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A Life of Worry
 ETHNO GRAPHIC STUDIES IN SUBJECTIVIT Y
Tanya Luhrmann, Editor
1. Forget Colonialism? Sacrifice and the Art of Memory in Madagascar, by Jennifer Cole
2. S ensory Biographies: Lives and Deaths among Nepal’s Yolmo Buddhists,
by Robert Desjarlais
3. C
 ulture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community,
by Kathryn Linn Geurts
4. B
 ecoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society,
by Joel Robbins
5. Jesus in Our Wombs: Embodying Modernity in a Mexican Convent, by Rebecca J. Lester
6. Th
 e Too-Good Wife: Alcohol, Codependency, and the Politics of Nurturance in Postwar Japan,
by Amy Borovoy
7. S ubjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations, edited by João Biehl, Byron Good,
and Arthur Kleinman
8. P
 ostcolonial Disorders, edited by Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Sandra Teresa Hyde,
Sarah Pinto, and Byron J. Good
9. Under a Watchful Eye: Self, Power, and Intimacy in Amazonia, by Harry Walker
10. Unsettled: Denial and Belonging among White Kenyans, by Janet McIntosh
11. O
 ur Most Troubling Madness: Case Studies in Schizophrenia across Cultures,
by T. M. Luhrmann and Jocelyn Marrow
12. Us, Relatives: Scaling and Plural Life in a Forager World, by Nurit Bird-David
13. The Likeness: Semblance and Self in Slovene Society, by Gretchen Bakke
14. Th
 e Anatomy of Loneliness: Suicide, Social Connection, and the Search for Relational Meaning
in Contemporary Japan, by Chikako Ozawa-de Silva
15. Being Single in India: Stories of Gender, Exclusion, and Possibility, by Sarah Lamb
16. Th
 e Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games,
by Jeffrey G. Snodgrass
17. A Life of Worry: Politics, Mental Health, and Vietnam’s Age of Anxiety, by Allen L. Tran
 A Life of Worry
Politics, Mental Health, and Vietnam’s Age of Anxiety

Allen L. Tran

UNIVERSIT Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press
Oakland, California

© 2023 by Allen L. Tran

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Suggested citation: Tran, A. L. A Life of Worry: Politics, Mental Health, and

Vietnam’s Age of Anxiety. Oakland: University of California Press, 2023.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.162

All interior photos by author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Tran, Allen L., author.

Title: A life of worry : politics, mental health, and Vietnam’s age of anxiety /
Allen L. Tran. Other titles: Ethnographic studies in subjectivity ; 17.
Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2023] |
Series: Ethnographic studies in subjectivity ; 17 | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023003597 (print) | LCCN 2023003598 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780520392168 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520392175 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Anxiety—Social aspects—Vietnam. | Anxiety—
Political aspects—Vietnam. | Mental health—Social aspects—Vietnam.
Classification: LCC BF575.A6 T736 2023 (print) | LCC BF575.A6 (ebook) |
DDC 152.4/609597—dc23/eng/20230501

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023003597

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023003598

32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 C onte nts

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments ix

Part One. Forms of Anxiety

1. How to Worry 3
2. Moral Sentiments 35
3. Rich Sentiments 53

Part Two. Clinical Manifestations of Anxiety

4. The Medicalization of Worry 73
5. The Psychologization of Worry 86

Part Three. Anxious Formations

6. Love, Anxiety 105
7. How We Worry 125

Notes 137
References 143
Index 165
 Illustrati ons

F IG U R E S

1. A popular way to unwind in the early 2000s, đi chơi (to go play) entails
cruising through the city on motorbikes with friends 8
2. New infrastructure projects like the Ông Lãnh Bridge in District 4 ease
congestion but also highlight inequality 43
3. A sidewalk café in Bình Thạnh District faces customers toward the street
instead of each other 54
4. The apartment complex at 14 Tôn Thất Đăm Street in District 1 is
the site of trendy cafés, vintage clothing stores, and private residences 55
5. Motorbikes and urban anonymity have made romantic intimacy
possible in the public sphere, especially in Ho Chi Minh City’s
downtown 106
6. A motorist in District 5 protects herself from the sun and pollution 127
7. A fluorescent tube light bulb draws attention to a late-night air pump
in District 3 127

vii
 Ack nowle d gme n ts

I like to read a book’s acknowledgments first to get the story behind the stories. In
my favorite stories about Vietnam that I heard as a child, the country was a place of
an idyllic beauty that could easily slide into something dangerous. The beaches in
Vũng Tàu, where my mother grew up, have a deceptively strong undertow. Guava
branches in Sơn Tây made the best slingshots for my father and his friends to shoot
at birds and each other with. The stakes in the stories from my parents’ last years
in the country before they moved to the United States in 1975 became starker yet
more ambiguous. Risk, desperation, and cruelty yielded to somehow even more
gutting acts of compassion and honor. So I suppose my first thanks should go
to my parents and my aunts and uncles for the stories that sparked my interest
in Vietnam and the sacrifices they made that allowed that curiosity to become a
vocation. Listening to these stories with me were my brother and our twenty-two
cousins. Thank you for the nonstop mischief, inside jokes, drama, and commisera-
tion, as well as the stories of your own.
My deepest gratitude, however, goes to the people in Ho Chi Minh City whose
generosity and patience I will never be able to repay. My colleagues at the Southern
Institute for Social Sciences patiently explained to me the contours of sentiment
(tình cảm) and demonstrated it to me every time I saw them. Prof. Văn Thị Ngọc
Lan, Bùi Linh Cường, Nguyễn Đặng Minh Thảo, Hà Thúc Dũng, and especially
Lê Thế Vững and Nguyễn Cúc Trâm went above and beyond to support my
research. The psychiatrists and psychotherapists I spoke with are laying the foun-
dations for future generations of mental health care workers, yet they made time
in their busy schedules to share their approach to treating anxiety, demonstrating
their conviction and determination in the process. Their patients and clients were

ix
x    Acknowledgments

often even more giving of their time and energy under difficult circumstances.
Most of all, I want to acknowledge the people I call Hoa, Hải, and especially Trâm
for trusting me with their stories. Their lives have unfolded over the past decade
in ways I certainly did not see coming. In particular, the twists and turns in Hải’s
life after the events described in chapter 6 warrant another book. But all three of
them faced trials, successes, and the long, discouraging stretches of stagnation in
between with their sense of humor intact, and they continue to seek out new ways
of thinking about their world.
I first learned to think about the world like an anthropologist as an undergrad-
uate at the University of California, Los Angeles, where classes taught by Doug
Hollan, Jason Throop, and Linda Garro sent me on my way. This project took
shape under the guidance of Tom Csordas, my primary advisor, and Janis Jenkins,
first at Case Western Reserve University and then at the University of Califor-
nia, San Diego (UCSD). Whenever I got lost in the weeds of social theory, Tom’s
ability to pinpoint where I took a wrong turn always left me shaking my head in
disbelief—how did he do that?—when I left his office. In terms of my research
topic, I have long followed the trail set by Janis’s detailed and empathic work on
how mental health and illness are experienced at the level of the individual and
the collective. At UCSD, Steve Parish became and still is my role model of the
anthropologist as writer, and Suzanne Brenner, Eddy Malesky, and Yen Le Espiritu
gave much-needed counsel on the politics and logistics of conducting research
in Southeast Asia. Just as important as my committee to my progression through
graduate school were my fellow students, including Nicole Barger, Jon Bialecki,
Waqas Butt, Esin Duzel, Ted Gideonse, Candler Hallman, Eric Hoenes, Nofit
Itzhak, Tim Karis, Corinna Most, Jess Novak, Tim Shea, and Brendan Thornton.
Eli Elinoff, Whitney Duncan, and Heather Spector Hallman deserve highlighted
recognition for their support and motivation, then and now.
My colleagues in the department of sociology and anthropology at Bucknell
University have given me more mentoring, and more of a sense of community,
than I ever expected. I am grateful for Deb Abowitz, Karen Altendorf, Danny
Alvord, Matt Baltz, Dannah Dennis, Elizabeth Durden, Sarah Egan, Lauren
Fordyce, Natalie Kuhns, Stevie Rea, and Clare Sammells. Conversations with Deb
Baney, Michelle Johnson, and Ned Searles carried me across the finish line more
often than they know. Outside of my department, drinks, dinner clubs, and pub
trivia with JiaJia Dong, Scott England, Qing Jiang, Leo Landrey, Alicia Hayashi
Lazzarini, Heather Mechler, Christine Ngô, John Penniman, David Rojas, Sezi
­Seskir, Dan Temkin, and Bryan Vandevender have also been essential. Anna Baker
and I cotaught an interdisciplinary class on anxiety, and her clinical expertise
moved chapter 5 away from simple critique. My anxious Gen Z students’ honesty
about their own experiences and curiosity about others’ always gave me more to
think through. Chapter 7 was written with them in mind. Jonathan Bean, Erica
 Acknowledgments    xi

­ elsandro, Annetta Grant, and Aaron and Marissa Mitchel made a small college
D
town in Pennsylvania feel more like a home. Any place with my dog Roger seems
like home, so thank you to Hadar Sayfan for opening hers in New York City to us.
Portions of this book have been presented at conferences for the American
Anthropological Association, Association for Asian Studies, and Society for Psy-
chological Anthropology and benefited from the engagement of panel organiz-
ers and discussants, including Amy Borovoy, Paul Brodwin, Tom Csordas, Byron
Good, Hsuan-Ying Huang, Janis Jenkins, Ann Marie Leshkowich, Rebecca Lester,
Andrea Muehlebach, Eugene Raikhel, Christina Schwenkel, Jason Throop, Ben
Tran, Anita von Poser, Julia Vorhölter, Jie Yang, and Jarrett Zigon, among many
others. Side conversations with Nick Bartlett, Elizabeth Carpenter-Song, Vivian
Choi, Michael D’Arcy, Jenna Grant, Chris Kortright, Martha Lincoln, Abby Mack,
Raphaëlle Rabanes, Sarah Rubin, and Michelle Stewart have become the highlight
of these events. Merav Shohet has carefully read and reread almost everything I
have written, an expression of her own excellent work on care and sacrifice. I look
forward to all of us gathering together again, hopefully soon. My gratitude also
goes to the audiences and participants at UCSD’s Seminar in Psychological and
Medical Anthropology and Science Studies Program; UCLA’s Mind, Medicine,
and Culture Seminar; Bucknell’s Medical Humanities Working Group and Center
for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender; the Framing (Dis)Orders Workshop
at Washington University in St. Louis; and the Affective Arrangements in Thera-
peutic Settings Symposium at Freie Universität Berlin.
Ho Chi Minh City draws a brilliant and supportive network of scholars whose
work grounds my own and always generates new ideas and connections to explore.
Ethnographic research is exciting and fulfilling but can be so draining! Being able
to vent or puzzle over something with fellow researchers is a gift, especially when
done over a bowl of noodles and a crisp lager with ice or a bougie cocktail. Dzô
to Erik Harms, Ann Marie Leshkowich, Hy Van Luong, and Christina Schwen-
kel for the insights into Vietnam studies; Ivan Small and Jamie Gillen for the
laughs; Mitch Aso and Caroline Herbelin for the stickers and gifs; Alex C ­ annon,
­Hyunok Lee, Khải Thư Nguyễn, and Maria Stalford for the deep conversations
and ­support; Claire Edington and Haydon Cherry for the gossip; and Sarah Grant
for all of the above. Numerous research trips to Ho Chi Minh City were made
­possible by the National Science Foundation; UCSD’s International, Comparative,
and Area ­Studies Research Fund; and Bucknell’s Scholarly Development Grant,
­International Research Travel Grant, and Tom Greaves Fund for Research or
­Curricular Development.
At UC Press, Kate Marshall and Chad Attenborough ushered this book through
the publication process with more patience than I deserved. Thank you to Tanya
Luhrmann for making the introduction to Kate. The generous and astute com-
ments of three reviewers, one of whom was later revealed to be Nick Bartlett,
xii    Acknowledgments

sharpened my arguments and expanded their scope. Portions of chapters 3, 4, and

6 were previously published in American Anthropologist, the Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute, and Medical Anthropology Quarterly.
My father, Lưu Tran, passed away as I was considering whether to pursue a
career in anthropology. Shortly before he died, he told me that he wasn’t worried
about me. My mother, Julie Tran, worries about me more than anyone ever has or
ever will. This book falls somewhere between their ways of worrying and would
not have been possible without either. My brother, Brian Tran, is the storyteller of
the family, and his book will be much better than mine. I am still trying to worry
about/for him just enough. Của bố mẹ, em.
 P art One

Forms of Anxiety