ABSTRACT
In recent years interest in Vietnam has surged alongside the country’s changing economic fortunes and increasing accessibility. Yet understanding Vietnam remains formidably difficult, particularly if we desire to understand the country in its full complexity. Written as the introduction to the most wide-ranging scholarly survey of contemporary Vietnam yet published, this essay proposes ways of studying Vietnam as an historically emergent, continuously evolving, multifaceted, and internally variegated social order or social whole. The chapter provides an overview of contemporary Vietnam’s recent transformation and proposes ways of understanding contemporary Vietnam in relation to features of its history, politics, economy, socioeconomic conditions, institutions, and culture. The chapter concludes with a brief outline of the 37 essays that make up the balance of the volume it introduces. As this chapter and the volume it introduces attest, the study of contemporary Vietnam is today a cumulative undertaking involving both natives of Vietnam and interested outsiders, reflecting diverse interests, intellectual traditions, and analytical standpoints. The essay affirms that there is, indeed, no one right way to study or understand contemporary Vietnam.
