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Drawing on a series of RAND interviews with Vietnamese prisoners during the Vietnam War, the paper aims to analyze the role of colonizer–colonized in the production of postcolonial representations (postcoloniality) and the role of the Western corporation in the processes of postcoloniality.

Selected RAND interviews are analyzed using a postcolonial lens and explored through the method of critical hermeneutics.

The analysis supports the contention that Western othering of Third World people is neither completely successful nor one-sided. It is argued that while the Western corporation is an important site for understanding hybridity and postcoloniality, analysis needs to go beyond focusing on the symbolic and the textual to take account of the material conditions in which interactions between colonizer–colonized occur. Finally, there is support for further study of the socio-political character of methods of research in the study of international business.

The case suggests further study of colonizer–colonized interactions outside of the context of an on-going war, which may have heightened some forms of resistance and voice.

The paper draws attention to the continuing problem of Western othering of formerly colonized people through military and commercial engagements that are framed by neo-colonial viewpoints embedded in theories of globalization and research methods.

The paper provides rare glimpses into interactions between colonizing and colonized people, and also the under-research study of the role of the Western corporation in the production of postcoloniality.

Accounting for seventy five percent of urban housing in Vietnam, street houses refer to a mixed-use housing typology that emerged in the 17th century. Such housing has evolved in response to Vietnam's unique culture and environmental conditions. Residential and commercial functions are integrated in a flexible and expandable manner, creating a variety of compositional possibilities in spatial layouts. In addition, transitional spaces such as courtyards, balconies, loggia, and terraces provide shading, cooling, and ventilation effects throughout the building. As one of the most adaptive and popular urban dwellings, the street house has promoted daily domestic activities and the identities of Vietnamese urban areas. However, such valuable aspects have received less attention in many recent urban developments in Vietnam. As such, the goal of this study is to identify and analyze the unparalleled ingenuity of the street house, particularly focusing on its spatial flexibility and environmental responsiveness. Furthermore, this study is intended to apply analytical investigations to the design of contemporary high-rise housing in Vietnam.

With such purposes, this paper is structured in two sequences. In the first phase, typological characteristics of the street house are studied; a field survey is performed to address the evolutionary transformation of the street house. By studying several precedents in Vietnam, our study focused on understanding the ways in which spaces are manipulated and in which diverse indoor and outdoor spaces are created. In addition, passive environmental systems are studied, meaning systems that are integrated with the spaces in order to control the microclimatic conditions of the house. Next, the morphology of the forms and space components are carefully examined through the contemporary examples of street house models in Vietnam. Especially, the flexible nature of the street house, in terms of spatial composition and expansion, is identified. In the second phase, a transition from the street house to high-rise housing is explored based on the previous analytical studies; compositional logic for arranging internal and external spaces are outlined to generate typological unit plans of street houses. Out of diverse design possibilities, an exemplary high-rise building is proposed to address the notions of spatial flexibility and integrated passive systems that are found in the street house. Ultimately, the proposed design aims to enrich dwelling environments for new high-rise urban communities.

This article examines the impact of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) on Korean exports to ASEAN countries by using the system generalized method of moments. The data covered 15 sectors according to their relative importance in Korean exports and spanned from 1980 to 2006. The estimated results suggest that Korea’s exports were diverted to ASEAN members as a result of the AFTA formation. In 5 of the 15 sectors, the AFTA exerted a significant negative effect on Korean exports to ASEAN countries, but for the remaining 9, the results were mixed and statistically insignificant. The results also indicate that the sectoral approach yields more robust and clear-cut results than the aggregate one.

In many countries, innovation in building design for improving energy performance, reducing CO2 emissions and minimizing life cycle cost has received much attention for sustainable development. This paper investigates the importance of optimization tools for enhancing the design performance in the early stages of Vietnam's cooling-dominated buildings in hot and humid climates using an integrated building design approach.

The methodology of this study exploits the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) optimization algorithm coupled with building simulation to research a trade-off between the optimization of investment cost and energy consumption. Our approach focuses on the whole optimization problem of thermal envelope, glazing and energy systems from preliminary design phases. The methodology is then tested for a case study of a non-residential building located in Hanoi.

The results show a considerable improvement in design performance by our method compared to current building design. The optimal solutions present the trade-off between energy consumption and capital cost in the form of a Pareto front. This helps architects, engineers and investors make important decisions in the early design stages with a large view of impacts of all factors on energy performance and cost.

This is one of the original research to study integrated building design applying the simulation-based genetic optimization algorithm for cooling-dominated buildings in Vietnam. The case study in this article is for a non-residential building in the north of Vietnam but the methodology can also be applied to residential buildings and other regions.

This article examines how farmers' assignment of responsibility for the disaster in late 2015 – early 2016 connects with reflexivity, habitus and local vulnerability.

This article uses semi-structured interviews with 28 disaster-affected households in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta to answer the question.

This article finds out that Vietnamese farmers actively accepted their responsibility for the disaster. In their explanation, they link their action with the root causes of vulnerability embedded in their socio-cultural traditions and collective identity.

This article makes a case for the importance of local culture and epistemologies in understanding disaster vulnerability and responsibility attribution.

This article is original in researching Vietnamese farmers' responsibility attribution, their aesthetic reflexivity, collective habitus and the socio-cultural root causes of disaster.

Discusses chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), which is a “contested disease”, that is, it is not recognized by the medical profession as a legitimate illness and, consequently, people suffering from the illness are not eligible for support/aid. Explores what this non‐recognition means and the impact it has on both the sufferers and their families. Refers to repetitive strain injury and Alzheimer’s disease – neither of which were recognized by medical professionals until recent times – as examples of illnesses that have gained medical legitimacy. Reports that sufferers of CFS, who did not receive an adequate medical diagnosis, were under pressure to become active again, whereas sufferers who received a diagnosis of persistent fatigue gained a lot more support from family and friends. Investigates also the strains involved in coping with a family member with an illness such as Alzheimer’s disease or CFS – as ever economic resources figure prominently. Raises the issue of management of illness in modern society. Recommends that, as health care is pushed ever more onto families and the community, so they should be the recipients of financial support.

This paper aims to propose a method to reduce the resistance of silicon-based V-shaped electrothermal microactuator (VEM) by applying a surface sputtering process.

Four VEM’s samples have been fabricated using traditional silicon on insulator (SOI)-Micro-electro-mechanical System (MEMS) technology, three of them are coated with a thin layer of platinum on the top surface by sputtering technique with different sputtered times and the other is original. The displacements of the VEM are calculated and simulated to evaluate the advantages of sputtering method.

The measured results show that the average resistance of the sputtered structures is approximately 1.16, 1.55 and 2.4 times lower than the non-sputtering sample corresponding to the sputtering time of 1.5, 3 and 6 min. Simulation results confirmed that the maximum displacement of the sputtered VEM is almost 1.45 times larger than non-sputtering one in the range of voltage from 8 to 20 V. The experimental displacements are also measured to validate the better performance of the sputtered samples.

The experimental results demonstrated the better displacement of the VEM structure after using the platinum sputtering process. The improvement can be considered and applied for enhancing displacement as well as decreasing the driving voltage of the other electrothermal microactuators like U- or Z-shaped structures while combining with the low-cost SOI-MEMS micromachining technology.

This chapter explores the influences of Vietnamese culture coupled with national policies on gender equality on academic women’s advancement into senior leadership positions.

In-depth interviews with 20 mid-level women leaders and five top-level leaders were conducted at four different higher education institutions in the Mekong Delta (MD) in southern Vietnam. In addition, document analysis and participant observations contributed to the overall analysis, which allowed for the cross-check of data from multiple sources to investigate the participants’ understanding, perception, conceptualization, and interpretation of their experiences of advancing in their careers.

Findings show that there is a large gap between the policies and gender practices. Gender equality does not exist in reality, regardless of tremendous efforts from the Vietnamese government and policy makers to ensure it in all spheres of life. Additionally, patriarchal hierarchy remains dominant in the institutional administrative system, and Vietnamese Confucian ideology continues to confine and adversely affect both men’s and women’s perceptions of women’s social roles, status, and forms of social participation. Nevertheless, academic women still develop professionally and find their own ways to advance to a few key leadership positions at their institutions.

The sample of this study is limited to academic women in the MD in Vietnam. Future research should include more women and universities and colleges, from not only the southern part but also other regions of Vietnam. Further, international and comparative studies should be conducted to see differences in experiences of academic women from several Southeast Asian countries as they move up their career ladder.

Because there have not been any empirical studies about women and leadership in academia in the MD, this study serves as a resource and foundation for improving gender policies and practices as well as future research on this topic and gender issues of colleges and universities in Vietnam.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the input- and output-specific technical inefficiency of Vietnamese prawn-rice rotational crops (PRRC) and to identify the impacts of the socio-economic characteristics of farmers and farms on these technical inefficiencies.

This study first used a Russell-type (input-output) directional distance function to estimate the input- and output-specific technical inefficiency. Second, it applied a bootstrap truncated regression to analyze the factors influencing these technical inefficiencies. Data were gathered through a survey among 94 farmers, from Ben Tre and Kien Giang provinces, the two popular PRRC areas in the Mekong Delta.

Results show that Vietnamese PRRC farmers could reduce the water surface area by 3%, the use of seedlings by 15%, labor by 16%, fertilizers by 26%, and the use of others by 24%, while simultaneously increasing the revenue of farming system by 57% relative to the variable returns to scale (VRS) frontier. Farmers with more years of experience are generally better in managing the use of seedlings and in improvement of revenue. Farmers in Kien Giang province are more efficient in achieving revenue of the PRRC farming system than farmers in Ben Tre province.

Outcomes of this study are useful to identify strategies in minimizing the use of inputs while simultaneously maximizing PRRC production.

This paper relates to the comparison of two mostly different ecological zones, being the dominant production areas of PRRC, in which, Kien Giang represents the western part, while Ben Tre is in the eastern part of the Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. The findings not only expand the current understanding but also suggest various meaningful research questions regarding the development of Vietnamese PRRC under the impacts of climate change. The study also contributes to the literature on examining the input- and output-specific technical inefficiencies and influencing factors.

The purpose of this paper is to trace the way in which a popular ritual became one of Vietnam’s most important festivals, elevated as a celebration of national heroism and charts its gradual transformation in modern society.

This research focuses on the combination of a fertility rite and narratives of St Gióng based on nationalism or heroism created a special festival reflecting many traditional cultural characteristics of Vietnam and the Việt people and the transformation of St Gióng from a mythological to a national symbol of heroism in anti-invader history was recorded in texts.

The paper casts light on the mythologization and historicization of St Gióng in Vietnam’s particular historical context by decoding the Gióng symbol as a core element of the folktales and myths about St Gióng to understand the formation and development of St Gióng in the cultural history of Vietnam.

The paper is not exploring the Gióng symbol within a larger cultural context of nationalism and ethnosymbolic approach in a comparison of national symbolism and heroism.

The paper includes implications for advised scholars to conduct further exploration of the symbol and myth of not only St Gióng in Vietnam but also Kubera in India and Vaisravana in China to connect Kubera, Vaisravana and St Gióng under the connection of literal myth and heroic symbol.

The paper shows how processes of historicizing myth and mythologizing history are important features of Vietnamese socio-historical research.

The paper shows how a fertility rite became a historical festival and the figure of St Gióng became a symbol of patriotic heroism.