Family line plays an important role in forming Vietnamese culture, and remembering as well as praying for the anscestor are regular activities of Vietnamese people. This article describes and analyzes the customs of worshipping in Vietnamese family, the embedded belief in the course, rituals of building a cemetery a death anniversary. This characteristic has changed dramatically the historical course of the country, resulting in a formation of a specific culture of community of people with the same blood. Conservation of the culture therefore becomes very neccessary. | Vietnam Social Sciences, No. 4(162) - 2014 IDENTIFYING THE FAMILY LINE CULTURE OF VIETNAMESE PEOPLE NGUYEN QUANG LE * Abstract: Family line plays an important role in forming Vietnamese culture, and remembering as well as praying for the anscestor are regular activities of Vietnamese people. This article describes and analyzes the customs of worshipping in Vietnamese family, the embedded belief in the course, rituals of building a cemetery a death anniversary. This characteristic has changed dramatically the historical course of the country, resulting in a formation of a specific culture of community of people with the same blood. Conservation of the culture therefore becomes very neccessary. Key words: Family line, tradition, ritual, culture, kinship. 1. Perception of the family line culture of Vietnamese people(1) UNESCO identifies culture as “ the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses. In addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs.”(2) As such, the family line culture is also a cultural phenomenon which encompasses all material culture (tangible culture) and spiritual culture (intangible culture) created by a community of people with the same blood and which creates the identity of that community - family line. Earlier, while examining Vietnamese culture in the old society, most researchers identified Vietnamese culture based on the most typical structure which includes three elements: family, village, country. It was assumed that family culture encompassed in its individual culture (in the role of a family member) and family line culture (in the role of an extended family, big family or family line). Nowadays, in the context of cultural diversity of different 64 cultures in the world, together with family culture, village culture and country culture, individual culture and family line culture have become
