ABSTRACT
Learning to be a police officer involves both formal and informal processes that are shaped by the contexts and places where they occur. Drawing on ethnographic, interview and observational data, this chapter illuminates individual motivations for becoming police officers in Vietnam, as well as ways students and officers experience the police organisation and navigate their careers. Significant aspects of learning to be a police officer relate to the importance of edification in broader Vietnamese society and the associated norms of tertiary education for police and the study of ‘morality’ which officers are encouraged to draw on to make judgements about their conduct and the conduct of others. This chapter also discusses the way the police institution invokes ‘culture’ as a positive and useful construct which actively shapes police attitudes and socialises them into the occupation, highlighting a long history of associating culture with positive approaches to improving occupational culture.
