Ideological Orientation and Political Control of Vietnamese Social Science.

This paper explores the critical potentials of Vietnamese social science. The research starts by looking at post-war political and social changes, and the present climate of debate to get at the meaning of party leadership and party ideology on the macro level. Section 4 analyzes two social science journals to ascertain the concrete outcome of party control and ideological steering. Section 5 discusses the talk with social scientists and representatives of the State Commission for Science and Technology (SCST) and the Vietnam Committee for Social Sciences (VCSS) to elucidate attitudes to social science exchange. The author held three seminars in the VCSS on a paper about Sweden to explore possible cognitive differences between Sweden and Vietnam as to presumptions and evaluations. To get an idea of the of the conditions for empirical and critical social science in Vietnam, for two months the author followed up a Swedish study of the living and working conditions of forestry workers, comparing this with a corresponding study made by a Vietnamese research team. These and other concrete explorations are the base for some concluding remarks concerning future social science exchange between Vietnam and Sweden.