Social Science Research Council

The Indochina Studies Program

In 1975, the American war in Indochina ended. For most Western scholars of Southeast Asia, the American defeat also meant the end of western research in and on the region: access to the field was impossible, institutional support waned at home, and the powerful postwar amnesia that overtook so much of America affected the scholarly community as well. Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia - three countries that had been so deeply intertwined with America's recent history and social crisis-faded from popular and academic consciousness with astonishing speed.

Concerned about the decline in scholarly interest in Indochina, the Joint Committee on Southeast Asia (JCSEA) created an Indochina Studies Program (ISP) in 1983. Supported by grants from the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Henry Luce Foundation, the ISP was intended to invigorate the Indochina field by drawing on the resources of some of the 650,000 Vietnamese, Laos, and Cambodians then resident in the United States. The program awarded grants to individuals for research on all aspects of Indochinese society ( exclusive of the American war) that could be studied through the knowledge, speech, skills, and memory of musicians, dancers, textile artists, writers, story tellers, former peasants and politicians, journalists, teachers, monks, and shamans now living in North America. In five years from 1983 to 1988, the ISP has given 38 grants to 67 scholars for research in such fields as anthropology, dance, history, law, literature, linguistics, music, religion, and sociology.

In addition to granting awards, the ISP organized a number of activities which heightened the visibility of Indochina studies in the United States, including:

The JCSEA also sponsored two conferences resulting in publications concerning Indochina: Cambodia: Revolution and its Aftermath (Yale University Southeast Asia series, 1983) and Postwar Vietnam: Dilemmas in Socialist Development (Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Monograph Series, 1988)

The ISP opened the possibility for the first time since 1975 of direct contact with Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Encouraged by the gradually improving political climate, the Council sent then program associate Dr. Mary McDonnell to Vietnam in 1986 and to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in 1987. Under the auspices of the US-Indochina Reconciliation Project and its director John F. McAuliff, Dr. McDonnell was hosted by the Foreign Ministry in each country and met with representatives of social science institutes, universities, ministries, and other organization. Responding to the interest expressed at these meetings in developing cooperative programs with the Council, the JCSEA and ISP agreed to pursue this initiative by sending a delegation to Indochina in January-February 1988 for extended discussions with counterpart organizations. The visit initiated a range of activities that promised fruitful collaborations between Indochinese social science scholars and their American counterparts.

Archiving the ISP research materials

From its inception, the ISP worked closely with the Library of Congress which, after two years of negotiations, agreed to serve as a primary repository for archive-ready materials. As part of the contract with LOC, the program agreed to prepare project materials for archiving before shipment to the Library's Asia division. The LOC thus received fully processed, microfilm-ready materials, complete with scope-of-content analysis. Not only was each project's end-project available, but all materials collected in the course of the research -- video and audio tapes, paperwork, field notes, rare manuscripts, photographs, surveys results, and a variety of artifacts - were organized, documented, and made available. By incorporating archival concerns and procedures into the initial stages of project development and research, the ISP assured that in addition to the immediate analytical and scholarly product, the often unique primary materials would be preserved and made readily available to subsequent scholars and future generations of Indochinese-Americans, as well as to the wider public.

The Indochina Scholarly Exchange ProgramWith the gradual relaxation of international relations, the Council was able to establish direct contact with scholarly institutions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The Indochina Studies Program experienced a transformation from a US-based program to a program able to engage in exchange with the region. In January 1989, it was succeeded by the Indochina Scholarly Exchange Program (ISEP), funded by the Henry Luce Foundation and the Christopher Reynolds Foundation.

The ISEP continued to administer projects initiated under the ISP with funds from the Ford Foundation, including the archiving of oral historical and textual research materials collected by ISP grantees (in collaboration with the New York University School for Archiving and the Library of Congress), and the preparation of a guide to these materials. The program's major focus, however, continues to be on the development of programs to facilitate scholarly communication with Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. In 1989, the ISEP successfully obtained the first license ever given by the U.S Department of the Treasury for scholarly exchange.

In the two years following its establishment, the ISEP sustained negotiated relationships with six counterpart academic and social science institutions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. A key focus of these agreements was on infrastructural development for the social sciences through collaborative work which incorporated, and was enriched by, the intellectual agendas and diverse research methodologies of colleagues outside the United States. The ISEP organized numerous workshops in collaboration with counterpart institutions in all three countries (the Lao National Institute for the Social Sciences, the Vietnam Committee for the Social Sciences (now the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences), the Cambodian ministries of culture and education). As part of the exchange program, ISEP sponsored for visits to the United States by scholars from all three countries. A Vietnamese economist was sponsored to conduct research on the effect of multinational corporations on developing Asian countries at the Center for Research on Economic Development at the University of Michigan. Two Vietnamese librarians were sent to the US to receive training in library science methodology, and to assist US librarians with the "Vietnamese Union Catalog" project at the University of Michigan and Cornell University's Echols Collection. The ISPE also offered grants for research and made 20 rewards in 1990.

The ISEP made a great contribution to the development of academic exchanges between the US and Indochinese countries. By the time the program ended in 1991, numerous other academic and nongovernmental institutions had initiated their own exchange programs, and scholarly contacts with the region had proliferated.

The ISP and ISEP today

After 1991, no additional programs were possible in Laos and Cambodia due to the lack of funding. Support from the Ford Foundation enabled a number of research, training, capacity building, and network creation projects in Vietnam. The ISP and ISEP evolved into the Vietnam Program which is active today.

The Vietnam Program by projects - 1987-present