Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Vietnam (i)
from sociologist Jonathan D. London and Vietnamese studies
Knowing anything about that country and people is a royal pain in the ass. Everyone thinks they own the place.
First off, the nationals, well, the multi-nationals. See, that is one of the prickly bits, there are several nations of that country and people.
Then everyone else on the planet, who either have an opinion or think you should be studying their country instead. I have been chewed out by a cab driver for not studying the Arab world which he was perfectly correct is a more pressing need.
He no doubt was a refugee qualified for something more exalted than driving a cab, as I am not really to do, well, anything. Except I suppose teaching the history of our kind since speciation or strength training.
Yet there I was, riding to an area studies meeting on my own dime, as I had walked into the Vietnamese ghetto of that city to find the bookstores and newspapers where I had conversations with people who reasonably considered me to be some kind of police.
People pay money for what you do, the first doctor I consulted when I had alarming symptoms told me. You are very good at it. You have been volunteering among very difficult people.
No wonder you are depressed. Not any more. Not for a long time now. My buddies, even the ones I don't get along with, we all deny that we are experts.
We work in the aura of the military, where an expert is someone who can carry out a specific task to a certain standard and teach another to do just that. Nobody in my thing can do that
because there are no standards. That is the meaning of that nation. Heaps accumulated by life of potsherds broken by struggle.
But if you take the shilling the decent thing to do is to acknowledge expertise if only by denying that you have any. It is a fucking job.
In that third-world nation itself and in all of the first world except the United States of America one Viet Nam expert can support a family raising and launching children to similar status while caring for parents. Here you can maybe kind of do that when you are loaded or your spouse has a real job.
But the USA will leave you alone. You don't have to be a country expert. You don't have to deny being an authority. You can work,
on knowing what you are talking about. You could, for example, read this book. Nobody in there is an expert. They all talk about what they know.
This was the first Viet Nam letter of 4 so far addressed to The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Vietnam, edited by Jonathan D. London. The second came on January 14, 2023 and the third on February 10, 2023.
The fourth, on April 14, 2023, was also the first of 1 so far on The Communist Party of Vietnam, also by Jonathan D. London.
Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.
