ABSTRACT
What has gone before has been, for the most part, descriptive of economic activity in the village of Khanh Hau, with only passing attempts to assess its meaning, if any, in the broader context of village society as a whole and its implications for future economic development. The question remains: are there any generalizations which can be made about the village and its people as a social organism to which the isolated bits of behavior can be related and within which they can be further explained and understood? Is there any synthesis possible in which the contributing points of view of the sociologist, the political scientist, and the economist can become part of a better understanding of village life, free of the confining scope of each discipline when each is applied separately? In short, can something of the breadth of insight toward which the novelist customarily gropes be achieved through the marshaling of data amassed via the techniques of the social scientist? Perhaps not, but the aim of this chapter is to attempt such a synthesis. 1
