The term culture was first coined by the English anthropologist E. B. Taylor in the eighteenth century. It is crucial to understand the culture to understand any society. Through exploring its religion, population, language, education, government, art and economics, an appreciation can be developed for the significant contributions Vietnamese people make in American society. Culture is that part of the social concept to which the various groups of the people belong to. It is an acquired quality that is exclusively available only to the humans. Culture frames the way that an individual leads his life in the society. It has always been the genre of study for the anthropologists and the sociologists and they have summarized the culture as the …show more content…
In 1941, the first war engaged the French and the Japanese, later followed by the Chinese invasion of the country. The Vietnam War left Vietnam in Shambles and the Communists but added to this devastation following their victory. Although the party has eased up on the economy a bit regarding control, it still wields absolute political power. The prognosis is not good for Vietnam from an economic standpoint, which implies that instead of simply easing up on its control in this area, the government should take an active role regarding improving the conditions its people are forced to live in and under. In Vietnam, just as everywhere, the demise of the Soviet Union, cast a pall over Communism as viable, which is sad because the actual theories that compose Marxism are benign in nature. Was Communism practiced, as it should be in Vietnam? There would be a middle and upper class which there are not except at the level of government, meaning it's the same old story of corruption, hunger for power and the occasional need to keep the people as submissive and as under-privileged as possible. Vietnam is a proud country just as its neighbor, China, is too proud. This is reflected in the educational system mentioned in this paper. The one and only emphasis in Vietnams schools are Vietnam itself. It is true that the Western world has influenced Vietnam regarding how to make money and how to spend it, just as it has influenced all third world countries with its greed. But number one, there is very little money to be made in Vietnam, so there are few places to spend it. Number two, any affection for the West, meaning America, begins and ends with money. Because of what this country did to Vietnam during the war, no American subject is taught in Vietnamese History schools; relations between the two
The Vietnam War, which lasted for two decades (1955-1975), was probably the most problematic of all American wars. US involvement in Vietnam occurred within the larger context of the Cold War between the US and the USSR. It was, and remains, morally ambiguous and controversial. The Vietnam War was slated as both a war against Communism and a war aimed at suppressing dangerous nationalist self-determination. Christian G. Appy's book, Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam, is a graphic and perceptive portrayal of soldiers' experiences and the lasting effects the Vietnam War has had on the American culture and people. Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam, is an analytical work that has three major purposes: 1. to show that those who fought in Vietnam were predominantly from the working class 2. to convey the experiences of the soldiers who served in Vietnam and 3. to offer his own scathing commentary of American actions in Vietnam.
Lawrence’s purpose in writing this book was concise and to the point. In recent history, due to the fall of the Soviet bloc, new information has been made available for use in Vietnam. As stated in the introduction, “This book aims to take account of this new scholarship in a brief, accessible narrative of the Vietnam War… It places the war within the long flow of Vietnamese history and then captures the goals and experiences of various governments that became deeply embroiled in the country during the second half of the twentieth century” (Lawrence, 3.) This study is not only about the American government and how they were involved in the Vietnam conflict, but highlights other such countries as France, China, and the Soviet Union. Lawrence goes on to say that one of his major goals in writing this book is to examine the American role in Vietnam within an international context (Lawrence, 4.) Again, this goes to show that the major purpose of Lawrence’s study included not only ...
In his article, “To Be Patriotic is to Build Socialsim”: Communist Ideology in Vietnam's Civil War, Tuong Vo challenges a standard view of the civil war between North and South Vietnam – the war is power struggle between the two camps. Based on a newly availble documents and other primary sources, Vu argues that “[V]ietnamese communists never wavered in their ideology loyalty during the period when key decisions about the civil war were made (1953–1960).....a modernizing socialist idology rather than a mere for national unification was driving the Vietnamese civil war from the north” (Vu 2009, 34–35).
Vietnam War (1954-1975) is considered as one of those big wars of the modern world that has been acknowledged and studied by countries in the world. Especially, in regard to the United States, starting and ending war in Vietnam was an unforgettable experience that has left a priceless lesson in its foreign policy, and of course a lot of loss, physically, mentally, and property. “The Legacy of Vietnam” article of George Herring basically summarizes how the Vietnam War led to an end in failure of America and what consequences it left behind.
Only in the Vietnam War was the United States’ participation criticized. This is such a gigantic change from prior wars that it bears study as to why it happened, and better yet, should have it happened. This paper will discuss the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War, by asking the simple question, Should have the United States’ gotten involved in the first place? This paper will prove that, in fact, America should not have gotten involved in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War took place between 1947- 1975.
This war on communism did not bring any solutions because even today Vietnam is still a communist country; therefore, the soldiers do not feel they had fought for a real cause. No one received anything that was satisfactory to him or her from the war. The men ended up going home scared for life at the violence and death they had seen in the Vietnam jungle.... ... middle of paper ... ... Works Cited Bremner, J. & Co., Ltd.
During the Lyndon Baines Johnson presidential administration, both those policy makers who supported America’s involvement in Vietnam and those who opposed the war were part of the “containment generation.” They had reached political maturity during World War II and the early years of the Cold War and had experienced the intense anticommunism of the McCarthy era of the early 1950s. These leaders understood and applied the lessons of American nationalism, which had the primary message that the U.S. was the dominating nation that had to embrace its responsibility to aid and improve nations in America’s image. Therefore, when they saw that there was a threat of the spread of communism to areas of Southeast Asia, a majority of the politicians were in favor of the war, which was the most costly U.S. foreign policy intervention during the Cold War. President Johnson and others considered Vietnam a crucial Cold war battleground where an American loss would trigger dire domestic and international repercussions. This view led him to decide to enter the Vietnam War, which was a condemnable action considering that there were intensifying domestic issues that he neglected because he was engrossed in the Vietnam situation. Anti-War protesters, a few politicians, and even the South Vietnamese all pointed out that this war was immoral and was resulting in destruction. Ultimately, Johnson’s decision resulted in a huge price paid on America’s part for its determination to prevent the spread of communism through this war and in the deaths of more 50,000 in an overseas war that was extremely difficult to win and that deepened divisions at home.
Being a communist country, the government controls all fascists of the economy. Civilians have no control of their economic state because free trade is illegal. The most common job for the vietnamese people is in the agricultural sector. They have many valuable exports that include: oil, rice, marine products, coffee, rubber, and tea. Many problems caused major setbacks on economic growth. Foreign domination had direct negative effects on progressive infrastructure, and spending capital on wars rather than economic development. The Encyclopedia of Modern Asia states “The economic development of Vietnam suffers from three serious impediments. During the time they controlled Vietnam, the French developed only those economic sectors that brought profit to the French themselves; long wars have marred recent history; and a decade of unfortunate postwar socialist experimentation with a centralized economy has left deep scars” (Lam 62). With the combination of foreign domination and communist ruling, Vietnams economic state has been poor throughout their history. In The Sorrow of War, Kien grew up with poor financial conditions. When he returns to his home, the condition of his stepfathers house explains his feeling towards living in poverty. “The house was old and greyish, surrounded by a sad, unkempt winter garden which itself was ringed by wispy eucalyptus that rustled in the light breeze. The
David Marr’s a historian at the Australian National University discusses in a chapter World War II and the Vietnamese Revolution. Marr identifies the agents involved in Vietnamese history during the 1930’s and 1940’s; and how these agents played a role in shaping Vietnamese history. Marr points out economic, political and social activities going out throughout the world and the effect they had on Vietnam.
As the sun set on the nineteenth century and the dawn of the twentieth century rose, the small, resource-rich country of Vietnam grew increasingly tired of French imperial rule in its homeland. For decades French colonialism had exploited the Vietnamese countryside to build up and provide for her own nation. “[These] colonizers declared that they were serving the Indochinese peoples by bringing material advancement and moral uplift - by performing, in short, a ‘civilizing mission.’” (Lawrence 11). However, only a small percent of Vietnamese elites actually benefited from these reforms. The rural Vietnamese peasantry, which accounted for the bulk of the nation’s total population, endured increasingly greater hardships, such as food shortages
Culture is a way of life that allows a diverse group of people to interrelate with one another. It is usually passed down from one generation to the next by communication and imitation. The term itself has a set definition, but it normally relates to the behavior, beliefs, values, and symbols that are accepted by a group of people. Culture can also be used to describe the time period and events in history. In the sense of what was deemed as popular during a specific stage in time and its impact on the culture surrounding it. Micro-historian have been dissecting and interpreting the meaning of popular culture and the courses of action that lead up to the events.
Anthropologists define the term culture in a variety of ways, but there are certain shared features of the definition that virtually all anthropologists agree on. Culture is a shared, socially transmitted knowledge and behavior. The key features of this definition of culture are as follows. 1) Culture is shared among the members of that particular society or group. Thus, people share a common cultural identity, meaning that they recognize themselves and their culture's traditions as distinct from other people and other traditions. 2) Culture is socially transmitted from others while growing up in a certain environment, group, or society. The transmission of cultural knowledge to the next generation by means of social learning is referred to as enculturation or socialization. 3) Culture profoundly affects the knowledge, actions, and feelings of the people in that particular society or group. This concept is often referred to as cultural knowledge that leads to behavior that is meaningful to others and adaptive to the natural and social environment of that particular culture.
As a citizen of Vietnam, I know that some past events shaped our country. Vietnam has a long history with China and France. It is found that there are four countries play very important parts in our history. There are China, France, Japan and the United States respectively. In this essay, the impact on the past events, which shaped the today Vietnam and interactions between Vietnam and the countries mentioned above will be discussed.
The word culture normally refers to the shared beliefs, norms, interactions, effective understanding and shared patterns of behaviors among a particular group of individuals. For a particular norm or believe to be termed as a culture it must possess some special features. One of the features is that the culture must be a learned behavior that is passed from one generation to another especially as a person grows in a given environment. Another feature of cultures is that they are interrelated. Cultures emerge from family, educational institutions and social institutions which offer a ground for learning the basics of the cultures. Other characteristics of the cultures include; cultures are adaptive, it is shared, it is a symbol, and it is dynamic
Culture is the totality of learned, socially transmitted customs, knowledge, material objects and behavior. It includes the ideas, value, customs and artifacts of a group of people (Schaefer, 2002). Culture is a pattern of human activities and the symbols that give these activities significance. It is what people eat, how they dress, beliefs they hold and activities they engage in. It is the totality of the way of life evolved by a people in their attempts to meet the challenges of living in their environment, which gives order and meaning to their social, political, economic, aesthetic and religious norms and modes of organization thus distinguishing people from their neighbors.