Anthropological Observations on Vietnamese Older Adults, Questions to be Asked and Gerontology-Related Research in Vietnam

Abstract

The current author is a social science researcher living in Vietnam for nearly a decade. Before developing a field work framework to do research about Vietnamese older adults, we start with the author’s everyday life observations without any reference to a scholarly source. Although the author penned a number of books and articles on Vietnam, these references are intentionally removed for a lively, everyday life account. These observations, we guess will convince the readers that Vietnamese older adults worth studying from an anthropo-gerontological perspective: Vietnamese old people are respected in the society; old age is not associated with sickness or problem; the meaning of old age is different also because of circular view of life and death etc. The tentative questions for interviews follow these observations. Finally relevant academic research about Vietnamese older adults is reviewed to compare the observations with academic knowledge.