THEORY AND SCOPE

In January 1956, less than three months after the proclamation of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, or South Vietnam), Ngô Đình Diệm’s government turned its attention toward surveilling civil society. Interior minister Nguyễn Hữu Châu requested an inventory of all voluntary organizations south of the seventeenth parallel. That survey revealed the existence of more than four hundred voluntary associations, ranging from labor unions and philanthropic groups to student associations and cultural clubs.1 According to the classifications used by the officials who compiled the inventory, t here were 150 labor unions, 148 mutual-aid and friendly societies, 94 religious groups, 18 arts and culture organizations, and 17 philanthropic associations. Significantly, only thirty-five were operating with government permission. The officials flagged five organizations that were suspected of harboring communists or supporters of other political rivals.2 Also alarming to the interior minister was the lack of information the government had about t hese four hundred organizations beyond their names and their founders. This prompted the minister to instruct city mayors and provincial heads to be more vigilant in enforcing state regulations when dealing with voluntary organizations and to make sure only registered organizations could operate.

The new government’s concern about voluntary groups—an impor tant component of civil society—is revealing on two counts. First, the government was aware of civil society’s potential power and was therefore eager to control this social realm. As subsequent chapters show, while South Viet namese authorities wanted to harness the energy of voluntary associations to enhance state-building endeavors and supplement the state’s social welfare provisions, government officials were also wary of civil society’s potential to challenge the state and create dissent. Second, Nguyễn Hữu Châu’s inquiry reveals that South Vietnam’s public life was robust. People’s associational activities were significant enough to attract state attention and surveillance. Over the next two decades, essentially the life span of the RVN, voluntary organizations continued to grow and South Viet name se citizens continued to participate in associational life. Many groups attended to the specific needs of their members, while others aspired to improve living conditions for their communities and to shape the life of the nation.

While there is no lack of books on Vietnam and its wars, few have examined South Vietnam’s civil society, and to my knowledge, none has made this important arena of social interaction its focus in the Republican period.3 This book examines South Vietnam’s extensive associational life and covers an array of groups, from mutual-aid societies and charities to professional and rights organizations. By examining people’s voluntary public activities, this book offers a unique glimpse into South Vietnam, a society grappling with postcolonial changes, territorial division, nation building, civil war, and foreign intervention. The underlying motivation of this book is to understand the wartime experiences of the South Vietnamese people in a way that does not reduce them to mere victims of violence. While many Vietnamese on both sides endured profound suffering and loss, they were not passive victims defined only by wartime adversities. The activities of voluntary organizations provide tangible evidence of how some residents of South Vietnam, mainly in the urban centers, articulated and responded to the dramatic events that shaped the history of the RVN (1955–1975).

Because of its origin, its dependence on US aid, and its eventual defeat, South Vietnam has been overlooked by historians both inside and outside Vietnam. The general view was that South Vietnam did not have a legal basis for governance or existence. Its establishment was supposed to be transitory, and the decision to divide the country was made without consulting the population in either the north or the south. Consequently, South Vietnam was often considered inconsequential in historical narratives of the Vietnam War (circa 1960–1975), or it has been depicted as a shell of a state without a constituency and without a nation.4 Any historical attention it received tended to focus on the corrupt and incompetent political and military leaders, who were dismissed as puppets of the United States.5

In the last twenty years, the scholarship on South Vietnam has been growing because of better access to archival material and because of the recognition that little is known about its people, particularly their motivations, aspirations, and actions. There is now consensus among historians that while the US played a critical role in establishing the RVN and in executing the war, the Vietnamese people were crucial actors who had a hand in shaping the fate of their short-lived state.

By using Vietnamese-language sources and paying attention to the decisions and actions of Vietnamese actors, research has provided a more nuanced treatment of South Vietnam and deepened our understanding of Vietnamese history and the Vietnam War. For the most part, t hese works focus on the South Vietnamese political establishment, the South Vietnamese military, and the communist-led insurgency and its supporters.6 A few offer glimpses into South Vietnamese society, shedding light on diverse and impor tant subjects such as South Vietnam’s antiwar movement, education system, and student activism.7 This book contributes to this growing body of literature by examining the South Vietnamese people’s voluntary social and civic activities. In addition to insights about wartime South Vietnam, the book explores state-society interactions, particularly how civil society navigated the demands of the war, the state, and competing political forces.

Civil Society, Associational Life, and the Public Sphere

By the standard definition, voluntary associations are t hose organi zations that individuals join freely, without coercion. They are the manifestation of civil society, commonly conceived as “the constellation of associational forms that occupy the terrain between individuals and the state.”8 Another component of civil society is the public sphere, idealized as the site where critical, informed engagement about the common good transpires.9 There is still significant debate about the definition and nature of civil society and its components.

The general assumption is that civil society is relatively free from state control and is “an arena occupied by a fluid and loosely bundled assemblage of interests at various stages of institutionalization; civil society is, by nature, plural.” 10 Because it is plural and relatively unrestrained, civil society is sometimes conceptualized as inherently antistate, and its activities are perceived as contrary to the state’s interest. Some scholars, policymakers, and activists therefore believe that civil society can foster democratic development and protect society against authoritarianism. The experiences in Latin America, postcommunist eastern Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa seemed to support this positive view of civil society. In t hese places, voluntary and religious organizations played an instrumental role in spearheading democratic developments.11 By virtue of being components of civil society, associational activities and the public sphere have also been theorized as being autonomous and supportive of democratic development.

Within this positive assessment of civil society’s potential is the notion that not all associational activities fit within the realm of civil society. General criteria that determine whether an organization is a constituent of civil society include independence from the state, civility toward those with different views, and willingness to “work and interact with the state.” 12 According to these measures, some groups fall outside of civil society, including organizations—such as the Ku Klux Klan—that use violence against those with opposing views and revolutionary organizations that do not recognize the legitimacy of the state and seek its overthrow. Some definitions also imply that civil society aspires to work for the collective good rather than selfish or parochial interests. In this schema, self-help and kin-based organizations would not be considered components of civil society.13 In other words, the quality of a group’s activities is a significant consideration in this positive conceptualization of civil society. These standards are important for theorists who consider civil society the basis for democracy, because to foster an open and democratic society, civil society needs to be “forward-looking and open to rational communication with groups different from themselves.” 14

There are theorists, however, who define civil society more broadly to include groups that do not explicitly set out to perform civic duties but focus instead on members’ shared interests. Robert Putnam, for example, evinces that voluntary associations, including t hose formed to serve narrow interests, have the capacity to build social trust, networks, and norms—k nown collectively as social capital— which in turn promotes and maintains economic development and effective governance.15 Influenced by Alexis de Tocqueville’s work that connected the vibrancy of American associational life to the country’s democratic tradition, Putnam suggests that voluntary tradition builds a foundation for trust and cooperation and develops “the ‘I’ into the ‘we.’ ” 16 In other words, associated participation encourages people to adopt a collective perspective, and the social capital that accrues from associational life can contribute to building a strong civil society.

Countering this positive assessment of civil society’s potential are scholars who contend that civil society has not always been independent, equal, or open. For example, Mary Ryan’s study of religious benevolent associations in nineteenthcentury US cities illustrates that while associational life can build trust and cooperation, it is also instrumental in reinforcing elite dominance and privilege.17 Similarly, Pierre Bourdieu shows that social capital has greater potential to reify hierarchical social relations than to promote horizontal social solidarity. According to Bourdieu, social capital is deeply implicated in the stratified economic and social structure because one needs adequate means and connections to accumulate social capital.18

Foremost among the sober critics of civil society’s emancipatory potential was Antonio Gramsci, who perceived civil society as neither separate nor independent from the state. For Gramsci and other advocates of this school of thought, civil society is an important component of a society’s superstructure wherein the state and the elite maintain hegemony through influence, inducement, and manipula- tion.19 The other constituent of the superstructure is the political society, which the state dominates through the use (or threat) of violence and force. Civil society in this view includes a wide variety of associative forms that “are non-productionrelated, non-government and non-familial, ranging from recreational groups to trades unions, churches, and political parties.”20 These sociocultural institutions underpin and support the capitalist economy in many modern societies. As such, it cannot be assumed that civil society exists in opposition to the state; in fact, it should be expected that some sectors of civil society, such as the economic and political elite, will share some of the same interests and goals as the state and will cooperate with the state to achieve their common objectives. In addition, the elite depend on the state to protect their hegemony with an “armor of coercion.”21

On the surface, Gramsci’s view of civil society appears bleak, holding little promise for civil society to act independently, defend society’s interests, or oppose the state. Diving even a little below the surface, though, reveals that the dynamics within civil society offer many possible trajectories that could lead to a vast array of fates for any given society and its political system. Gramsci suggests that neither civil society nor the state is unified or uniform in its interests and views. As a result, many competing interests operate in civil society, with a complex and unpredictable constellation of alliances. The state itself “is engaged in a struggle with other actors to dominate popular ideas, values, and norms.”22 Because it is a domain of contestation, plurality, and coalition making, elite hegemony is never complete. The contestation may lead the state to intervene directly to reassert hegemony if the threat to its stability appears imminent. Meanwhile, the plurality and conflict within civil society also present opportunities and space for “counterhegemonic narratives” to be articulated and mobilized.23 Moreover, because the state’s moral authority depends on maintaining a functioning civil society, it may be necessary for the state, even an authoritarian state, to compromise at times.24 Similar limitations have been noted with regard to the democratizing potential of the public sphere. According to Jürgen Habermas, the bourgeois public sphere first emerged in eighteenth-century Europe as an arena of open and free debate. Because of its ability to keep the state in check, the public sphere was considered an important element in democratization.25 However, as critics have pointed out, the nature of this idealized public sphere was restrictive, making it inaccessible to marginalized peoples such as women and the working class.26 Historians of nonWestern societies have discovered that the public sphere did not necessarily promote democracy and can in fact coexist with authoritarian rule, as in the cases of French colonial Vietnam and pre–World War II Japan.27 To explain the apparent contradiction, Elizabeth Berry explains that Japan’s public sphere was not “the space where popular sovereignty was claimed but where leadership was scrutinized and disciplined by criticism.”28 In other words, to understand the public sphere in societies outside of Western democracies, one needs to “detach the public sphere from the telos of democracy.”29 Shawn McHale similarly argues that the public sphere in French colonial Vietnam was not linked to democratization but was a hierarchical domain where “particularistic interests contested their views.”30

Informed by theories about the nature and potential of civil society, this book examines the associational life and public sphere of South Vietnam. In the RVN, many competing forces were at work to influence public life. The authoritarian governments of Ngô Đình Diệm (1954–1963), various military juntas (1963–1967), and Nguyễn Văn Thiệu (1967–1975) defined the limits of associational and public activities. The RVN’s police force closely monitored those suspected of supporting communists or other political opponents. The US government and foreign aid organizations also played a role in associational life by dispensing aid and advice in an attempt to win favor and influence. In addition, the Lao Động Party and its southern organizations, the National Liberation Front (NLF) and People’s Revolutionary Party (PRP), infiltrated some key organizations in an effort to proselytize members. Along with the multiple forces influencing South Vietnam’s civil society, the exigencies of war circumscribed the content and form of associational life. The war created massive numbers of refugees, orphans, and wounded, and assisting these wartime victims became the focus of many organizations. The interplay of these forces made civil society a highly contested domain, wherein diverse groups and participants vied for influence and advantage. Voluntary organizations had to learn how to navigate these dominant forces and circumstances, adjusting their activities, goals, and membership to ensure their survival.

Methodology and Scope

This book examines an array of voluntary associations and their activities in South Vietnam. The groups discussed include mutual-a id associations, cultural clubs, professional societ ies, charitable organi zations, community development groups, women’s associations, student organ i zations, and rights movements. Where possible, I utilized accounts from personal interviews and memoirs of participants.31 However, for the most part, I relied on archival and textual evidence. As such, my discussion focuses on officially registered and active organizations that left written records, such as registration applications, club charters, correspondence with government officials, and state surveillance reports. Although voluntary associations were required to apply to the government for permission to operate, many did so without official sanction. Moreover, many small and ad hoc groups operated throughout South Vietnam, particularly in small towns and villages, and left few documentary traces. Given the lack of pri-