On 1 August 2020, wrecking balls began to demolish the Catholic church in Bui Chu town, in the Vietnamese province of Nam Dinh, putting an end to more than a decade of lively debate over whether the 1885 church building was to be preserved. The losing camp had favoured retaining the original structure and taking essential steps to enhance its integrity and safety; the prevailing camp argued to demolish the old church and replace it with a (larger) replica built with modern construction methods and materials. The present paper examines the positions and alignments among various actors, including church clergy, state officials at different levels, scholars of religion, heritage experts, journalists, and members of the congregation. These debates implicated complex questions of the continuity and value of colonial heritage, the effectiveness of Vietnam's legal system for protecting built heritage, and the sensitive historical relations between the state and Vietnam's Catholic minority.
This paper presents a thematic analysis pertaining to the Vietnamese government's role in regulating the country's online game industry. Interviews with administrators who worked for Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications were conducted, revealing the perspective and reluctance of the government towards this new socialist-oriented entertainment market in a communist society. The legal framework imposed on online games and its side effects are critically analysed.
This paper examines the prominence of East and Southeast Asia as a focus of communications and game studies. The idea of going regional when researching video games comes from the fact that each locale has its trait to construct its gaming industry and gaming environment from which the gaming experience is also reflected differently. The reasons provided, ranging from the regional market's dynamic nature to the attention that the governing states have paid to the gaming industry, help place Asia–Pacific in general and East and Southeast Asia particularly in the global gaming juxtaposition where the other part is usually the Western countries. Examples that help highlight the rising prominence of the regions as the most potential areas are also considered. This review's findings indicate that East and Southeast Asia have gradually built up their reputation by actively joining the designing, processing, and distributing digital products system. Thus, the focus of future research on the regions should be more concerned with video gaming.
In Vietnam, a country where religious expression is widespread, many gods and goddesses are commonly worshipped. Among those, Bà Tổ Cô (Family Goddess) is widely worshipped in the North of Vietnam due to her exceptional background as unmarried, young, and having spiritual roots, unlike other national and heroic figures. This article examines the sanctity of the Family Goddess by decoding the terms, worshippers, beliefs and practices, sacred encounters and supports. The research is a final result of decade-long field trips, archival study, and in-depth interviews with various stakeholders. The research findings show that the veneration of the Family Goddess in Northern Vietnam is a continuity of a long-standing tradition of worshipping female deities in Asia and thus emphasising the need to maintain this unique intangible heritage as a crucial part of Vietnamese cultural diversity.
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