Dr. Lam Minh Chau: Anthropology is my destiny

We talked with him about his destiny and love for anthropology.

- What brought you to Anthropology?

I came to anthropology for many reasons. But perhaps the most important reason was that I was fortunate enough to meet, and be mentored by, two anthropologists. They were the ones who opened my eyes and guided me to this fascinating field of science.

The first person I met very early was my father, Associate Professor Lam Ba Nam. He was one of the third generation of anthropologists in Vietnam, inheritors of a tradition of ethnology and anthropology with many achievements that had been shaped in Vietnam since the French colonial period and developed strongly during the war and the nation building period.

My father never intended for me to pursue anthropology. But he took me with him on field trips across the country, to the “home-carried rice” of the Muong people, the “muong phai lai lin” of the Thai people, to the “guol” roofs of the Co Tu people in the Truong Son mountain range, the Central Highlands, and the Khmer pagodas in the South. The experiences from those trips, along with the stories about his ethnographic journey, the ethnographic books and notes that filled the family’s bookshelves, and my father’s own life as an ethnographer were so passionate and engaging. All of these things planted in me the first feelings for ethnology and anthropology.

The second person, I met when I had just completed my bachelor's degree program in history and ethnology at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. That was when I had the desire to study abroad, and specifically to explore new schools of knowledge in countries with long-standing ethnology and anthropology. I think I was very lucky to meet Professor Susan Bayly during those days of finding my way.

Professor Susan Bayly, professor of anthropology at the University of Cambridge, UK, is an anthropologist who spent 20 years studying India before coming to Vietnam in the 2000s. She has been attached to this land until now, with a warm affection and passion for the culture, people and history of the country and people of Vietnam. It was Professor Susan Bayly who guided me to the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, UK, where I studied for a Master's degree and later a PhD under her guidance. It was her endless knowledge, serious academic spirit, and dedicated guidance that brought me to new horizons of anthropology, from Antonio Gramsci to James Scott, from Foucault and Bourdieu, and beyond.

- Belonging to the "successor generation" of two famous scientists from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU, the path to becoming known as "researcher Lam Minh Chau" must be more difficult than other scientists?

It is true that there are difficulties sometimes. For example, sometimes when people know that I am "Mr. Nam and Mrs. Phung's child"*, they often assume that I must be like this or that. That is both their recognition of my parents, but also puts a little pressure on me. However, I think that my family background has given me the main opportunities and advantages. Among them, there are special advantages that I think I am really lucky compared to many other colleagues to have.

(* Associate Professor Dr. Lam Ba Nam - Associate Professor of Anthropology, former Vice Rector of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU and Associate Professor Dr. Vu Thi Phung - former Head of the Department of Archival Science and Office Management, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU - author)

Firstly, my parents are both researchers. Therefore, I inherited a treasure trove of knowledge right in my home. Not only books, but also the knowledge and experiences that my parents accumulated throughout their research journey. They shared those things not only in the office, but also at the dinner table, on family trips, when the whole family sat around the tea table and talked. I think my passion and knowledge for scientific research were truly nurtured in simple moments like that.

Second, my parents are not only sources of knowledge but also critics. Science, by its very nature, is about discovering new things, not only through the process of research, but also through the process of refining ideas, building arguments, and putting those arguments to debate and testing to see if they are really new and convincing. And for me, my parents are the first and most important “filter” when I want to verify or test a new idea. Their criticism, very kind but strict, has helped me many times to realize the loopholes or lack of persuasiveness in my arguments. Most importantly, they never charge for criticism. For my father, it is at most a pack of cigarettes.

Finally, I think the biggest advantage I had growing up in my family was the space and atmosphere of a research environment. I think when you have parents who are also researchers, you have a big advantage in that your parents understand what you are doing, and never complain about you sitting in front of a computer screen all day, sometimes mumbling to yourself, and reading books while pulling your hair. The scientific stories that you read, the things that interest you can be shared regularly with your family, like everyday stories, full of excitement and novelty.

Another interesting thing about my house is that we don’t have separate study rooms. Instead, we have a common study space for the whole family. That room is full of books, often with lights on until 11 or 12 at night, and is always filled with interesting stories about all kinds of scientific topics.

- In the past 5 years, how many articles have you published, how many of them international?

My total number of articles in the past 5 years is about 10, including 4 articles in international journals listed in ISI and Scopus.

- What are the advantages and disadvantages for Vietnamese scientists when publishing internationally in the field of social sciences and humanities, sir?

I think international publication is difficult for any field of science. But social sciences and humanities have their own difficulties. In general, the number of international publications by researchers in the social sciences and humanities in the world in general and in Vietnam in particular is often much less than that of their colleagues in the natural sciences. This phenomenon comes from many causes.

Here I would like to talk about some of the main reasons, based on my personal understanding and experience as well as consulting the opinions of some colleagues.

First, articles in the social sciences and humanities are mainly articles written by a single author (sole author), while natural sciences and technology tend to publish articles that are the product of a group of authors, and each member of that group has the right to declare the article in his or her publication list. For this reason, when calculating the quantity, the number of articles by an author in the social sciences and humanities is much less than in other fields. Even when the issue of counting only the corresponding author and the main/first author is raised, the social sciences and humanities are still at a disadvantage in terms of quantity. The reason is that in a social science article, the corresponding author and the main author are basically the same person. However, in the natural sciences and technology, it is relatively common for an article to have one person as the main author and another person as the corresponding author. Thus, if the work is calculated according to the corresponding author and the main author, then an article in natural sciences can be used to calculate points for two people, while in social sciences and humanities it is only one.

Second is the language problem. Here I do not mean that natural sciences and technology do not encounter language difficulties. But with social sciences and humanities, the language problem is more challenging. To my understanding, in the fields of natural sciences and technology, the novelty of an article can be seen relatively clearly from the information and data published in the article. In other words, the article is a place to express and present new information and discoveries that have been sought during the research process. The requirement for argumentation is raised, but not as heavy as in the social sciences. For social sciences and humanities, discovering something new during the research process is only half the battle. The other half is writing down and presenting that new thing in the form of convincing arguments. This requires the ability to express, the way to write, the way to organize a paragraph as well as the structure of a research paper with a capacity of 8,000 to 12,000 words, so that all become a unified and coherent block of argument. That is not to mention the problem of vocabulary and concepts. There are many words in Vietnamese that do not have corresponding words in other languages. There are many Vietnamese concepts that if translated literally into another language can completely change its nature. All of these create significant challenges when publishing internationally in the social sciences and humanities.

Third is the theoretical issue. Here I do not dare to comment on the social sciences in the world in general, but only on the social sciences and humanities in Vietnam. The social sciences and humanities in Vietnam have had a long development journey with great achievements, closely linked to the role of previous generations, of which we are the successors and inheritors. However, there is a problem with the Vietnamese social sciences in the current integration period. That is, sometimes we are not really "on the same path" with the mainstream of social sciences in the world. I know many social science researchers in Vietnam who are extremely talented and dedicated, and they have accumulated and introduced many very good, elaborate and new documents in domestic journals. But when publishing internationally, the key point is how, on the basis of those specific documents, it is possible to generalize into a theoretical contribution, helping to criticize, adjust or enrich a theoretical school that is popular in the world.

In other words, a significant challenge in developing international publications in social sciences and humanities in Vietnam is how to make the research of Vietnamese social scientists not only introduce new materials, but also really discuss and contribute to the development of theoretical issues that the world's scientific community is interested in.

- And what about anthropology?

I think anthropology is no exception. The same challenges that the social sciences and humanities are facing, anthropology is facing similar challenges.

- As a lecturer, how do you see the current development of Anthropology? What is the future of this field of study? What message do you have for your students?

Anthropology is a science with a long history. Although the teaching and research of anthropology in universities only began in the mid-19th century in England, anthropological knowledge had existed long before that, through the role of Western explorers, traders, and missionaries on their journey to discover strange lands in Africa, the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia.

Through that long historical process, anthropology has gradually affirmed itself as one of the basic sciences in the social sciences and humanities in the world. Currently, in the world's leading universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), there are departments of Anthropology.

To explain what anthropology is, what anthropology can contribute to life, and what the future of anthropology is is a long story and it is difficult to tell it all in a few lines. But if I may, I would like to say this. Anthropology is first and foremost the science that studies human culture, or simply the way we eat, dress, live, travel, get married, have funerals, weddings, ceremonies, religions and beliefs, the way we spend money, our concept of aesthetics, the way we use Facebook, our taste in cars, our concept of life partners, all of these are culture.

What is important is that anthropology studies culture in a very unique way. While the vast majority of other social sciences study culture with the aim of finding general laws, or universal cultural rules that can be applied to all cases, contexts, and to the vast majority of humanity, the aim of anthropology is to understand cultural diversity and to compare the cultures of different human communities, in different contexts. In other words, anthropology is one of the rare sciences whose main concern is to explain the differences between people in one place and people in another part of the world. What anthropology is interested in is why, while modern humans are almost identical biologically, they are so different in the way they eat, dress, live, walk, get married, love, talk, sing, die, live, get married, bury, in their enjoyment of McDonald's fast food, their taste in Hollywood movies, in their use of Facebook and mobile phones. Anthropology is the science of understanding how human cultures in one place differ from human cultures in other places, and explaining why human cultures around the world are so different and diverse.

I think that having said that, students, parents, and employers might wonder about the applicability of anthropology. After all, how can a field whose main concern is cultural differences be used?

The short answer is: rather than being applied in a specialized field, anthropological knowledge has been and is being used in many different fields, and more specifically wherever cultural differences arise and become a problem to be dealt with or an opportunity to be seized.

Anthropological knowledge has been and is being used in social management, business, international relations, human resource organization, and many other aspects. For example, I think there are quite a few of us who use Iphone. Those who used Iphone from the very first days will see that Iphone was only black and white at that time.

But in 2013, when the iPhone 5s went on sale, Apple introduced a third color, gold. Why 2013 and why gold and not another color? Because that was when Apple began expanding into Asia, and one of the most important markets was China.

There, the concept of color and aesthetics, one of the aspects of culture, is very different from that of Europeans and Americans. Gold is considered a symbol of luxury, wealth and power. Apple's introduction of the gold iPhone is a result of grasping and taking advantage of the opportunity from that cultural difference.

In fact, anthropological knowledge, knowledge of cultural differences, is always necessary not only in macro issues, but also in everyday life. A tourist, or a tour guide, needs to know to remind passengers that tipping is required in the United States but not in Japan. An American businessman studying the market in Asia needs to understand that while finishing the food on the plate in European and American countries shows satisfaction with the food, such an action in an East Asian country is likely to be misunderstood as criticizing the host for not preparing enough food and being inhospitable.

These are just a few of many examples to show that anthropology is a science with great potential for application, and therefore, has a wide open future for development in the world as well as in Vietnam.

Thank you very much, Dr.