented by Oscar Salemink

© 2011 VTC News
© 2011 VTC News

Dr. Paul Sorrentino had successfully defended his thesis “Áp vong: appliquer l’âme. Rituels non-médiumniques de possession par les morts dans le nord du Vietnam” [translated as “Áp vong: To affix the soul. Non-mediumnic rituals of possession by the dead in the north of Vietnam” by the author himself] at the Sorbonne in Paris, last Friday, November 29th.

Although the thesis has a rather “French” length (496 pp.) I found it a great pleasure to read as it contains wonderful ethnographic descriptions of unusually high quality. For instance, I was blown away by the 60-page ethnographic narrative in the Prélude about a search through possession for the grave of a person called Ông Trượng. The reporting is detailed, lively, precise, and the researcher appears very perceptive of what was said or unsaid, which lexicological register was used; what was done or not done; who looked where or did not look. It was only the first example of compelling ethnography in the thesis that I found highly emotive, having some experience with the importance that many Vietnamese people attach to honoring their dead ancestors or relatives – including those who died in the wars and whose graves are unknown. Sorrentino also dissects and interprets the various meanings of specific words from different registers (everyday Vietnamese, sino-Vietnamese, political vocabulary, Buddhist terms, etc.) in an expert manner.

Áp vong appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon, which might be somewhat comparable to lên đồng [spirit possession linked up with Mother Goddess worship] or gọi hồn [soul calling]. In those two forms of spirit possession, ritual specialists are possessed by deities (lên đồng) or souls of dead people (gọi hồn). There is an abundant literature in various languages (Vietnamese, English, French) about lên đồng, and an emerging literature about gọi hồn (e.g. Heonik Kwon, Mai Lan Gustafsson, Kirsten Endres, Phan Đăng Nhật and myself), but áp vong – a neologism in Vietnamese – has to my knowledge not yet been the object of systematic study. The main difference with the other forms of possession is that with áp vong, the persons to be possessed are not ritual experts themselves (although experts do play a role in guiding the ritual) but relatives or descendants of the dead persons – hence lay people themselves.

The author devotes a chapter to the question how it is possible that this practice emerged and spread so quickly – mostly after 2000 – and offers a detailed picture of the various persons and institutions involved in that process. The possession rituals tend to be only minimally ritualized, and the practice is now being promoted and practiced in “scientific” institutions that claim expertise in extra-sensorial [ngoại cảm] forms of knowing and sensing, and that uses a mix of scientistic and Buddhist discourses. Interestingly, instead of being dismissed as superstition [mê tín dị đoan] some of the institutions enjoy support from the highest echelons of the Party.

Sorrentino uses a constructivist theoretical framework that offers a vocabulary to interpret how the various protagonists (relatives, ritual experts) arrive at a common interpretation of the possession event in situations of utter uncertainty and oftentimes confusion. That (theoretical) framework might evolve further in the future as the practice itself evolves and – perhaps – routinizes and ritualizes. However, the great merit of this thesis is that it offers amazingly insightful – sometimes very intimate – ethnographies of the practice at a stage of formation, and as such it will be of great use to other scholars who may wish to study this phenomenon in the future. The thesis received the highest distinction from the examiners.

I can only hope that Sorrentino’s work will soon become publicly available – not only in French, but also in Vietnamese and English.

Oscar Salemink, Professor in the Anthropology of Asia, 02/12/2013.

Paul Sorrentino : Áp vong / appliquer l’âme. Rituels non-médiumniques de possession par les morts dans le nord du Vietnam [thèse]

2011 VTC News
© 2011 VTC News

Paul Sorrentino, doctorant au Canthel, a soutenu sa thèse intitulée :

Áp vong : appliquer l’âme. Rituels non-médiumniques de possession par les morts dans le nord du Vietnam”, le vendredi 29 novembre à 14h, à la Sorbonne

Jury composé de Richard Pottier (Université Paris Descartes, directeur de la thèse), Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière (CNRS), Oscar Salemink (Université de Copenhague), Anne de Sales (CNRS) et Gilles Tarabout (CNRS).

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Résumé de la thèse :

Dans cette thèse, j’interroge le développement rapide, au Vietnam et dans les années 2000, d’une forme nouvelle de rituel de possession par les morts, appelée áp vong (littéralement : appliquer/apposer l’âme). L’une des particularités de ces séances est que les défunts n’y sont pas incarnés par le spécialiste rituel, qui ne joue qu’un rôle d’encadrement, mais par un client, par l’intermédiaire duquel les autres membres de la famille pourront interroger leurs morts. Après un exposé du contexte d’idées et de pratiques dans lequel ces rituels sont apparus (représentations liées à la personne, conceptions sotériologiques, autres pratiques de possession), je tente de comprendre la place qu’ils prennent dans la société vietnamienne, marquée par une transformation profonde de la relation entre les vivants et les morts liée au traumatisme de la guerre.

Cela m’amène à analyser les aspects politiques de cette innovation rituelle : en effet, la popularisation fulgurante des séances de áp vong a eu pour théâtre des « centres de recherche » créés par des intellectuels vietnamiens se posant en promoteurs de ces pratiques face à un pouvoir central pris entre sa volonté d’éradiquer les « superstitions » et son devoir de prendre en charge la mémoire des victimes de la guerre.

Enfin, pour tenter de comprendre ces rituels, où ceux qui incarnent les morts ne sont ni des médiums, ni des victimes de l’affliction causée par un défunt, et où la possession est constamment en train de se faire et de se défaire (j’accorde une place importante aux séances qui ne « fonctionnent » pas ou mal), j’adopte une approche constructiviste visant à lire la possession autour du possédé plutôt qu’en lui. De là, je propose de considérer la possession comme une épreuve, au sens que la sociologie pragmatique a donné à ce terme : une qualification négociée de la réalité, portant dans ce cas sur l’attribution d’une agentivité (celle d’un défunt) à un corps (celui du possédé).

Source : Canthel EA 4545