The core theme of the Sixth Engaging with Vietnam conference was “Frontiers and Peripheries: Vietnam Deconstructed and Reconnected.” We invited participants to think of Vietnam not as a self-contained entity as in the conventional way. Instead, we wanted to deconstruct Vietnam, both as a frontier or periphery of larger entities and as containing in itself distinct frontiers and peripheries. The larger entities of which Vietnam constitutes a periphery or frontier could be some larger geographical/historical/cultural/economic/political zones, such as wet-rice economy, Chinese civilization, the Indo-Malay world, European imperialism, the Roman Catholic Church, Cold War camps, the K-pop wave, transnational social movements, transnational crimes, global capitalism, and diasporic communities.

Some of the questions we were interested in were: Where have Vietnamese situated themselves when they think of the broader world around them? How has Vietnam’s peripheral or frontier status shaped its history, culture, society, politics, and the identities of its people? What characterizes the major patterns of Vietnamese interactions with the center/metropole as well as with other peripheral or frontier areas? While external powers have historically sought to dominate Vietnam, Vietnamese in history and in the contemporary era have themselves sought to colonize other frontiers and peripheries. How have Vietnamese rationalized such events? How do they integrate internal frontiers and peripheries in their thoughts and acts? Can we think of Vietnam as an empire? Our aim was for participants to experiment with new conceptualizations in order to show aspects of Vietnamese history, culture, economy, and politics in a fresh light.