Kien Nguyen-Trung

This article is an autoethnography of how engaging with my previous autoethnographic article facilitated my recovery and self-growth. I wrote my previous piece (Nguyen-Trung, 2022) while stranded in Australia due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which prevented me from visiting my grandfather one last time before his passing in 2021. If my past autoethnography focused on the themes of death, grief, and loss, the current article's autoethnography revolves around awakening, healing, and self-transformation. In this current article, I reflexively look back on my autoethnographic journey and reflect on how it impacted me as a grandchild and a human being on the one hand, and a qualitative sociologist and a writer on the other. I tell stories of how, since writing my first autoethnography and sharing it with others, whether at an academic conference, a meeting, a social encounter, or via a social media post, I managed to overcome the darkest time of my life and gradually heal my personal crisis and somehow transform myself. There were three key lessons learned from such a journey: the emergence of self-awareness, the significance of empathy and humanity within research communities, and the therapeutic and transformative potential of writing.

Purpose-This article argues the value of integrating pragmatism in applying behavioural science to complex challenges. We describe a behaviour change-led knowledge co-production process in the specific context of climate change in Australia. This process was led by an interdisciplinary research team who struggled with the limitations of the prevailing deterministic behaviour change paradigms, such as the "test, learn, adapt" model, which often focuses narrowly on individual behaviours and fails to integrate multiple interpretations from diverse stakeholders into their knowledge co-production process. Design/methodology/approach-This article uses collaborative reflection as a method of inquiry. We document the team's experience of a recent challenge-led, programatic research initiative that applied behaviour change strategies to reduce climate vulnerabilities. We demonstrate the necessity of critical reflection and abductive reasoning in the face of the complexities inherent in knowledge co-production addressing complex problems. It underscores the importance of accommodating diverse perspectives and contextual nuances over a one-size-fits-all method. Findings-The article shares lessons learnt about integrating collaborative and critical reflection throughout a project cycle and demonstrates the capacity of abductive reasoning to ease the challenges arising from the tension between behaviour change paradigms and knowledge co-production principles. This approach allows for a more adaptable and context-sensitive application, acknowledging the multiplicity of understandings and the dynamic nature of behavioural change in relation to climate adaptation. Originality/value-This reflection contributes original insights into the fusion of pragmatism with behaviour change strategies, proposing a novel framework that prioritises flexibility, context-specificity and the recognition of various stakeholder perspectives in the co-production of knowledge.

The Climate Adaptation Mission led by BehaviourWorks Australia explores how behaviour science and systems thinking can identify and test behaviour change interventions, with a goal to increase the adaptive capacity of communities most at risk of climate change impacts by 2030.
This report describes the design, delivery, and evaluation of a behaviour change intervention intended to help Victorian regional local government climate adaptation planners build adaptive capacity, improve adaptation planning and response through integration of Traditional Owner values and knowledge, and establish partnerships between local governments and Traditional Owners in working together to address impacts of climate change.
The intervention was an Adaptation Forum, led and delivered by the Dja Dja Wurrung Aboriginal Clans Corporation (DJAARA). Staff from 11 local governments in central Victoria, and other land governance bodies were brought together on Dja Dja Wurrung Country (Djandak) to build cultural awareness of Dja Dja Wurrung climate resilience strategies and promote the formation of partnerships for climate adaptation planning in the region.
We used quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate the Adaptation Forum. We asked five standard evaluation questions: did it meet participants’ needs (relevance); did it fit with existing priorities and activities in the region (coherence); did it change behavioural influences and behaviour (effectiveness); did it improve adaptive capacity and partnerships (impact); did any benefits last (sustainability).
The Adaptation Forum was found to successfully meet the attendees' needs and aligning with existing government strategies and the broader transformation in climate adaptation that emphasises regional, local government, and Traditional Owner perspectives. It increased attendees' cultural awareness, knowledge, and willingness to engage with DJAARA.
However, the forum's impact on local government adaptive capacity was limited, and fewer partnerships were formed than anticipated. Several barriers to greater impact were identified, including the need to address historical injustice and participate in processes of reconciliation between governments and Dja Dja Wurrung People; differences in how governments and DJAARA approach projects, partnerships, and collaboration; and a lack of resources / existing successful models to support meaningful engagement of Dja Dja Wurrung in adaptation planning.
To address these barriers, Adaptation Forum attendees recommended local governments and DJAARA (1) participating in ongoing processes of reconciliation (2) involving council key decision- makers in DJAARA-led activities; (3) highlighting successful projects or partnerships to demonstrate how collaboration can happen; (4) working with other governance bodies, like the Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance, to pool resources and helping to create more consistent approaches for engagement across councils; (5) continuing to use experimental approaches or embedding evaluations in partnerships to support learning and demonstrating ‘what works’ to build adaptive capacity and meaningful partnerships between local governments and DJAARA in climate adaptation.
Attendees also suggested that future versions of the Adaptation Forum in new contexts should dedicate time to understanding and preparing for potential barriers, inviting key decision-makers, making specific asks for commitments to action, and providing ways for attendees to continue to communicate and work together.

The release of ChatGPT in November 2022 heralded a new era in various professional fields, yet its application in qualitative data analysis (QDA) remains underdeveloped. This article presents an experiment involving applying ChatGPT (Model GPT-4) to thematic analysis. By employing an adapted version of King et al.'s (2018) Template Analysis framework, this article aims to assess how ChatGPT can help with QDA in a full analytical process of a sample dataset provided by Lumivero. My experiment includes applying ChatGPT in four stages: data familiarization; preliminary coding and initial template formation; clustering and template modification and finalization; and theme development. Findings reveal GPT-4's capacity in efficiency and speed in grasping the data and generating codes, subcodes, clusters, and themes, alongside its learning and adapting capabilities. However, the current version of the model has limitations in terms of effectively handling detailed analysis of large databases and producing consistent results, as well as the need to move across workspaces and the lack of relevant training data for QDA purposes.

In disaster scholarship, there is limited understanding about how vulnerability is socially constructed by a convergence of varying social structural and historical processes that predispose certain vulnerable groups to disasters even before a hazard event occurs. This article aims to fill this void by using Critical Disaster Studies perspectives to explore the root causes of why crop farmers in the coastal region of the Vietnamese Mekong Delta have been locked in a permanent position of vulnerability. In order to develop more sustainable food supply chains, this exploration aims to shed light on the socio-cultural interpretations, experiences, and needs of disaster-affected farmers-the most important but vulnerable actors in the crop production hierarchy in Vietnam. Following a historic disaster between late 2015 and early 2016, local governments deliberately organised farmers into an agricultural cooperative in an attempt to support farmers in enhancing economic resilience and disaster preparedness. However, this intervention has failed since farmers refused to participate in the organisation's activities. While this reaction may seem irrational, it reflects farmers' distrust in the government, which was largely a result of their collective trauma from the state's agricultural collectivisation policy implemented between 1976 and 1985. Farmers chose to cling to their individual working routines out of concern about government supervision, forcing them to take bigger risks and pay for the food supply chains' catastrophic damage. Our findings show that a strained relationship between farmers and the government can jeopardise disaster recovery and resilience building. Our paper adds to the Critical Disaster Studies literature by revisiting the concepts of vulnerability and resilience, emphasising the importance of addressing socio-cultural vulnerability before improving disaster resilience.

Nghiên cứu định tính này sử dụng tiếp cận lý thuyết từ cơ sở (grounded theory) để khảo sát và xây dựng mô hình lý thuyết về khả năng tham gia của phụ nữ H‟re và Kor trong chương trình 135 giai đoạn II và chương trình ISP tại các huyện miền núi tỉnh Quảng Ngãi. Bài viết cho thấy khả năng tham gia của phụ nữ H‟re và Kor dường như bị hạn chế từ phía môi trường khách quan (thể chế) và cũng như từ bản thân họ. Dựa trên kết quả nghiên cứu này, bài viết đưa ra các giả thuyết: (i) hệ thống cung cấp thông tin cho người dân trong các huyện miền núi Quảng Ngãi thiên về nam giới; (ii) khả năng tiếp cận thông tin của phụ nữ H‟re và Kor trong hai chương trình 135-II và ISP bị hạn chế và kém hơn nam giới cùng dân tộc; (iii) các chính quyền địa phương/ ban quản lý dự án chưa chú ý nhiều đến việc tham vấn ý kiến của người phụ nữ; và (iv) khả năng biểu hiện ý kiến của người phụ nữ thấp. Các dữ liệu được trình bày dưới dạng các câu chuyện, đối thoại, các ghi chép, các lược đồ và các bảng, nhằm mục đíc...

There is a scant literature discussing how risk-taking behaviour is influenced by the interplay of agency and social structures. This article seeks to fill this void by utilising Bourdieu's theory of practice to develop the Practice-Oriented Risk Habitus and Multiple-Capital Model (P-HAC) to account for Vietnamese farmers' risk-taking practice. Risk habitus is the durable organising principles of risk-relating practice. Drawing on a qualitative case study of a disaster-prone rural commune in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, we found that farmers have developed a risk habitus drawing on multiple capitals that are suitable to their agricultural production. Particularly, natural, built and cultural capitals combined to restructure farmers' risk perception, economic capital provided farmers with a compelling incentive to take risk, while social capital can act as a buffer against risk. Yet, capitals are not always positive. Social and cultural capital could impose negative community habitus on individual farmers' risk-taking practice.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools have been used to improve the productivity of evidence review and synthesis since at least 2016, with EPPI-Reviewer and Abstrackr being two prominent examples. However, since the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in late 2022, a large language model with an intuitive chatbot interface, the use of AI-powered tools for research – especially those that deal with text-based data – has exploded. In this working paper, we describe how we used the AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT, ChatGPT for Sheets and Docs, Casper AI, and ChatPDF to assist several stages of an evidence review. Our goal is to demonstrate how AI-powered tools can boost research productivity, identify their current weaknesses, and provide recommendations for researchers looking to utilize them.

The Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD) has experienced a series of unprecedented disasters in the last decade, resulting from a combination of drought and saline intrusion in the 2015-2016 and 2019-2020 dry seasons. These events have severely impacted the region's agricultural sustainability and people's livelihoods, prompting an urgent need to explore their root causes and derive lessons for future prevention. Despite a growing body of literature on disaster vulnerability, little has been done to address these questions in the Vietnamese context. This article seeks to bridge this gap by critically examining Vietnam's food politics and agricultural modernisation policies in relation to changes in water resource management, disaster risk management and farming practices. Through a case study of Tan Hung commune in Soc Trang province, the article argues that the current vulnerability to disasters, exemplified by the unsustainable system of triple rice cultivation, is an uninten...

Evidence is increasing that a substantial proportion of people who are incarcerated in youth and adult correctional facilities have a disability. The high rate of people with disability in the criminal justice system is likely to be the effect of complex interactions between systemic, structural and individual factors. These include a lack of awareness and inappropriate management of challenging behaviours among service providers, and a compromised ability to understand and navigate the judicial system or access needed services. Detention in the criminal justice system is associated with a range of poor outcomes, one of which is homelessness. Homelessness includes experiences of sleeping rough on the street, staying in temporary or insecure accommodation, or in housing that is inadequate for privacy and social relations. Homelessness, and related experiences of housing instability, can affect a person’s wellbeing and become part of a cycle of health problems, justice system involvement and institutional care. Given the high proportion of people with disability involved with the justice system and the vulnerability for homelessness created by being incarcerated, the objectives for this project were to review the evidence on: 1. the factors that contribute to homelessness post-release for people with disability 2. the effectiveness of interventions designed to prevent or reduce homelessness post-release for people with disability 3. the policies, strategies, initiatives, and programs of corrective services in each Australian jurisdiction that address the housing needs of people with disability leaving their facilities.

There is a scant literature discussing how risk-taking behaviour is influenced by the interplay of agency and social structures. This article seeks to fill this void by utilising Bourdieu's theory of practice to develop the Practice-Oriented Risk Habitus and Multiple-Capital Model (P-HAC) to account for Vietnamese farmers' risk-taking practice. Risk habitus is the durable organising principles of risk-relating practice. Drawing on a qualitative case study of a disaster-prone rural commune in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, we found that farmers have developed a risk habitus drawing on multiple capitals that are suitable to their agricultural production. Particularly, natural, built and cultural capitals combined to restructure farmers' risk perception, economic capital provided farmers with a compelling incentive to take risk, while social capital can act as a buffer against risk. Yet, capitals are not always positive. Social and cultural capital could impose negative community habitus on individual farmers' risk-taking practice.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools have been used to improve the productivity of evidence review and synthesis since at least 2016, with EPPI-Reviewer and Abstrackr being two prominent examples. However, since the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in late 2022, a large language model with an intuitive chatbot interface, the use of AI-powered tools for research – especially those that deal with text-based data – has exploded. In this working paper, we describe how we used the AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT, ChatGPT for Sheets and Docs, Casper AI, and ChatPDF to assist several stages of an evidence review. Our goal is to demonstrate how AI-powered tools can boost research productivity, identify their current weaknesses, and provide recommendations for researchers looking to utilize them.

The Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD) has experienced a series of unprecedented disasters in the last decade, resulting from a combination of drought and saline intrusion in the 2015-2016 and 2019-2020 dry seasons. These events have severely impacted the region's agricultural sustainability and people's livelihoods, prompting an urgent need to explore their root causes and derive lessons for future prevention. Despite a growing body of literature on disaster vulnerability, little has been done to address these questions in the Vietnamese context. This article seeks to bridge this gap by critically examining Vietnam's food politics and agricultural modernisation policies in relation to changes in water resource management, disaster risk management and farming practices. Through a case study of Tan Hung commune in Soc Trang province, the article argues that the current vulnerability to disasters, exemplified by the unsustainable system of triple rice cultivation, is an unintended consequence of Vietnam's agricultural reform and biased water management approach, which relies heavily on large-scale irrigation infrastructure.

Based on a revised multiple capital framework called the Funnel of Multiple Capital Deployment (FMAD), this article provides a critical reflection on how local communities in Vietnam respond to disasters and climate change. This framework depicts communities' dispositions to mobilize and allocate various community capitals to relevant collective actions in order to successfully adapt to external threats such as disaster risks and climate change. The deployment of this capital is heavily influenced by the state's institutional capacity for disaster risk management and climate change adaptation. This article demonstrates this framework by reviewing recent research on disaster risk management and climate change adaptation in Vietnamese scholarship. The article demonstrates that local practices of using various capital in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation are informed by a wealth of evidence from the current literature, even though the reviewed studies did no...

PurposeThis article examines how farmers' assignment of responsibility for the disaster in late 2015 – early 2016 connects with reflexivity, habitus and local vulnerability.Design/methodology/approachThis article uses semi-structured interviews with 28 disaster-affected households in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta to answer the question.FindingsThis article finds out that Vietnamese farmers actively accepted their responsibility for the disaster. In their explanation, they link their action with the root causes of vulnerability embedded in their socio-cultural traditions and collective identity.Research limitations/implicationsThis article makes a case for the importance of local culture and epistemologies in understanding disaster vulnerability and responsibility attribution.Originality/valueThis article is original in researching Vietnamese farmers' responsibility attribution, their aesthetic reflexivity, collective habitus and the socio-cultural root causes of disaster.

In Vietnam, it is commonly believed that gender norms, sex labour segregation, and structural organization of social institutions often favour male dominance while restricting women's roles in domestic spheres. However, there is a scant literature of Vietnamese scholarship on the determinants of gender role attitudes, especially geographical disparities. This paper aims to fill this void by using a nationally representative survey with 8288 respondents. Our findings suggested that age, marital status, religion, education, living area, region, ethnicity, and personal monthly income are the factors that predicted gender attitudes. In terms of regional disparities, we found that Northerners were more permissive in their gender attitudes than Southerners, which may be explained by distinct historical and political trajectories in Northern and Southern Vietnam during the last century. There were, however, inconsistent patterns among different age cohorts whereby region significantly impacted the attitudes of women born before the end of the French War in 1954, men born after the Reunification in 1975, as well as both men and women born between 1954 and 1975.

Purpose This article examines how farmers' assignment of responsibility for the disaster in late 2015 – early 2016 connects with reflexivity, habitus and local vulnerability. Design/methodology/approach This article uses semi-structured interviews with 28 disaster-affected households in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta to answer the question. Findings This article finds out that Vietnamese farmers actively accepted their responsibility for the disaster. In their explanation, they link their action with the root causes of vulnerability embedded in their socio-cultural traditions and collective identity. Research limitations/implications This article makes a case for the importance of local culture and epistemologies in understanding disaster vulnerability and responsibility attribution. Originality/value This article is original in researching Vietnamese farmers' responsibility attribution, their aesthetic reflexivity, collective habitus and the socio-cultural root causes of disaster.

Scholars and policymakers often use their expert knowledge to define the risk that laypeople face. Nonetheless, they have frequently overlooked how laypeople describe and explain the risks they face on a daily basis. Moreover, an emphasis on individualisation and reflexivity in Western societies has led to little understanding of how a non-Western community constructs its shared risk culture and how this culture associates aesthetic reflexivity and risk epistemologies. The purpose of this research is to fill these gaps by exploring how Vietnamese farmers reflexively define risk in their everyday lives, which in turn informs their risk-taking attitude and action. Drawing on a case study of disaster-prone farmers in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, this research reveals a distinct set of farmers’ risk epistemologies through a process of hermeneutic reflexivity situated in their risk culture and a shared identity. They do not view risk as wholly negative but rather as an opportunity to att...

Scholars and policymakers often use their expert knowledge to define the risk that laypeople face. Nonetheless, they have frequently overlooked how laypeople describe and explain the risks they face on a daily basis. Moreover, an emphasis on individualisation and reflexivity in Western societies has led to little understanding of how a non-Western community constructs its shared risk culture and how this culture associates aesthetic reflexivity and risk epistemologies. The purpose of this research is to fill these gaps by exploring how Vietnamese farmers reflexively define risk in their everyday lives, which in turn informs their risk-taking attitude and action. Drawing on a case study of disaster-prone farmers in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, this research reveals a distinct set of farmers' risk epistemologies through a process of hermeneutic reflexivity situated in their risk culture and a shared identity. They do not view risk as wholly negative but rather as an opportunity to attain the aim of surviving and profiting. They see cultivating a risky crop as a collective action of risking their lives, sharing with their community both the challenges and the opportunities that risk might offer. My article makes a case for sociological research into non-Western civilizations, where late modernity and reflexivity might not be accompanied by individualisation but rather with collectivism and tradition.

This article is motivated by my personal wish to pay tribute to my beloved grandfather, who passed away during the COVID-19 pandemic while I was stranded in Australia. Relying on an evocative autoethnography of a grandson, a father, a PhD candidate and graduate, and a researcher, and in reference to the concepts of place-making theories such as time-space expansion, I tried to embrace my experience of grief and loss as well as to make sense of my feelings of distance, impermanence, and death during this chaotic period. The story I will tell below chronicles my emotional and spiritual journey from the moment I first learned of my grandfather's illness (early 2020) until the time after his passing (October 2021). I have found out that during this process of attempting to converse with, heal, and take care of myself, I have transcended the physicalsocial aspects of place and touched on spiritual space.

Family is one of the most important institutions in our society. This fact was strongly confirmed in the modern society, but since 1950s has been challenged by the rise of phenomena such as cohabitation, divorce, homosexual relationships. The changes in social reality have shifted social thoughts from the emphasis on family life to the diversity of personal lives. The author examines the shift from modernism to postmodernism, in view of transforming from the sociology of the family to the sociology of personal life. This article begins with the discussion of failure of conventional approach to the family, it then shows the challenges of social life to modernity and finally demonstrates the variety of personal lives' phenomena in contemporary society.

Care of the self, according to Michel Foucault, is the practice of coming back to one's soul and construct the truth of self. While in ancient times, people cared for themselves by writing in hupomnemata, in our modern times, we use social network sites (SNSs) or social media. These digital platforms have provided users with many technological advantages to conduct the online care of self. Sharing a post, posting a status, tweeting a photo or video, replying to a friend's comments, or revising stories stored in their virtual timeline is one of many self-care acts in a virtual space. However, these advantages of digital technologies accompany with the challenges of losing freedom or being supervized by algorithms whenever individuals engage in social media. This paper tries to answer the question that how modern practices of hupomnemata and care for self, are supported and manipulated by social media's algorithms. The paper is expected to contribute a new understanding of the self and care for the self in contemporary social media engagement.

Từ sự kiện lịch sử Hạn mặn năm 2015-2016 dẫn tới những thiệt hại to lớn đối với nông dân trồng lúa vụ 3 ở Đồng bằng Sông Cửu Long, bài viết thảo luận nguyên nhân gây ra tình trạng dễ tổn thương của nông dân. Tại sao họ lại dễ bị thiệt hại từ hạn mặn? Sâu xa hơn, tại sao họ lại chấp nhận làm một vụ lúa rủi ro lớn như vậy? Để làm rõ điều đó, bài viết sử dụng dữ liệu định tính gồm phỏng vấn nông hộ và cán bộ địa phương cùng với phân tích tài liệu để chỉ ra những nguyên do tới từ HIỆN TẠI VÀ QUÁ KHỨ và từ phía NÔNG HỘ VÀ CHÍNH SÁCH, THỂ CHẾ. Bốn khía cạnh này cắt nhau. Ở chiều hiện tại, nông hộ thiếu hụt kinh nghiệm ứng phó với hạn mặn, tâm lý chủ quan, sự phụ thuộc vào độc canh lúa, và tâm lý đánh cược với thiên tai từ phía nông dân cùng với môi trường thiếu hụt các hỗ trợ chuyển đổi sinh kế từ môi trường chính sách kết hợp với nhau. Ở chiều quá khứ, đó là chính sách tăng cường nông nghiệp sau thống nhất đất nước cùng với quá trình xây dựng hệ thống thủy lợi ngăn mặn giữ ngọt khiến cho nông dân có cơ hội chuyển đổi từ một vụ/năm lên 2-3 vụ/năm. Từ đó vụ 3 trở thành một điểm nóng, vực giới hạn khiến nông dân đứng trước rủi ro cực lớn từ hạn hán và xâm nhập mặn. Như vậy, tính dễ tổn thương của nông dân trồng lúa vụ 3 trước hạn mặn là kết quả phát triển từ lịch sử tương tác giữa nông dân với tư cách là các chủ thể có năng lực hành động và môi trường chính sách thể chế với tư cách là cấu trúc xã hội.

Tóm tắt: Những thay đổi trong chính sách đất đai từ những thập niên 90 trở lại đây của Việt Nam góp phần đáng kể trong việc tăng nhanh sản lượng nông nghiệp và phát triển nông thôn nói chung và của Đồng bằng sông Cửu Long nói riêng. Mặc dù vậy, vấn đề nông nghiệp ở Đồng bằng sông Cửu Long vẫn còn chưa thoát khỏi đặc trưng của nền nông nghiệp tiểu nông để chuyển sang nền nông nghiệp hàng hóa. Bài viết này trình bày kết quả của cuộc nghiên cứu về xã hội tiểu nông tại Đồng bằng sông Cửu Long tiến hành năm 2014 tại hai xã Thân Cửu Nghĩa (tỉnh Tiền Giang) và Tân Long (tỉnh Hậu Giang). Bài viết tập trung vào các nội dung: bàn về quy mô sản xuất qua hiện trạng diện tích đất canh tác nông nghiệp; trình bày hiện tượng nông dân không đất với thảo luận thêm nỗ lực của nhóm hộ này trong việc tìm kiếm các nguồn thu nhập phi nông nghiệp; thảo luận về nguồn gốc đất đai, hiện tượng phụ canh, và cuối cùng là phân tích tình trạng sử dụng đất nông nghiệp hiện nay ở hai xã khảo sát. Từ khóa: kinh tế tiểu nông, nguồn gốc đất, phụ canh, nông dân không đất, Đồng bằng sông Cửu Long.

Bài viết này sử dụng số liệu của hai xã là Hải Vân thuộc tỉnh Nam Định và Thân Cửu Nghĩa thuộc tỉnh Tiền Giang nhằm phân tích sự khác biệt trong cách thức tham gia vào đời sống hội nhóm và các liên kết dân sự của người dân nông thôn ở vùng Đồng bằng sông Hồng và Đồng bằng sông Cửu Long. Số liệu định lượng cho thấy việc tham gia vào hội nhóm ở xã Hải Vân tích cực hơn so với ở xã Thân Cửu Nghĩa. Cơ chế gắn kết của các loại liên kết xã hội của người dân được khảo sát ở Hải Vân cũng tỏ ra chắc chắn và mang lại nhiều lợi ích về mặt tinh thần, thông tin hơn, trong khi người dân Thân Cửu Nghĩa sử dụng liên kết xã hội đặc biệt là các đoàn thể chính thức nhằm tìm kiếm các giúp đỡ về vật chất. Kết quả này được cho có nguồn gốc từ sự khác biệt cơ cấu tổ chức xã hội, nơi mà làng xã miền Bắc vẫn mang dáng dấp làng xã cổ truyền khép kín, với quan hệ nội tại mạnh mẽ, trong khi làng xã miền Nam có xu hướng mở với các liên kết xã hội tự do và phục vụ lợi ích kinh tế nhiều hơn.

Since Doi Moi (i.e. the Renovation) in 1986, Vietnam has substantially transformed its society from one of the poorest countries into a middle-income country. The socio-economic reforms have led academics to the focus on studying macro problems such as economic reform, weak government, civil society or social inequality. In the mean time, the investigation of micro aspects presented in everyday life has been often neglected. The presentation of everyday life, however, is essential to understand social structure in general. This paper employs the concept of “deference rituals” developed by Erving Goffman to investigate the ways Vietnamese people address others, give them exclamations, and perform salutation rituals in their day-to-day life. By doing so, the paper aims to answer the question that why it is functional for society that those deference rituals are carried out; and what their performance does accomplish for maintenance of social interaction order. The paper finds out that although these small rituals are usually considered as mundane forms, their displays serve to help Vietnamese participants show their respect to and readiness to comply with the wishes of the seniors, ensuring the stability of a hierarchical order.

Nghiên cứu dân tộc học, văn hoá và lịch sử đã có những mô tả khá chi tiết về đời sống hội nhóm ở các miền quê Bắc Bộ. Các nghiên cứu Pierre Gourou, Đào Duy Anh, Phan Kế Bính, Nguyễn Văn Huyên và Nguyễn Từ Chi đã làm nổi bật xu hướng hội nhóm rất sinh động bên trong các làng xã cổ truyền xứ Bắc Kỳ. Trong bài viết này, tác giả sử dụng cách tiếp cận hiện đại dựa trên khái niệm xã hội dân sự và các đặc trưng của nó nhằm làm mới lại những cứ liệu cũ về đời sống hội nhóm trong các thôn quê trước năm 1954.

Trong khi các nghiên cứu thực nghiệm nổi lên ngày càng nhiều, các bàn luận xoay quanh vấn đề phương pháp nghiên cứu trong khoa học xã hội Việt Nam còn ít ỏi. Để góp thêm vào việc phân tích, thảo luận về các phương pháp, kỹ thuật nghiên cứu cụ thể trong thu thập và phân tích dữ liệu của các nhà nghiên cứu khoa học xã hội, bài viết giới thiệu những nhận thức sai lầm phổ biến trong phương pháp quan sát định tính, sau đó đưa ra một kỹ thuật cụ thể - kỹ thuật mô tả sâu để giảm thiểu các sai lầm đó.

This article addresses the concept of ―face‖ in the practices of Vietnamese deference rituals. It explores how Vietnamese people conceptualize the term ―face‖ regarding the manner of showing respect to other people in everyday encounters. Drawing upon the qualitative dataset of my Master thesis, in this article I employ the concepts of ―face‖ and ―deference rituals‖ derived from Goffman‘s theory of social interaction to analyze Vietnamese day-to-day social interactions. I find out that the face in the context of social interaction is often classified into two categories: the face of the subordinate and the face of the superordinate. Due to the high status of the latter in Vietnamese hierarchical system, losing face can lead to serious consequences to the latter; while for the former losing face is often belittled. There is a similarity between ―face‖ and ―deference ritual‖ in Vietnam with those in other countries such as Japan, China, and at the same time, a crucial difference in those terms between Vietnamese culture and Western culture.

Nation Target Programme on New Rural Development, launched in 2009, has been one of Vietnam’s main programs in recent decades. The Government of Vietnam considers the success of NTP-NRD as the major drivers of the country’s industrialization and modernization. After over five years of implementation, the Program has achieved some remarkable successes. However, there have been difficulties facing the GoV in further development and meeting the goals of NRP-NRD. This paper provides some insights on the concepts of “new rural area”, “new rural development” from historical perspective. This paper aims to discuss the emergence of “new rural development” ideas as well as its formation as a national target program. This paper argues that the ideas of new rural development program had come before the advent of historical Resolution 26 (2008), tracing back to the Forth Party Congress in 1976. The paper seeks to describe the process of evolution of this concept into a national target program through the roles of policy-makers, especially the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV).

Nghiên cứu này nhằm tìm hiểu về khoảng cách giữa nhận thức và thực hành của sinh viên trong "học tập tích cực". Nghiên cứu sử dụng cơ sở dữ liệu điều tra 300 sinh viên thuộc 6 trường đại học ở Hà Nội. Phát hiện từ nghiên cứu cho thấy, thực sự vẫn tồn tại một khoảng cách đáng kể giữa nhận thức và thực hành trong "học tập tích cực". Các biến số như phương pháp giảng tích cực, tâm trạng hào hứng, vui vẻ, vị trí ngồi đầu lớp, chủ động chọn ngành học, tính cách mạnh dạn, v.v. là những biến số có thể góp phần làm giảm khoảng cách giữa nhận thức và thực hành.

The dramaturgical model in sociology was developed by Erving Goffman in his famous work "The Presentation of Self in Everyday life" published in 1959. This theoretical model views social life as a stage on which an individual plays a role of performer, and tries to impress audience throughout her/his show. This viewpoint is one of Goffman's substantial contributions to comprehension of social interaction in day-to-day life. However, recent advances in communication technologies, especially the diffusion of the Internet and mobile phones, have brought many significant changes to social world. Those changes have led to the demand of revising Goffman's theory in order to better capture the nature and the rules of current social phenomena. This paper aims at assessing Goffman's dramaturgical model by examining contemporary social interaction based on recent improvement in communication technologies. Four main points in his framework including the interaction order, self, front, backstages and frontstages are put into discussion. By reviewing recent research, the paper suggests some modifications to Goffman's theory and leaves some questions for the future research to investigate.

Nghiên cứu định tính này sử dụng tiếp cận lý thuyết từ cơ sở (grounded theory) để khảo sát và xây dựng mô hình lý thuyết về khả năng tham gia của phụ nữ H‟re và Kor trong chương trình 135 giai đoạn II và chương trình ISP tại các huyện miền núi tỉnh Quảng Ngãi. Bài viết cho thấy khả năng tham gia của phụ nữ H‟re và Kor dường như bị hạn chế từ phía môi trường khách quan (thể chế) và cũng như từ bản thân họ. Dựa trên kết quả nghiên cứu này, bài viết đưa ra các giả thuyết: (i) hệ thống cung cấp thông tin cho người dân trong các huyện miền núi Quảng Ngãi thiên về nam giới; (ii) khả năng tiếp cận thông tin của phụ nữ H‟re và Kor trong hai chương trình 135-II và ISP bị hạn chế và kém hơn nam giới cùng dân tộc; (iii) các chính quyền địa phương/ ban quản lý dự án chưa chú ý nhiều đến việc tham vấn ý kiến của người phụ nữ; và (iv) khả năng biểu hiện ý kiến của người phụ nữ thấp. Các dữ liệu được trình bày dưới dạng các câu chuyện, đối thoại, các ghi chép, các lược đồ và các bảng, nhằm mục đích xác định các mô hình lý thuyết cho các nghiên cứu tiếp theo

This thesis explores the contribution of agency and social structures to the evolution of the social vulnerability in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD), following a historic drought and saline intrusion in late 2015 – early 2016. Based on qualitative case study research, I conducted 28 farm household interviews, 21 key informant interviews with stakeholders, documentary and archival records analysis, and direct observation. I employ secondary quantitative data analysis, quantitative analysis of household data, and thematic analysis of qualitative data to provide a comprehensive assessment of the topic. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of practice, I consider farmers as the agents, who have capacities to make decisions and take actions under the enabling and constraining conditions of the field of agriculture. In the present timeframe, I examine how they form their perception of risks and natural hazards in everyday life. Positioning crop production at the centre of their lives, farmers ranked natural hazard risks as the most fearsome threat, ahead of rice pests, pathogens, and market instability. Farmers described the 2015-2016 disaster as a crop failure, identifying physical happenings, financial effects, crop damages and psychological burdens. They were able to identify the contributing factors leading to the event. While some criticised government officials for the occurrence of the disaster, farmers actively accepted their responsibility for contributing to the event. This reflects their collective habitus that is formed upon the use of cultural capital (belief in rice and land values, normalising risks), economic capital (land, money, assets), and social capital (bonding, bridging and linking relationships). The habitus shown in the use of these capitals for risk management strategies have been connected to deeply buried social structures, which can be dated back to the transformation of the agricultural field in the post-reunification of Vietnam context. The Vietnamese state, the dominant agent of the political field, pursued a food politics that turned the VMD into a ‘rice bowl’, took on agricultural modernisation with an emphasis on agricultural intensification and large-scale irrigation work construction. As a result, farmers were motivated to transform their habitus and cropping practice, which has seen them transitioning from a single cropping to a triple cropping system, putting themselves in a position of planting a risky crop 3 that was vulnerable to the present conditions of natural hazards (i.e., saline intrusion). In short, I argue that the current disaster vulnerability is a product of historical interplay between social structures and farmers’ agency.

In late 2015, the El Nĩno phenomenon induced Vietnam’s worst drought in 60 years, which lasted until mid-2016 and intensified the most expansive saline intrusion in 90 years. The combination of the two hazards resulted in a large-scale disaster, which has led 18 provinces of Vietnam, most of them from the Mekong Delta, to water shortage, insanitation, human and animal diseases, food emergency need and a considerable disruption in local communities’ livelihoods. These devastating effects raise the question of what makes local households vulnerable to drought and saline intrusion. The chapter argues that vulnerability to the natural disaster is not something resulted from external threats, but rather, is derived from the interplay between social structures residing deeply inside the socio-economic systems and agency’s conditions presenting at the household level. Social structures are rules and procedures that constrain and/or enable human actions in agricultural production, risk taking and adaptation. Agency refers to the capacities of disaster-affected households in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta who cultivated third rice crop and suffered heavily from the 2015–2016 disaster. In addition to households’ lack of planning and coping capacities, the constitution of vulnerability to drought and saline intrusion can be attributed to the interaction between farmers’ choice of extra rice crops and the state’s policies and directions in agricultural and irrigation development since 1990s to date.

Chapter 1 outlines the theoretical framework the authors used to research and analyze Vietnam’s social capital. This chapter explores the origins of the concept “social capital” in Western scholarly history since the work of Lyda J. Hanifan (1916), and discusses the development of social capital theories thorough various studies conducted scholars such as Pierre Bourdieu (1986), James Coleman (1988), Robert Putnam (1993, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002), Francis Fukuyama (1995, 2001), Alejandro Portes (1998, 2000), Nan Lin (1999, 2001). Furthermore, the chapter also points out the debate around the advantages/disadvantages of applying social capital theories to solving development issues including the works by Narayan (1997), Narayan and Cassidy (2001), Rose (1999, 2000), Woolcock (1998), Woolcock and Narayan (2000). The chapter provides discussion on different forms of social capital including the distinction between bonding social capital and bridging social capital from social network perspective and identifies how this perspective has been employed in actual research. Finally, the chapter divides social capital’s functions into two groups, positive and negative. Regarding positive function, it discusses how social capital can be utilized in boosting household’s livelihood activities, promoting civil society’s growth, advancing economic development, and building social trust. Concerning negative function, the chapter analyses how social capital could exclude outsiders, demand high responsibility from while limiting personal freedom and the development of group insiders.

As a long, narrow country featuring varying climate conditions, Vietnam suffers heavily from various natural hazards and climatic extremes such as storm, typhoon, flood, earthquake, landslides every year. Therefore, building disaster and climate change resilience has been central to Vietnam’s national strategy for disaster prevention, response and mitigation since 2007. Following that national direction, building disaster and climate change resilience has been practiced throughout the country. Literature on such the topic, conducted at different levels (from local to central) and from different approaches and disciplines, have revealed that local communities of Vietnam have their unique mechanisms for mitigating and recovering from adverse events like natural hazards. One of the mechanisms is the use of social capital as a crucial resource assisting community members in tackling disaster risks and climatic extremes and effectively bouncing back from suffering. This presentation aims to provide a review of Vietnamese scholarship carried out in the last decade (2007-2017) on the relation between social capital and disaster and climate change resilience. The presentation offers insights into social and cultural patterns in the use of social capital in building resilience to natural disasters and climate change in varying communities studied. The presentation also contributes to debates on the same topic at regional and global levels.