Cultural Anthropology

After reading the essay, the concepts and issues of American culture that were addressed reminded me of my first semester at UT. One of the first courses that I took was cultural anthropology. It is a specific field of anthropology that focuses on the study of cultural variation among humans through participant observation, and the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities. Culture shock was one of the first topics discussed in class. It was an appropriate introduction to the course, because I would imagine most of the incoming freshmen who just set foot on campus for the first time were experiencing culture shock to some degree. I define culture shock to be that sense of unfamiliarity when forced to adapt to a new environment, society, or lifestyle. I was presented with the task of living an independent life: living in a dormitory 200 miles away from home, cooking my own meals, managing work and classwork simultaneously, etc. What made the transition from one lifestyle to another smooth was allowing myself to become immersed in my new environment to the point where I forgot how I lived my previous lifestyle. It was a gradual process in which my daily routines at UT became second nature. This was my personal rite of passage.

The author of Trip to Hanoi also experienced cultural shock as an American guest in North Vietnam. She describes herself to be a "stubbornly un-specialized writer" with a predetermined notion that her account of the unexpected trip to Hanoi will offer her no new material for her work and opposition to the Vietnam War. Through her experiences with local North Vietnamese and her hosts, she tries to understand the nature of her environment that is so different from home. For one, she expected North Vietnam to be similar to revolutionary societies such as Cuba of the Western world. She expected the North Vietnamese to be "informal, impulsive, easily intimate, and manic", only to find them to be the complete opposite. She found it difficult to understand the stylizing of the Vietnamese language. She found that they spoke in declarative sentences using tag words such as "freedom" and "unity", that overall had a flattening effect on their language. She felt as though she was being treated like a child by her hosts. The hosts created daily schedules for her, provided transportation to walkable distances, and provided her hearty meals that the average Vietnamese citizen would have once a month. As her expectations of North Vietnam proved wrong, the more she felt the society to be "exotic" and "small" in stature compared to that of the United States.

The author of the essay presented her findings of Vietnamese culture as a cultural anthropologist. All of her findings are forms of participant observation, where Hanoi was the location of her fieldwork. The only problem is that her findings through pages 57 and 71 are biased towards American superiority. The author fails to come to terms with Vietnamese culture during these pages, because she is constantly finding some way to compare it to her biased expectations. She finds that the Vietnamese are constantly hiding their "real" selves due to her understanding of the concept of politeness in American culture. Ultimately, she finds the Vietnamese to be "opaque, simple-minded, and naive".

She already has a biased opinion of her account in Hanoi and of its culture, yet she somehow believes that she can understand their culture from a Vietnamese point of view with her current attitude. If she doesn't want to come off as some type of "typical American", arrogance and all, she has to allow herself to become immersed in the culture to a point where she's no longer thinking about the American way of life as dominant. Analysis of a different culture has to be made on neutral grounds. Only until she drops the concepts American culture does she realize that the Vietnamese are as "real" as they can be. They do not portray that sort of "split" personality that Americans tend to do, especially in regards to entertaining a host. They manifest sexual self-discipline, and their sincerity is based on their willingness to be shameless. They are self-sufficient, especially during times of war. This essay highlights the reality that the North Vietnamese, while not an ideal society, are social creatures just like anyone other human. The differences between Vietnamese culture and American culture do not make the Vietnamese inferior, regardless of whatever biases we may have. By analysing the rhetoric represented in Hanoi, the author was able to provide a detailed account of her participant observations.