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Social Organization and Confucian Thought in Vietnam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

John K. Whitmore
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Extract

To analyze Vietnamese social organization, we must put aside ourimage of it as similar to that of China, with its patrilineal clans. Writings on Vietnam have portrayed a country molded by its northern neighbour in the “thousand years of Chinese domination” of the first millennium A.D. to such an extent that all things Vietnamese must needs be seen in a Chinese and indeed a Confucian light. Socially, this means domination by the male and the father, patrilineal succession, and clan organization, that is, a certain rigidity in social organization.

Type
Symposium on Societal Organization in Mainland Southeast Asia Prior to the Eighteenth Century
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , September 1984 , pp. 296 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1984

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References

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