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Culture and Capitalism in the Pottery Enterprises of Biên Hòa, South Vietnam (1878–1975)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

HY Van Luong  and
Diệp Đinh Hoa
Diệp Đinh Hoa
Affiliation:
University of Toronto and Institute of Ethnology Vietnam
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Extract

In the past two decades, social scientists have paid considerably greater attention to the possible role of native sociocultural frameworks in structuring the organization of economic enterprises. The primary research focusing on the Japanese and Chinese cases relates to the emergence of many highly competitive industries in capitalist East Asia in which relations of production do not necessarily resemble American or Western industrial relations. The following historical analysis of production relations in the pottery industry of Tân Vạn, a major centre of Southern Vietnamese ceramic production, seeks to contribute empirical data for comparative purposes within the East Asian sociocultural sphere.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 16 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1991

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References

This paper has benefited from the comments of Hue-Tarn Ho Tai, Keith Taylor, and an anonymous referee for the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. The study on which this paper is based was sponsored by the Social Science Commission of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. It was assisted by a research grant to the senior author from the Joint Committee on Southeast Asia of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation.

1 Rohlen, Thomas, For Harmony and Strength: Japanese White-Collar Organization in Anthropological Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Vogel, Erza (ed.), Modern Japanese Organization and Decision-Making (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Cole, Robert, Work, Mobility, and Participation: A Comparative Study of American and Japanese Industry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Gordon, Andrew, The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan: Heavy Industries, 1853–1955 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dore, Ronald, British Factory — Japanese Factory: The Origins of National Diversity in Labor Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973)Google Scholar.

2 Đng Nai ceramics was exported to both socialist and non-socialist countries. Vietnamese trade organizations converted the value of the export to the non-socialist world to rubles at the rate of one US. dollar to a Soviet ruble.

3 It is from Tân Vạn that the pottery handicraft has spread to neighbouring villages in Đng Nai, as well as to Thuận An and Thủ Đức districts of Sông Bé and H Chi Minh provinces. In the nineteenth century, however, the main pottery centre of South Vietnam was located in Chợ Lờn, a Chinese town adjacent to Saigon.

4 Derbès, , “Etude sur les industries de terres cuites en Cochinchine”, Excursions et Reconnaissance 12 (1882): 552–619Google Scholar.

5 In mid-1989, for a population of 10,388, Tân Vạn had only 90 hectares of agricultural land, not all of which were exploited. Much of the agricultural land had been converted into residential and industrial plots, especially since the early 1960s. According to local official statistics, small industries and handicrafts accounted for approximately 94 per cent of the agricultural and industrial production in the cooperative and private sectors in 1988.

6 The state sector included 4 pottery factories, and more than a dozen brick kilns. The production figures from the state sector are not available.

7 As documented in the archives of the Dutch East India Company, in a twenty-year period from 1663 to 1682, the Dutch alone exported 1,450,000 pieces of porcelain (an average of 72,500 pieces a year) from Tonkin (North Vietnam) to the rest of Southeast Asia, compared to an average of 63,300 pieces a year from Japan for 1653–83 (a total of 1.9 million), and 114,700 pieces a year from China for the 1608–1682 period (a total of 8.6 million pieces). See Volker, T., Porcelain and the Dutch East India Company (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1954), pp. 193–222Google Scholar.

8 Trương đức Tài, Tóm lược truy n th ng ngh g m (lu hủ) tại Biên Hòa (A Summary of the Jar Pottery Handicraft in Biên Hòa) (2-page typescript, 1986).

9 Gourou, Pierre, L'utilisation du sol en Indochine française (Paris: Centre d'Etude de Politique Etrangère, 1940), pp. 266–68Google Scholar; and Rambo, A. Terry, A Comparison of Peasant Social Systems of Northern and Southern Vietnam: A Study of Ecological Adaptation, Social Succession, and Cultural Evolution (Carbondale, Illinois: University of Southern Illinois, Center for Vietnamese Studies, 1973), ch. 3Google Scholar.

10 The Biên Hòa School of Fine Arts was established in 1903. In response to the popularity of its products on exhibition in France in 1925 and 1932, the school played an important role in the formation of the Société cooperative artisanale de potiers de Biên Hòa in 1933. A separate and 40-metre kiln was built for the enterprise in 1936. The firm gave the pottery students at the school practical experiences, and offered employment to the most qualified ones as salaried employees after their graduation. The enterprise was administered by the school until 1950 when it became independent due to a conflict with the school over the use of the rapidly growing profit from decorative ceramic production. It also switched to a piece-rate system in the 1950s. Employing more than 100 workers at its peak, the firm ceased to operate in 1974.

11 This kiln was designed along the line of the traditional cannon kiln. Like other kilns, it also produced water jars.

12 In the 1960–75 period, six kilns were constructed for the production of decorative ceramics in the neighbouring village of Bứu Hòa and the town of Biên Hòa across the river (three by the Dona enterprise, 2 by Ceraco, and 1 by Donaco). It involved a significant capital infusion from large southern capitalists in the form of limited partnerships.

13 The largest enterprises in Tân Vạn in the 1971–75 period were the Nam Lủng firm with approximately 200 workers, the Trấn Minh Đạo kiln with 150 employees, the Ba Thơ enterprise with over 100 employees and the Tin Phong firm with about 50 workers. All manufactured decorative ceramics, with the first, second, and fourth ones also producing water jars.

14 In 1989, the largest jars were also sold to fish sauce producers for sauce fermentation in the province of Thuận Hải in the southern part of Central Vietnam.

15 Since 1975, Tân Vạn has produced a large number of 1.5-foot-high sugar jars. For a short period, rubber sapping bowls were also manufactured on order. At the time of our field research, flower pots and re-burial ceramic coffins were produced in small quantity.

16 Before 1975, kaolin came from Chánh Củ, currently in the province of Hố Chi Minh, as well as from Binh Đáng, Bn Cỏ, and Tân Uyên, presently in the neighbouring Sông Bé province. By 1989, virtually all decorative ceramic enterprises in Tân Vạn had purchased already processed kaolin from the Tân Uyên area of Sông Bé.

17 In 1989, potter wheels, still moved by feet, were used only in the production of certain low-quality-clay objects, such as sugar jars and flower pots.

18 The shortest cannon kiln in Tân Vạn has the length of 50 metres. At the kilns manufacturing only decorative ceramics, saggars had to be made for firing wares.

19 The firing method for Korean chamber kilns, similar to that for chamber kilns in Tân Vạn and the neighbouring Sông Bé province, is described in Sayers, Robert, The Korean Onggi Potters (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987), pp. 129–31Google Scholar.

20 Due to the lack of family labour for managerial tasks, the owner(s) of the Trương family kiln(s) reportedly leased their factories for a few years in the first decade of the twentieth century and since the 1960s.

21 In the past century, the Trương family kilns were all bequeathed to younger sons. Eldest sons always ended up being passed over after being given opportunities to manage the firms for a few years, because they were all judged not as capable as their younger brothers. In contrast, the founder of the Lâm family bequeathed the original pottery kiln of the family (constructed in the nineteenth century) to his eldest son and a brick kiln to his other one. Having no son of his own, the eldest son eventually passed the kiln to his grandson by his eldest daughter, passing over his adopted sons and his younger brother's son in the process.

22 Of these four kiln owners, only two moved up from the worker ranks. The third had been a low-ranking employee of the government centre for handicraft development and subsequently a small-scale decorative ceramics producer. The fourth had accumulated capital for the construction of his kiln in 1974 from trade and transportation. He had not worked in pottery, although his wife was a jar-lid moulder.

23 Precise figures on the cost of kiln and factory construction are not available for the period under analysis. In the late 1980s, the construction of a 50-metre cannon kiln and other parts of a factory cost approximately US$35,000. During the same period, the annual incomes of a top fire master and an average decorative ceramics painter reached respectively US$900 and US$180.

24 Besides learning the skills, apprentices had to take care of their masters' other needs, such as shower water during or at the end of each working day. Most apprentices started learning the skills between the age of 12 and 14. In the pre-1945 period, the apprenticeship took at least two years in jar moulding, and five to seven years in wheeling. Of the two best known fire masters in Tân Vạn in 1989, one moved from the apprentice to the master rank within three years, and the other, after five years directly on the job.

25 During the French colonial period (1862–1945), a family member or close relative of the kiln owner also took charge of a distribution outlet for the products of the firm in the Chinese town of Chợ Lớn, approximately 30 kilometres downstream from the village of Tân Vạn.

26 The exception probably relates to the owner-honoured tradition of offering foods to the fire deity at the firing time.

27 During our field research in Summer 1989, many skilled workers reported that should a worker decline a cash advance, his piece rate would increase by 12–33 per cent.

28 In 1989, in Tân Vạn, kiln owners still had to offer wage advances to jar and jar lid potters, wheelmen, and the members of the fire team. The advances to jar potters averaged 2–4 months of income, depending on the skills of the recruited worker. The advances to firemen and wheel potters seldom exceeded one month of pay.

29 Ward and Pelzel have suggested the preference among Chinese workers for multi-stranded relations within work contexts. See Ward, Barbara, “A Small Factory in Hongkong: Some Aspects of Its Internal Organization”, in Economic Organization in Chinese Society, ed. Willmont, W.E. (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1972), pp. 353–85Google Scholar; and Pelzel, John, “Factory Life in Japan and China Today”, in Japan: A Comparative View, ed. Craig, Albert (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 371–432Google Scholar.

30 A jar is moulded in six parts over a six-day period. In any particular day, a moulder has to work on five sets of jar in five different stages of completion, and starts the first part of another set. If the work is disrupted for one day, the unfinished products would become too dry for the potter to complete the moulding process.

31 The decline probably resulted from the higher rice price rather than a considerably greater exploitation by kiln owners. Figures from various jar moulders indicate that throughout the period from the 1930s to 1975, their piece rate remained approximately 10 per cent of the wholesale price of a jar.

32 Many jar potters believed that jar bottoms would be defective in a large number if work resumed before the twentieth day of the first lunar month in the new year.

33 From mid-1988 to mid-1989, the rates of labour turnover in two of the three largest cooperative enterprises in Tân Vạn varied from 24 to 36 per cent.

34 This jar moulder retained an outstanding memory of rice prices and the piece rates for jar moulding over the years because constantly buying groceries on credit from a local merchant, he kept a notebook of his expenses in order to settle the grocery bills on pay days.

35 Cf. Dore, , British Factory — Japanese FactoryGoogle Scholar.