A review of studies on masculinities in Vietnam

1
A review of studies on masculinities in Vietnam
?
Vu Hong Phong, Department of Sociology,
University of Essex

• BACKGROUND
• Since the middle of 1980s, the Socialist Republic
  of Vietnam has allowed the development of a
  market oriented economy, characterized by a fast
  growth of private sector in many areas, such as
  healthcare, education, entertainment, work. Many
  studies have focused on impacts of social changes
  on gender relations and gender identity.

• METHODS
• Identifying key terms
• Vietnam, men, masculinity, masculinities,
  gender, women, and their possible combinations
• Searching for published articles
• Paper-based articles in library and electronic
  articles in Web of Science, EBSCOhost, JSTOR,
  etc.
• Looking for types of men and types of
  analyses in the literature

• RESULTS
• Negative masculinities
• The Kinh man (who accounts for 90 of a
  population of 86 millions) Young man Living in
  cities or flat rural areas
• The unfaithful man and HIV/AIDS
• The risky/abnormal/gay man and HIV/AIDS
• The violent man

RESULTS

• Confucianism and Social changes analysis
• Stress of the importance family lineage, sons
• Social changes, more women than men lose their
  jobs
• Women are pushed back to family, where
  Confucianism force them to obey men, they are
  vulnerable to domestic violence
• Used to explain the Violent Man
• Exposure to globalization analysis
• Increasing exposure to westerns culture and
  value through easy access to TV, movies, internet
• Plenty of choice of being a man are available
• Used to explain the Gay Man
• Commercialization of masculinity analysis
• Increasing number of marketing techniques that
  use womens sexuality to attract male clients
• Social attitudes toward commercial sex become
  more liberal
• Used to explain The Unfaithful Man
• Wife Rice, Sweetheart/Sex worker Noodles
• Rice is essential but tiresome !
• You should get some noodles!
• (Phinney 2008)

• OBJECTIVE
• To describe images of Vietnamese masculinities in
  contemporary social science literature
• To describe different types of arguments/analyses
  on Vietnamese masculinities employed by
  researchers/authors

Different choices of being a person
Forces that make one choice more acceptable
than others

• Neglected masculinities
• Men of ethnic minorities, old men, men living in
  mountainous areas
• Good man (non-risky, non-violent, faithful)
• Masculinities as propagandized by the State
• Absent Propagandized Masculinities

Soft masculinity young men making up !

• CONCLUSIONS
• Heavily influenced by public health, focused
  mainly on negative aspects of masculinities,
  heavily constructed by foreigners!
• Health need of men not classified as risky is
  forgotten
• Public health needs the risky man to call for
  support
• Images of Vietnamese men in English literature
  are biased unless studies written by Vietnamese
  scholars in Vietnamese are included in the
  analysis

Hard masculinity!
1966 1976
2006
A heroic laborer Masculinity after
war hardworking, devoting
Masculinity at War Vietnamese Naval Forces are
determined to beat American invaders!
Entrepreneur Todays masculinity economic
success, creative
For additional information please contact Vu
Hong Phong Room 6.346, Department of
Sociology University of Essex E-mail address
hpvu_at_essex.ac.uk
Gay a new choice of being man !