Social Drinking among Vietnamese Civil Servants: The Sociality of Male Sexual Impotence
Ngo Thi Ngan Binh, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University / Department of Anthropology, RSPAS, Australian National University
In recent years heavy alcoholic consumption among many Vietnamese public sector workers has raised serious questions of office-time abuse and corruption. The practice of ‘diplomatic’ drinking, as this community often describes its social meetings, is growing popular as an inevitable social route to upward mobility. The drinking table then becomes a place where business dealing is lubricated, social power is negotiated, potential connections are created and personal gains are exchanged. Not only does it provide a mutual force for men to seek promotion opportunities and well-situated career choices but it also generates a visibly superior image of men holding collective power in their hands. The downside of such activities, however, is that they have a negative effect on men’s health, and even result in weak libido. Since sexual competence in Vietnamese society is associated with men’s pride in their manliness, such unanticipated impotence diminishes men’s sense of masculinity. This paper will analyse this widespread but often overlooked phenomenon of male gatherings. It will also raise and address the question of how Vietnamese men within this drinking circle manage to cope with and find ways to resolve this leisure pursuit in its own crisis.
