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Competing Imagined Ancestries: The Lạc Việt, the Vietnamese, and the Zhuang

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Vietnam at the Vanguard

Part of the book series: Asia in Transition ((AT,volume 15))

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Abstract

As we write this abstract, it is 2020 and there are scholars in China hard at work seeking to demonstrate that the Zhuang ethnic group are descended from ancient people known as the “Luoyue.” Not all that long ago, in the 1950s, certain Vietnamese scholars worked equally hard to demonstrate that the Vietnamese were descended from the very same “Luoyue” people, pronounced in Vietnamese as “Lạc Việt.” In both cases, these claims to ancestry from the Lạc Việt/Luoyue were new. They were also both parts of efforts to construct an identity that could unify a group of people and provide them with a sense that their group possessed deep historical roots. This effort has succeeded in Vietnam. In the case of China, it is an effort that is still underway. In this paper, we examine these two “competing imagined ancestries” and ponder how these identity projects will impact the lives of people in both Vietnam and China in the years ahead.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, Vietnam National University-Hanoi, Hanoi, Vietnam

    Hong Hai Dinh

  2. Institute of Asian Studies (IAS), University of Brunei Darussalam, Gadong, Brunei Darussalam

    Liam C. Kelley

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  1. Hong Hai Dinh
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  2. Liam C. Kelley
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Correspondence to Hong Hai Dinh .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Global Studies Programme, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Jamie Gillen

  2. Institute of Asian Studies (IAS), University of Brunei Darussalam, Gadong, Brunei Darussalam

    Liam C. Kelley

  3. Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education (SHBIE), University of Brunei Darussalam, Gadong, Brunei Darussalam

    Phan Le Ha

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Dinh, H.H., Kelley, L.C. (2021). Competing Imagined Ancestries: The Lạc Việt, the Vietnamese, and the Zhuang. In: Gillen, J., Kelley, L.C., Le Ha, P. (eds) Vietnam at the Vanguard. Asia in Transition, vol 15. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5055-0_6

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