Dr. Lam Minh Chau: Anthropology is my destiny

We had a conversation with him about his passion and affinity for anthropology.

- What led you to pursue a career in Anthropology?

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

The first person I met very early on was my father, Associate Professor Lam Ba Nam. He was one of the third-generation anthropologists in Vietnam, inheriting a highly successful ethnographic-anthropological tradition that had been established in Vietnam since the French colonial period and flourished during the war and national reconstruction.

My father never actually intended for me to pursue anthropology. But he took me along on his field trips across the country, to the traditional Muong people's "house-carrying rice," the Thai people's "canal-driven irrigation," the Co Tu people's gươl houses in the Truong Son Mountains and the Central Highlands, and the Khmer temples of Southern Vietnam. The experiences from those trips, along with the stories he told about his ethnographic journeys, the books and notes on ethnology filling our family's bookshelves, and my father's own life as an ethnologist—all of these things instilled in me my first feelings of affection for ethnology and anthropology.

The second person I met was shortly after completing my bachelor's degree in history and ethnology at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. At that time, I had the aspiration to study abroad, specifically to explore new schools of thought in countries with long-standing traditions in ethnology and anthropology. I believe I was very fortunate to have met Professor Susan Bayly during those formative years.

Professor Susan Bayly, an anthropologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, spent 20 years studying India before coming to Vietnam in the 2000s. She has remained deeply connected to Vietnam ever since, with a passionate love for its culture, people, and history. It was Professor Bayly who guided me to the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, where I pursued my Master's and later my PhD under her supervision. Her boundless knowledge, rigorous academic spirit, and dedicated guidance opened new horizons in anthropology, from Antonio Gramsci to James Scott, from Foucault and Bourdieu, and beyond.

- Belonging to the "successor generation" of two renowned scientists from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, the path to establishing herself as a researcher, Lam Minh Chau, must have been more challenging than for other scientists?

Difficulties do exist sometimes. For example, when people find out I'm "the child of Mr. Nam and Mrs. Phung," they often assume I must be this or that. This is both a recognition of my parents' status and creates some pressure for me. However, I think my family background has primarily given me opportunities and advantages. Among these, there are some particular advantages that I consider myself truly fortunate to have compared to many of my colleagues.

(* Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lam Ba Nam – Associate Professor of Anthropology, former Vice Rector of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vu Thi Phung – former Head of the Department of Archival Studies and Office Management, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi – authors)

Firstly, both my parents are researchers. Therefore, I inherited a treasure trove of knowledge right in my own home. Not just books, but also the insights and experiences my parents accumulated throughout their research careers. They shared this not only in their offices, but also at the dinner table, during family trips, and when the whole family gathered around the tea table to chat. I believe my passion and knowledge for scientific research were truly nurtured in these simple moments.

Secondly, my parents were not only a source of knowledge but also critical thinkers. Science, by its very nature, is the pursuit of novelty, not only through research, but also through refining ideas, building arguments, and presenting those arguments for debate and testing to see if they are truly new and convincing. And for me, my parents were the first and most important "filter" when I wanted to verify or test a new idea. Their critiques, kind yet strict, have often helped me realize flaws or lack of persuasiveness in my arguments. Most importantly, they never charged for their critiques. For my father, it was just a pack of cigarettes at most.

Ultimately, 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 great advantage because your parents understand what you're doing and never complain about you sitting in front of a computer screen all day, occasionally muttering to yourself, and scratching your head while reading. The scientific stories you read, the things you're interested in, can be shared regularly with your family, like everyday stories, full of excitement and novelty.

Another interesting thing about my house is that no one has a private study room. Instead, we have a shared workspace for the whole family. That room is full of books, often lit up until 11 or 12 midnight, and always filled with interesting conversations about all sorts of scientific topics.

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

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

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

I think international publication is difficult for any scientific field. But the social sciences and humanities present unique challenges. Generally, the number of international publications by researchers in the social sciences and humanities worldwide, and in Vietnam in particular, is significantly lower than that of their counterparts in the natural sciences. This phenomenon stems from several causes.

Here I would like to discuss only some of the main causes, based on my personal understanding and experience, as well as the opinions of some colleagues.

Firstly, articles in the social sciences and humanities are primarily written by a single author, while natural sciences and technology tend to publish articles as the product of a group of authors, with each member of the group entitled to list the article in their publication catalog. For this reason, when calculating the number of articles by a single author in the social sciences and humanities, the number is significantly lower compared to other disciplines. Even when considering only the corresponding author and the main/first author, the social sciences and humanities still lag behind in terms of quantity. This is because, in a social science article, the corresponding author and the main/first author are essentially the same person. However, in natural sciences and engineering, it is relatively common for an article to have one main author and another as a corresponding author. Therefore, if we consider the work based on the corresponding author and the main author, a paper in natural sciences could be used to count points for two people, while in social sciences and humanities it would only be counted for one.

Secondly, there's the language issue. I'm not saying that natural sciences and technology don't face language difficulties. But for social sciences and humanities, language presents more challenges. To my understanding, in natural sciences and engineering, the novelty of a paper can be relatively clearly seen from the information and data it publishes. In other words, the paper is where new information and findings discovered during the research process are presented. The requirement for argumentation exists, but it's not as heavily emphasized as in social sciences. For social sciences and humanities, discovering something new during research is only half the battle. The other half is writing and presenting that new information in the form of persuasive arguments. This requires strong expressive abilities, writing style, paragraph organization, and the structure of a research paper ranging from 8,000 to 12,000 words, ensuring everything forms a unified and coherent argument. This is without even considering the issue of vocabulary and concepts. Many Vietnamese words have no direct equivalents in other languages. Many Vietnamese concepts, if translated literally into another language, can completely alter their essence. All of these factors create significant challenges when publishing internationally in the social sciences and humanities.

Thirdly, there is the theoretical issue. Here, I dare not comment on social sciences worldwide in general, but only on social sciences and humanities in Vietnam. The social sciences and humanities in Vietnam have had a long and arduous development with tremendous achievements, closely linked to the role of previous generations, of whom we are the successors and inheritors. However, there is a problem with the Vietnamese social sciences in the current era of integration. That is, sometimes we are not truly "walking the same path" as the mainstream of social sciences worldwide. I know many social science researchers in Vietnam who are extremely talented and dedicated, and they have accumulated and presented a great deal of excellent, meticulous, and novel material in domestic journals. But when it comes to international publication, the key point is how, based on those specific documents, one can generalize into a theoretical contribution that helps to critique, adjust, or enrich a prevailing school of theory in the world.

In other words, a significant challenge in developing international publications in the social sciences and humanities in Vietnam is how to ensure that research by Vietnamese social scientists not only introduces new materials but also genuinely discusses and contributes to the development of theoretical issues that the global scientific community is interested in.

- And specifically for the field of anthropology?

I think anthropology is no exception. Just as the social sciences and humanities face challenges, so too is anthropology.

- As a lecturer, how do you see the current development of the field of Anthropology? What is the future of this discipline? What message would you like to convey to your students?

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

Throughout its long history, anthropology has gradually established itself as one of the fundamental sciences in the social sciences and humanities worldwide. Currently, leading universities around the world, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have 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 how we eat, dress, live, travel, marry, mourn, get married, rituals, religion and beliefs, how we spend money, our concept of aesthetics, how we use Facebook, our taste in cars, our concept of life partners, all of these are culture.

Importantly, anthropology studies culture in a very unique way. While the vast majority of other social sciences study culture with the aim of discovering general laws, or universal cultural rules applicable to all cases, contexts, and the majority of humanity, the aim of anthropology is to understand cultural diversity and compare the cultures of different communities in different contexts. In other words, anthropology is one of the rare sciences whose primary concern is explaining the differences between people in one place and people in another part of the world. What anthropology is concerned with is why, while modern humans are almost identical biologically, they are vastly different in how they eat, dress, live, travel, marry, love, speak, sing, die, live, get married, mourn, in their enjoyment of McDonald's fast food, their tastes in Hollywood films, and in their use of Facebook and mobile phones. Anthropology is the science that investigates how human cultures in one place differ from human cultures in other places, and explains why human cultures around the world are so different and diverse.

I think that saying this might raise concerns among students, parents, and employers about the applicability of anthropology. After all, how can a field whose primary concern is cultural differences be used in such situations?

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 first days will see that Iphone at that time was only black and white.

But in 2013, when the iPhone 5s went on sale, Apple introduced a third color: gold. Why 2013, and why gold instead of 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 aspect 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 stems from its understanding and leveraging of this cultural difference.

In fact, knowledge of anthropology and cultural differences is always necessary, not only in macro issues but also in daily life. A traveler or tour guide needs to know to remind passengers that tipping is acceptable in the US but not in Japan. An American businessman exploring markets in Asia needs to understand that while finishing all the food on your plate in European and American countries is a sign of satisfaction with the meal, doing so in an East Asian country could easily be misinterpreted as criticizing the host for preparing too little food and being unhospitable.

These are just a few of the many examples that show that anthropology is a science with enormous potential for application, and therefore, has a bright future for development both globally and in Vietnam.

Thank you very much, Doctor.