ABSTRACT
Eager, young, and naïve researchers are pervasive in the social sciences. I was certainly no exception, and although I still may be considered naïve, I am probably not as eager as I once was. I think back to the first years I worked in Vietnam. My approach to interviews with officials, employees, tour guides, and executives in the Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) tourism industry was the antithesis of elegance. I would send a generic email to hundreds of people in the industry in the days before I arrived in HCMC stating that I would be there from this day to that one, write a (short) biography and research agenda (in horrifically esoteric language), include some questions to discuss, and list times and dates when I was available; all in English, not Vietnamese. I am surprised I received any feedback at all! Those who did respond were invariably employees in foreign-owned tourism companies who have a glint of contextual understanding about the nature of the ‘Western business interview’. The majority, however, responded in a more appropriate (and for me, frustrating) way: with silence. Over the course of years spent conducting research in Vietnam, I have come to learn that scholarly eagerness is best left behind in the US. The most fulfilling feedback I have received on Vietnam’s doi moi (open door) policies, ideas of Vietnamese culture, and entrepreneurialism through the lens of the HCMC tourism industry has come from informal gatherings, usually at a home or a restaurant. Asian scholars with methodological leanings toward the qualitative are doubtless familiar with the importance of time spent in the home, at restaurants, and in the early mornings and late evenings in order to facilitate answers to their research questions. I too have conducted some of my work in these places and under these conditions, and there would not be anything called scholarly ‘progress’ without them.
