Autopsy of a Massacre On a Political Purge in the Early Days of the Indochina War (Nam Bo 1947)

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
François Guillemot

AbstractThis paper examines the history of an unknown “mass murder” perpetrated in 1947 in Southern Vietnam by the Viet Minh forces. It was organized in the outskirts of Saigon, mainly against Cao Dai and Hoa Hao religious forces that were portrayed as “reactionary” during their political revolutionary trials. Before presenting and analyzing the data of nearly 900 victims, the paper briefly presents the social, political and military conquest and context of French Cochinchina, as well as explains the political and military ambitions of the Viet Minh forces after the advent of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi on September 2, 1945. The focal point of this article is the review of the data related to the massacre and its uses, i.e.what they can reveal about the course of the massacre, its actors and victims. Finally, the paper's last section assesses the official historiography of the massacre, which has been recognized by the current regime in a 'soft' mea culpa. In conclusion, this article discusses the issue of violence in Southern Vietnam and its consequences for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in a more long term perspective.

Author(s):  
Michael Moehler

This book develops a novel multilevel social contract theory that, in contrast to existing theories in the liberal tradition, does not merely assume a restricted form of reasonable moral pluralism, but is tailored to the conditions of deeply morally pluralistic societies that may be populated by liberal moral agents, nonliberal moral agents, and, according to the traditional understanding of morality, nonmoral agents alike. To develop this theory, the book draws on the history of the social contract tradition, especially the work of Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Rawls, and Gauthier, as well as on the work of some of the critics of this tradition, such as Sen and Gaus. The two-level contractarian theory holds that morality in its best contractarian version for the conditions of deeply morally pluralistic societies entails Humean, Hobbesian, and Kantian moral features. The theory defines the minimal behavioral restrictions that are necessary to ensure, compared to violent conflict resolution, mutually beneficial peaceful long-term cooperation in deeply morally pluralistic societies. The theory minimizes the problem of compliance by maximally respecting the interests of all members of society. Despite its ideal nature, the theory is, in principle, applicable to the real world and, for the conditions described, most promising for securing mutually beneficial peaceful long-term cooperation in a world in which a fully just society, due to moral diversity, is unattainable. If Rawls’ intention was to carry the traditional social contract argument to a higher level of abstraction, then the two-level contractarian theory brings it back down to earth.


Author(s):  
DIANE E. DAVIS

What constitutes modern Mexico? Is there a clear distinction between the historic and modern Mexico City? And if there are, does this distinctions hold up throughout the twentieth century, when what is apparent is a mix of legacies coexisting overtime? This chapter discusses the semiotics of history and modernity. It discusses the struggle of the Mexico City to find its own image including its struggle to preserve historic buildings amidst the differing political alliances that either promote change or preserve the past. However, past is not a single entity, hence if the preservation of the rich history of Mexico is pursued, the question arises as to what periods of history represented in the city are to be favoured in its future development. In this chapter, the focus is on the paradoxes of the Torre Bicentenario and on the pressures to preserve Mexico’s past, the ways they have been juxtaposed against the plans for its future and how the balance of these views has shifted over time. It determines the key actors and the institutions who have embraced history as opposed to progress, identifies the set of forces that dominated in the city’s twentieth-century history, and assesses the long-term implications of the shifting balance for the social, spatial and built environmental character of the city. The chapter ends with a discussion on the current role played by the cultural and historical authorities in determining the fate of the city.


Author(s):  
Christopher Hamlin

There are many precedents for long-term research in the history of science. Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program’s current identity reflects significant change—intended and accidental, both consensual and conflictual—from research concerns that were prevalent in the 1980s. LTER program has pioneered modes of research organization and professional norms that are increasingly prominent in many areas of research and that belong to a significant transformation in the social relations of scientific research. The essays in this volume explore the impact of the LTER program, a generation after its founding, on both the practice of ecological science and the careers of scientists. The authors have applied the agenda of long- term scrutiny to their own careers as LTER researchers. They have recognized the LTER program as distinct, even perhaps unique, both in the ways that it creates knowledge and in the ways that it shapes careers. They have reflected on how they have taught (and were taught) in LTER settings, on how they interact with one another and with the public, and on how research in the LTER program has affected them “as persons.” A rationale for this volume is LTER’s distinctiveness. In many of the chapters, and in other general treatments of the LTER program, beginning with Callahan (1984), one finds a tone of defensiveness. Sometimes the concerns are explicit: authors (e.g., Stafford, Knapp, Lugo, Morris; Chapters 5, 22, 25, 33, respectively) bemoan colleagues who dismiss LTER as mere monitoring instead of serious science or who resent LTER’s independent funding stream. But more broadly, there is concern that various groups, ranging from other bioscientists to the public at large, may not appreciate the importance of long-term, site-specific environmental research. Accordingly, my hope here is to put LTER into several broader contexts. I do so in three ways. First, to mainstream LTER within the history of science, I show that the LTER program is not a new and odd way of doing science but rather exemplifies research agendas that have been recognized at least since the seventeenth century in the biosciences and beyond.


Author(s):  
Patrice Ladwig

Lao Buddhism’s histories are deeply fragmented. Most Lao were deported to Siam in the nineteenth century, and after the demise of the French colonial regime, the country was drawn into the Second Indochina War. After two decades of brutal warfare and massive destructions, the Lao communist movement took power in 1975. This chapter examines the history of Lao Buddhism in the context of these events, and puts its main focus on the entanglement of religion and politics in the postcolonial phase, as the political polarization of the Lao sangha during the Cold War and the impact of the subsequent revolution remain crucial for understanding Buddhism’s position in the current Lao PDR. While under reformed socialism there has been a resurgence of Buddhism in the last two decades, the social and religious transformations resulting from rapid modernization through the capitalist economy and globalization bring new challenges for the Lao sangha.


1995 ◽  
Vol 40 (S3) ◽  
pp. 51-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard Ebbinghaus

Prophecies of doom for both working-class party and labor unions have gained popularity in the Western industrial democracies over the last two decades. The “old” Siamese twins, working-class party and labor unions, have a century-long history of their combined struggle to achieve political and industrial citizenship rights for the working class. Both forms of interest representation are seen as facing new challenges if not a crisis due to internal and external changes of both long-term and recent nature. However, despite these prophecies political parties and union movemehts have been differently affected and have responded in dissimilar ways across Western Europe. The Siamese twins, party and unions, as social institutions, their embeddedness in the social structure, and their linkages, were molded at an earlier time with long-term consequences. Hence, we cannot grasp today's political unionism, party-union relations and organized labor's capacity for change, if we do not understand the social and political conditions under which the organization of labor interests became institutionalized. An understanding of the origins and causes of union diversity helps us to view the variations in union responses to current challenges.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (27) ◽  
pp. 56-69
Author(s):  
Tho Ngoc Nguyen

Cultural practice is a kind of expression and reflection of real livelihood into human mind and experience, is a set of knowledge, values, faiths and social standards constructed by the whole community; therefore, it contains the rhythm and breath of life and can be changed to meet the demands. Regarding socialenvironment, the communities always keep going on the processes of developing and diversifying their culture through acculturation, exchange and localization, which finally constructs the social norms, goals and driving forces for their advancement. Among various approaches and methodologies, the change in  empowerment in cultural practices actively offers the optimized values in functional standardization and implementation. The final value is undoubtedly the social capital. This research is to investigate the introduction, development, change and empowerment of the Chinese-rooted Guan Gong belief in Vietnam, through which emphasizes the process and nature of the cult during the deep absorption in Vietnamese history of anti-foreign invasions throughout the last two centuries, and enriches local values of a characteristic belief and a symbolic icon of multicultural exchanges in Vietnam, especially in the Southern region. Thispaper applies the theories of deconstruction and empowerment under cultural studies perspective in order to analyze and explain the processes of  deconstruction, restructuring and empowerment in the cult of Guan Gong in Southern Vietnam as well as extract the regular principle of cultural exchanges locally.


Author(s):  
Felicitas Becker

In parallel with mosques, centres of Quranic education, known locally as madrasa, sprang up in the countryside between c.1920 and 1960. They were small, poor, and often transient; their one defining feature was the presence of a mwalimu, a teacher. Comparison of the parallel development of madrasa and mission schools makes clear that the main reason for this divergence was not resistance to Christian elements in the missionaries' syllabus, but to the perceived interference of mission teachers with the authority of students' families and with local religious practices. By contrast, madrasa tolerated these practices and were more closely integrated into the social networks of parents. The spread of madrasa and of mission schools involves three subtle long-term processes. Topics covered include educational practice and the status of knowledge, madrasa and mission schools, unyago, colonial politics and local networks, schools and madrasa as local institutions, madrasa as sites of encounter with Muslim knowledge, imagining Muslim scholarship, and performance and orality in Muslim education. In general, the history of madrasa emphasizes an indirect association between education and social control – the complex status of knowledge.


Author(s):  
Celia E. Deane-Drummond

The relationship between empathy, love, and compassion has long been contested in the history of moral theory. Drawing on Martha Nussbaum’s definition of compassion as a form of judgement, and its relationship to empathy as both emotive and cognitive, this chapter seeks to uncover some of the reasons why empathy and compassion are still contested by scientists working in moral psychology as being relevant for the truly moral life. It also draws on fascinating work by archaeologists that shows reasonable evidence for the existence of deep compassion far back in the evolutionary record of early hominins, even prior to the appearance of Homo sapiens. The long-term care of those with severe disabilities is remarkable and indicates the importance of empathy and compassion deep in history. This is not so much a romanticized view of the past, since violence as well as cooperation existed side by side, but an attempt to show that the rising wave of anti-empathy advocates have missed the mark. Compassion is the fruit of cooperative tendencies. Primatologist Frans de Waal has also undertaken important work on empathy operative in the social lives of alloprimates. The Thomistic concept of compassion in the framework of his approach to the virtues in the moral life is also discussed.


Urban History ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Cécile Armand ◽  
Christian Henriot

Abstract In this article, we rely on a census of French residents in 1942 to conduct a quantitative micro-history of the French community in the wake of the Japanese invasion of Shanghai. On the basis of this snapshot, we examine this group from the perspective of long-term demography combined with a spatial approach drawing on the geospatial resources built over a decade in Shanghai. We argue that the system of power in the French Concession shaped the structural traits of the French population as a self-contained community. It created a politically, culturally and linguistically defined space where French nationals were presented with opportunities and even privileges. It sheds light on the social characteristics of foreign communities in a transcolonial city and on the spatial patterns they created in a non-western urban setting. Methodologically, we harness Geographical Information System tools to bridge demography and spatial history.


Author(s):  
Eli Vakil ◽  
Dan Hoofien

The history of clinical neuropsychology in Israel has been affected by both the worldwide development of the field of neuropsychology, which began in the 1970s and provided the conceptual and theoretical frameworks of clinical neuropsychology, and by the social implication of the unique geopolitical situation of the state of Israel. These circumstances led to a great need for neuropsychological rehabilitation services initially for veterans and later for civilians. While European and American influences are evident in the scientific knowledge of neuropsychology and neuropsychological assessment, Israel has been pioneering, creative, and original in neuropsychological rehabilitation. Israel’s contributions are reflected in the research conducted on various aspects of rehabilitation that has exploited an advantage that exists in Israel—the long-term follow-up of individuals after traumatic brain injury (TBI). This research has, in turn, encouraged the formation of graduate programs and training facilities for clinical neuropsychology at most of the universities in Israel.


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