"Nature and Human in Sino-Vietnamese conceptions and practices. Articulations between Asian vernacular "analogism" and Western modern "naturalism" modes of identification"

Christian Culas (1)

1 UMR ART-Dev - Acteurs, Ressources et Territoires dans le Développement

One important finding about nature in Vietnam is there are only little studies about the ideas-conceptions of nature and about the relations between human and non-human in Vietnam. My main objective is to describe and to understand what are the conceptions and practices of nature in Vietnam today. To attempt to reconstruct the conceptions of the world and the relationships humans / nature (or “non human” (Latour 2004) in Vietnam, I will proceed in two ways. First, I will give an overview of historical landmarks of the conceptions of relations human/nature and human/human (politics), because Vietnam is one important place where traditional Chinese mode of identification and worldview (“analogism” Descola 2005) and modern Western mode of identification and worldview meet (“naturalism”) and build a new synthetic and hybrid way of thought and action. Second, some examples of what nature means in Sino-Vietnamese conceptions and practices will show the diversity of ways of thinking and acting nature. Historical process that built the current conceptions and practices of nature in Vietnam is deeply syncretic and hybrid. Three examples selected will help us to understand what are the diversity of Vietnamese conceptions of nature: a) Taoist conceptions of Nature where man can learn and experience to reach nature through practice. b) Man can integrate some powers of nature by eating them. c) In Vietnamese conceptions and actions nature can be built by and around the human in “nature garden”, similar in many points to Japanese notion and landscape calls “Satoyama” where biodiversity is built and maintained by human. These examples of contextualized conceptions and actions with nature can show how the analogical tradition can articulate, integrate, and oppose with different forms of naturalism in certain specific situations to build the current conceptions and practices of nature in Vietnam.

Mots clés: Vietnam; China; Nature; Relation human/non-human; Ontologies; Analogism/Naturalism; Satoyama; nature garden; Biodiversity; Japan

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Christian Culas. "Nature and Human in Sino-Vietnamese conceptions and practices. Articulations between Asian vernacular "analogism" and Western modern "naturalism" modes of identification". Chitra Sankaran, Chi P. Pham, Gurpreet Kaur. Ecologies in Southeast Asian Literatures: Histories, Myths and Societies, Vernon Press, pp.111-129, 2019, 1-62273-633-8. ⟨halshs-03088629⟩