Maritime anthropological studies in island and coastal areas in Southern Central and Southern Vietnam from narrative, oral History and life history approach

Abstract

This paper explores conversations of fishermen and residents in island and coastal areas in southern Central and Southern Vietnam within the framework of maritime anthropology. The conversations are presented in the forms of narratives, storytellings and memories from three different approaches: narrative, oral history and life history. Deloyed in anthropology, history, literature, folklore and other disciplines, these approaches share one common character – interviewing as the means of data collection. Only through interviewing, a researcher is able to engage his/her subjects into the process of commemorating their lived experience, both individually and collectively. From fragmented memories and stories about the past to vivid representation of contemporary social reality of the people in island and coastal areas, the researcher then needs to “combine” them spatially and temporally to reconstruct a comprehensive narrative. If we fail to do that, these precious narratives would eventually vanish. To embed these narratives into the scientific stream of social life, we need to double-check, investigate, study and analyze them from multi-disciplinary perspectives. This is a real challenge to researchers; however, the information we achieve after “cleaning up data” is remarkably meaningful both scientifically and pragmatically.