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Millenarian Machines in South Vietnam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Frances R. Hill
Frances R. Hill
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

The persistent vitality of groups that are neither traditional nor modern nor transitional poses one of the most stubborn conceptual and practical problems of political development. An examination of the political-religious sects of South Vietnam from the perspective of the paradox of non-modern and untraditional institutionalization questions the common hypothesis of unilinear development. It is facile to assume that such groups as tribes, castes, or millenarian movements will conveniently wither away under the onslaught of modernity or to condemn them as causes of the lack of development in the new states. Far from being aberrant vestiges of a past that is being overcome, the sects are but particular manifestations of historic and contemporary factionalism. What South Vietnam lacks is not a vigorous development of sub-national groups but a central government with responsive and directive capacity. Without such a center the concept of a system becomes meaningless and the sects have little reason for seeking security in interaction rather than incapsulation.

Type
Politics and Religion
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , July 1971 , pp. 325 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1971

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References

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