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AbstractWith 80% of Vietnamese people holding key Buddhist beliefs, Buddhism has great impact on the thoughts, emotions, and behavior of Vietnamese people. However, almost no Buddhism‐based psychosocial interventions are offered at formal psychiatric hospitals across Vietnam, nor is there any plan to incorporate these interventions into mental health care. This exploratory study examines the perceptions of mental health clients and staff regarding the effectiveness of Buddhism‐based therapies (BBTs) in mental health treatment in Vietnam, using ethnographic observation and in‐depth interviews with 24 patients and eight professionals at the only psychiatric hospital employing BBT. Participants strongly believed in the positive impact of BBT to help clients manage or improve their symptoms. However, clients and staff advised that BBT should not be used alone; rather it should be used in combination with medication and was best employed for stress‐related disorders. They unanimously supported incorporating BBT into the formal mental health system, especially if the therapies were well developed through collaboration between Buddhist monastics and mental health professionals. Results of the paper suggest that Vietnam should think strategically about developing and incorporating BBT into the formal mental health care system.

This historical study analyzes the transformation of the concept 'adolescence' in post-war Vietnam (1975–2005) and its implications for social work. Government-regulated media documents show that the concept of adolescence has undergone three phases corresponding to the three political-economic shifts in Vietnam over these decades: adolescents as miniature communists (1975–1986); adolescents as growing youths characterized by romantic sentiments, puberty, and identity search (1986–1995); and adolescents as the newly coined 'teen Viet' and vanguards of capitalist consumption (1996–2005). Social work with Vietnamese adolescents and families must consider the impact of these conceptual shifts on thoughts, emotions, and behaviors of corresponding adolescent cohorts.

The purpose of this article is to explore the conceptualization and representations of adolescence in the Vietnamese media during the Reform era (1986–1995). Analyzing newspapers targeting adolescents, I argue that the Reform era marked a departure from the conceptualization and representation of Vietnamese adolescents as miniature communists, which dominated the media in pre-Reform decades. It also marked the emergence and convergence of Vietnamese adolescence into a global adolescent sensibility, which emphasizes identity search and mood swings. Factors contributing to these conceptual changes include the adoption of a market economy, a new high school system, and family planning policies.

Vietnam introduceerde een stelsel van publieke landeigendom bij de vestiging van de socialistische staat. Er is echter een langdurige discussie geweest over de vraag of dit het juiste stelsel is. Na de economische hervorming van 1986 zijn de sociaal-economische omstandigheden van het land dramatisch veranderd. Vietnam is een land geworden in de zogeheten middengroep; het maakt de overgang naar een industriële economie. Deze veranderingen gaan gepaard met kansen en problemen voor de agrarische sector, gelegen op het terrein van de grenzen aan de productiviteit en aan de aan het land gerelateerde investeringen. Dit was aanleiding voor een heropening van het debat over de eigendom van de grond. In feite heeft de staat een herziening van de wetgeving op dit terrein gevraagd om zo de investeringsbereidheid van de boeren te stimuleren. Om verschillende redenen, waaronder ook politiek-ideologische, is echter het stelsel van het publieke eigendom van de grond onveranderd gebleven. In plaats daarvan heeft Vietnam zich gericht op de gebruikszekerheid van de landbouwgrond om de investeringsbereidheid te versterken. Is deze aanpak nu de juiste om de met het land verbonden investeringen een impuls te geven, gezien de veranderende sociaal-economische context in Vietnam? Om deze vraag te beantwoorden heb ik een rechtsvergelijkend onderzoek gedaan naar de zekerheid van de gebruiksrechten op landbouwgrond naar Vietnamees en Chinees recht. In het onderzoek staat centraal het opsporen van de sterkte en zwakte van de gebruiksrechten van de boeren in beide landen en de evaluatie daarvan. De belangrijkste bevindingen zijn: (1) ondanks nog aanwezige beperkingen is de wettelijk vastgelegde gebruikszekerheid van hun grond voor de boeren in beide landen beduidend verbeterd, (2) de bevindingen omtrent de ontwikkeling van de Chinese gebruikszekerheid van hun land voor de boeren zijn een duidelijke bevestiging voor de constatering dat Vietnam op de goede weg is door de gebruikszekerheid van de boeren te vergroten om zo de bereidheid tot investeren te stimuleren, en (3) de ervaringen in China en Vietnam vormen een nuttig voorbeeld voor andere economieën in transitie waarmee men rekening kan houden wanneer zij efficiency en gelijkheid van landgebruik op de politieke agenda zetten. ; Vietnam established a public land ownership regime when starting a socialist state. However, there has been a long established debate on the appropriateness of such a regime. Since an economic reform took place in 1986, the socio-economic conditions of the nation have changed dramatically. Vietnam has become a middle-income country, transforming substantively into an industrial economy. The changes have brought opportunities as well as challenges to the agricultural sector such as limits in land productivity and land-related investment. This leads to the revisiting of the debate. In fact, the State demands a reconsideration of land laws to improve farmers' investment incentives. Yet, due to several reasons including the political ideology, the regime of public land ownership has remained in effect. Instead, Vietnam is approaching the security of farmers' land rights to increase land investment. Is this approach appropriate to spur land-related investment in the changing socio-economic context? To answer this question, I conducted a PhD comparative research on the security of farmers' land rights under the Vietnamese and Chinese laws. The research aims to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the farmers' land tenure security in both countries and to confirm the right direction of the reform approach. The main findings are (i) despite the limits, the legal security of farmers' land rights has been improved significantly in both countries, (ii) the finding on the evolution of the Chinese farmers' tenure security restates firmly that Vietnam has been moving in a right direction in enlarging tenure security to boost investment incentive, and (iii) the experience of China and Vietnam could be a useful reference for other transition economies to take into consideration in addressing land use efficiency and equality.

This paper focuses on TFP analysis in the context of the impressive reforms of the ease of doing business in Vietnam using a novel and unique micro dataset of manufacturing enterprises between 2000 and 2010 for the analysis. The first phase of the reforms (2000-2005) observed the implementation of business start-up simplification, and the central governance of business regulations was decentralized to provincial authorities in the second phase (2006-2010). Results of this research are as follows. First, on average, larger firm-size and higher TFP growth rate were mostly observed in manufacturers at the TFP frontier (the fourth quartile of TFP). Second, the average ratio of female workers was higher in leading TFP manufacturers than in less productive firms in low-technology industries, especially in the second phase of the reforms. Third, the TFP catch-up of the least productive firms to the frontier firms was faster in the second phase (2006-2010) compared to the first phase (2000-2005) across all industries and economic regions. However, larger TFP gaps still existed in high-technology industries. Last but not least, the first-difference estimation of panel data comprising 63 provinces (in the second phase of the reforms) shows that local governments that performed better in the ease of doing business significantly fostered provincial manufacturing TFP in either for upper or lower productive provinces in Vietnam. Furthermore, a province gained significant spillovers from nearby elite provinces with leading productivity.

Globalisation has moved nations to take steps to meet the demands of an increasingly competitive employment market. The Vietnamese Government has introduced a number of initiatives to equip its labour force with the necessary knowledge and skills, one of which is requiring teachers to change their teaching methods toward constructivist pedagogies. This study focuses on pre-service teachers' learning in Vietnam, where a 'large power distance' is widely practiced in education. This article reports on part of the action research study, showing the influences of 'large power distance' on pre-service teacher learning in Vietnam. The findings show that the 'large power distance' in Vietnamese culture generated both negative and positive influences during the teacher learning process. The findings contribute to the discussions about the role of teacher educators in promoting change for better education in Vietnam. Keywords: Constructivist pedagogies, power distance, pre-service teachers, teacher learning, Vietnamese teachers.Cite as: Nguyen, H.T.M. (2016). The influences of 'power distance' on pre-service teacher learning in Vietnam. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 1(2), 38-49. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol1iss2pp38-49