defining 'vietnamese digital neighborhood'
'Vietnamese digital neighborhood' is an ethnographically rooted and participatory concept. This means that the term was designed based on (1) detailed, thick descriptions of the group dynamics and (2) the collaborative involvement of the research participants in the conceptual construction process, respectively.
To elaborate on the latter, interlocutors partook in discussions and debates on making sense of the relationship between a Facebook/ Messenger online community and the notion of a 'Vietnamese neighborhood.'
By Vietnamese neighborhood, I refer to how the research participants attempted to translate the English word and elaborate on its connotations. Four out of six participants translate the term 'neighborhood' as 'hang xom lang gieng' in Vietnamese. Nguyet translates it as 'hang xom' (the shorter version of hang xom lang gieng), and An as 'community' or 'cong dong.'
The term neighborhood in English is different than that in Vietnamese - hang xom lang gieng,
Tien highlighted the subtle difference between the word and its Vietnamese equivalent. Others seem to agree with her. To Nguyet, the notion has a spatial connection with the countryside where hang xom lang gieng associated with tuong than tuong ai (intimate care - my translation) and tinh thuong men thuong (care and love - my translation) - the two proverbs connoted the cultivation of mutual care and support within a community. Nguyet and some participants shared plenty related and similar memories, including asking the neighbors for food (e.g., Vietnamese pickles, green onions, pints of salt, or rice), trong nha - guarding neighbors' houses by occasionally looking over, gui do - keeping stuff for neighbors, and any mutual support when needed.
Even though some participants live in the countryside during childhood, their current residency resides in the urban area. There, hang xom lang gieng has a hegemonic spatial connection with khu tap the - a communal apartment (see figure 2). In Di ngang Ha Noi (Walk across Ha Noi - my translation), Nguyen (2017) introduced the initial idea of khu tap the from 1949. One of its first blueprints was presented by architect Bieu Pham-Dinh in 1952, instigating a five-story building where two to three households share a kitchen and a toilet (ibid). Later on, the current khu tap the remained a similar number of building stories. Each household has private kitchen and bathroom. Families in the khu tap the situate near one another, rendering the deeds of community care and support possible in the urban space.
Owing to the lack of geographical proximity, Tien, Nga, or Huyen hesitated to assimilate the Messenger group chat with '(digital) neighborhood' or (digital) hang xom lang gieng. By digital, I mean anything built using the binary code of 0 and 1 (Horst and Miller 2012, 3).
Still, the group nurtures a spirit of care and support in analog settings. For example, because Huyen and Van live not too far away from each other, they could come to the other's house for a spontaneous shower or a quick nap. Nevertheless, some agree that the online group is a form of a digital neighborhood. Aligned with the quote on the main page, a few see the group as a digital khu tap the. Ethnographies of togetherness in the next section will further explain this thought process.
Hence, the result of such collaborative effort is that 'Vietnamese digital neighborhood' becomes a concept-in-the-making. This fluidity does two things. Firstly, it gives hang xom lang gieng a discursive slip away from its hegemonic representation of khu tap the, opening up possibilities for other spatial associations. One option is to reconsider the link between hang xom lang gieng and the Messenger group chat - a digital field site potentially containing the seeds of care and support.
My ethnographies reveal that such qualities exist in Messenger owing to its functions of 'text bar' or 'add photos and videos.' For instance, Tien or Nguyet often booked tickets for the whole group to museums (e.g., Victoria and Albert), get-away trips (e.g., Brighton or Edinburgh), or musicals (e.g., Les Misérables). For efficient communication, students took screenshots of available seats of the railways or of the theaters and shared them in the chat for decision-making.
The 'text bar' affordance is convenient to type and share personal information immediately if the booking requires. I render such convenience as digital proximity, facilitating praxis of care and support as digital practices. Thus, I argue that the Messenger affordances fulfill the proximity element required to make a 'Vietnamese digital neighborhood' possible.
Secondly, the conceptual flexibility constructs a hybrid mode of hang xom lang gieng, comprising the qualities of care and privacy.
The slip above serves to bring people into the neighborhood imaginary easier since not everyone lives in khu tap the these days (see figure 3). In fact, only Huyen's family owns a house in khu tap the while others reside in various housing types like flats or modern apartments.
For people with some money, they tend to buy modern or high-end apartments. One of its advantages is privacy. They don't need to know, hear, or even meet anyone. The apartments will have separate areas and lifts, and usually, those places are not crowded. Maybe because life is so busy now that people want to rest and focus on their families more. The values of hang xom lang gieng become less important,
shared An, discussing the increasing disappearance of the values of hang xom lang gieng. Her quote reveals the absence of care for neighbors and its replacement of the need for privacy in modern apartments. Additionally, she texted that cheap apartments somehow remained the habits of hang xom lang gieng as those "[had] the same atmosphere of an old khu tap the where everyone [would] know any incident occurred in a specific story or people [would] even eat together in the hall."
An's observations also bring notions of price and privacy to the table, indicating two interconnected correlations, one between low price and the values of hang xom lang gieng, one between high price and the need for privacy.
The blurred boundary of public-private is a feature of khu tap the. Huyen mentioned that usually, if a child received parental discipline, the sound reverberated throughout all the stories.
Therefore, if the Messenger group chat is rendered as a 'Vietnamese digital neighborhood', does it dismiss the monetary disparity and bring people together? Does participation still mean a sacrifice of personal privacy? Or, how does Messenger re-negotiate the experience of privacy?
To access the 'Vietnamese digital neighborhood,' each group member needs a smartphone. Hence, possessing a smartphone is the least common denominator to enter this form of a neighborhood. The statement implies that a 'Vietnamese digital neighborhood' does not eradicate the financial inequalities. Instead, Messenger mobilizes the disparity from ownership of a physical house to ownership of a smartphone. Thus, the digital space excludes individuals who cannot afford such digital devices even though they are exponentially cheaper than a physical house.
In case one is privileged enough to possess a smartphone; then, Miller et al. (2021) viewing it as an alternative home can be productive to conceptualize a 'Vietnamese digital neighborhood.' Based on multiple ethnographies around the world, the authors refer to the smartphone as a 'transportal home,' stating that:
"We are always ‘at home’ in our smartphone. We have become human snails carrying our home in our pockets. The smartphone is perhaps the first object to challenge the house itself (and possibly also the workplace) in terms of the amount of time we dwell in it while awake. As a term, the Transportal Home comprises several elements. In addition to referencing the home, it acknowledges the smartphone as a portal from which we can shift from one zone to another. Finally, there is also an analogy with transport, as a vehicle for mobility." (Miller et al. 2021, 219)This referencing of a home is complementary for the notion of 'Vietnamese digital neighborhood.' As participants live in disparate places around London, they cannot experience the analog proximity of the 'traditional' hang xom lang gieng or khu tap the. However, if students are 'at home' via their smartphones, the digital proximity mentioned above renders the Messenger group chat an equivalent hang xom lang gieng.
Yet, such proximity does not equate to a lack of privacy. Users can always turn on airplane mode, switch off the notifications bar, or ignore the interaction. One interlocutor said:
I can leave the phone and choose to engage with the topics I find interest in only. Otherwise, I would spend time doing my schoolwork.
The analog remoteness in London, digital proximity, and the autonomy over affordances of the 'alternative home' provide users with a level of privacy while participating in the 'Vietnamese digital neighborhood.'
Therefore, I argue that the fluidity of 'Vietnamese digital neighborhood' engenders a hybrid mode of hang xom lang gieng - a place that consists of both qualities of care and support/ tinh thuong men thuong and tuong than tuong ai, and a sense of privacy.
Overall, the discussion thus far indicates that the concept of 'Vietnamese digital neighborhood' is fluid, embracing the qualities of care/ support and some levels of autonomous privacy. The Messenger group chat serves as a material embodiment of the 'Vietnamese digital neighborhood.'
Then, if not for COVID-19, will there even be a 'Vietnamese digital neighborhood'? Or rather, if COVID-19 did not exist, how would the interaction of the community have altered? The answers to both are hard to speculate. Incidents of racist crimes against Asian people and movements of Stop Asian Hate have problematized the romanticizing narrative of COVID-19 as a cause of global unity. Yet, the effects of tinh thuong men thuong and tuong than tuong ai interweaved through the following 'ethnographies of togetherness' highlight how we can expand our understanding of human capacities when we focus more on the digital.
If we approach the group dynamics in the theoretical lens of attainment, which considers a new technology regarding its facilitating human's ability to attain something, rather than disrupting some prior holistic being (Miller and Sinanan 2014), what new ways of being together can we reveal? Or, does the assumption that 'humans have always been virtual' hold any truth (Boellstorff 2008)? My ethnographies of togetherness attempt to explore those questions.
bibliographies
Boellstorff, Tom. 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Horst, Heather A., and Miller, Daniel, eds. Digital Anthropology. London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. Accessed April 20, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Miller, Daniel, and Jolynna Sinanan. 2014. Webcam. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Miller, Daniel, Laila Abed Rabho, Patrick Awondo, Maya De Vries, MarÃlia Duque, Pauline Garvey, Laura Haapio-Kirk, Charlotte Hawkins, Alfonso Otaegui, Shireen Walton, and Xinyuan Wang. 2021. The Global Smartphone: Beyond a Youth Technology. London: UCL Press.
Nguyen, Tien N. 2017. Di ngang Ha Noi. Ha Noi: Tre Press.