Social Science Research Council

"Hy Sinh and Nghia: Sacrifice as Virtue in Vietnamese Family Life"

My dissertation research is designed to rethink and expand anthropological conceptualizations of sacrifice through a person-centered and language socialization study of sacrifice as it shapes everyday family practices and relationships in Central Vietnam. Extending scholarly models that envision sacrifice as an occasioned religious ritual of consecration that mediates the relationship between human and supernatural worlds, my study will examine sacrifice as a quotidian social practice of consecration that mediates human-human relationships. My focus is the spectrum of practices of sacrifice that pervade Vietnamese family life in relation to stable and shifting family role expectations and personal experiences across generations, in light of Vietnam’s tumultuous modern history.

Integrating the methods and perspectives of psycho-cultural and linguistic anthropology, in this study I seek to: 1) advance theoretical formulations of sacrifice by elucidating how the cultural disposition to sacrifice underpins Vietnam’s hierarchical social structure; 2) enrich understanding of how sacrifice is related to morality in general and morality as enacted in Vietnam; and 3) illuminate the durability of values undergirding Vietnam’s traditional family structure in the face of accelerated politico-economic change. Finally, it is hoped the research will provide an international comparative perspective for understanding how families and households are organized, and how kin relationships are narrated and experienced by individuals of different genders and generational strata.