Single Mothers and the State's Embrace

Reproductive Agency in Vietnam

Inbunden, Engelska, 2022

AvHarriet M. Phinney

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The first in-depth study of xin con (asking for a child)In the mid-1980s, after the Indochina Wars, a shortage of men meant that many single women in Vietnam found themselves without suitable marital prospects. A number of these women chose to pursue single motherhood by "asking for a child" (xin con)—asking men to get them pregnant out of wedlock. Xin con appeared to be a radical departure from traditional Vietnamese kinship values and practices, which were based in Confucian patriarchal and patrilineal reproductive interests. However, this innovative solution was rooted in both pre- and postwar values, practices, and notions of gender, kinship, love, and sexuality.This ethnography explores the practice of xin con among single mothers in the postwar era and today, and considers the ways their reproductive agency was embraced rather than rejected by the Vietnamese state as it entered the global market economy. Rather than condemning or trying to restrict older single women's reproductive agency, government officials enacted policies that would accommodate both the women and the state—a strategy that represents an intriguing alignment of Confucian heritage, Communist ideology, and governing tactics and demonstrates the social power of women.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2022-02-01
Mått152 x 229 x undefined mm
Vikt454 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieSingle Mothers and the State's Embrace
Antal sidor236
FörlagUniversity of Washington Press
ISBN9780295749426
UtmärkelserShort-listed for EuroSEAS Social Science Book Prize 2024 (United States)

Tillhör följande kategorier

Genusvetenskap inom Samhälle och politik
Antropologi inom Samhälle och politik

"The book is a must read for anyone who would like to understand how gendered norms impact choices made by individual women and how the personal is necessarily political and social at the same time. As the book is well written and easy to read, it can serve not just other scholars but can also be adopted to universities as teaching material for undergraduate courses on gender and South East Asian studies. Phinney's book is a welcome contribution to scholarship on women in Vietnam as it manages to be free from essentialistic interpretations of Vietnamese women while acknowledging the frameworks that have contributed to gendered sexual norms."(South East Asia Research) "Single Mothers and the State's Embrace makes a significant contribution to our understanding of kinship and gender in postwar Vietnam. Phinney's longitudinal perspective beautifully illuminates how individuals make choices within social contexts; society comes to identify those choices as categories of action and being; government renders the categories legible through discourse and policy; and the resulting interpellation shapes individuals' subjectivity and future action."(Journal of Southeast Asian Studies) "This well-crafted and soundly argued study is a must-read for scholars interested in Vietnamese women's reactions to social norms and state policies."(Journal of Vietnamese Studies)