Village conventions also bound individuals to organizations as well as connected organizations together. Every member of the village took part in many different institutions and they had a responsibility to abide by regulations of those institutions. Village conventions regulated both responsibilities of some organizations and “sorts of people” towards the village community. | Vietnam Social Sciences, (172) - 2016 POLITICS - ECONOMICS The Role of Village Conventions in Rural Social Management at Present Bui Xuan Dinh * Abstract: Village conventions also bound individuals to organizations as well as connected organizations together. Every member of the village took part in many different institutions and they had a responsibility to abide by regulations of those institutions. Village conventions regulated both responsibilities of some organizations and “sorts of people” towards the village community. In turn, the organizations forced every member to undertake the responsibilities and regulations. Thus, village conventions connected all the village institutions together. The paper describes village convention in rural social management at present and proposes some policy recommendations. Key words: Village convention, rural, social management, Vietnam. 1. Existence background of village conventions in the traditional rural society . Viewed from the universal law At the time of tribes and clans, human society was administered by blood relations and other specific regulations (based on living and production activities as well as security, worship, and membership, etc.) for every bloodline community (clan commune), to which people conformed through many generations. After the primitive society (or clan commune) broke up, the blood relations based habitation was replaced by the neighborly relations - based habitation. To maintain common life, people of different lineages in a new habitation unit (a rural commune or a neighborly commune or an agricultural commune) set up unwritten conventions on various aspects of the community life. People abided by those conventions strictly from generation to generation. And, the conventions gradually 34 became customs - a major tool for social management.(*) In class - stratified society, the state authorities carried out social management by law. However, the state still relied on rural communes
