Face masks were undoubtedly one of the most visible and (at least in some countries of the Global North) most controversial markers of the Covid-19 pandemic. Contrary to the white-German majority society in Berlin, Vietnamese migrants in the city were aware of the essential role of wearing masks in public right from the beginning of this health crisis. In March 2020, when the German government agency for disease control was still advising the general public against donning masks, former Vietnamese contract workers were already producing thousands of fabric masks for donation to ill-prepared hospitals and care facilities. Vietnamese students in Berlin, as well as children of Vietnamese migrants born and/or raised in Germany, also initiated various mask-related campaigns to tackle the health crisis and support local Vietnamese communities.

Based on digital ethnography in the spring of 2020, as well as later offline ethnographic exploration, we tracked the emergence of Vietnamese care networks trying to cope with the then-evolving pandemic. Looking through the analytical lens of face masks, we aim to highlight people’s emic understandings of care as materialized in self-sewn masks.

Besides showing the processual character of those care responses, we also aim to work out distinct differences between the migrant generation and post-migration actors regarding their motivations for organizing their respective campaigns. While our interlocutors from the latter group were much more vocal about anti-Asian racism and thus focused on community care projects, the Vietnamese migrants we talked to framed their care response in terms of a narrative of giving back to their second home country at a time of need. In addition, we will show how these care responses were differently shaped by media discourses from Vietnam and/or the global Vietnamese diaspora.

This paper explores the Vietnamese government’s approach toward public health risk communication in the context of citizen mobilization during the Covid-19 pandemic. We analyze the government’s communication strategy using images and videos published during the pandemic, such as artwork, leaflets, campaigns, music videos, and public announcements in public spaces. The government’s visual risk communication strategy is embedded in an idealized vision of cooperative citizenship. The focus is on the moral obligation of citizens toward the Vietnamese nation and the morality of caring, in which the state communicates behavior it deems morally correct.

Since the relaxation of religious regulations in Vietnam in the 1990s, an increasing number of studies have examined the resurgence of religious practices with the revival of traditions and economic development. Some studies have shown that people accept the authority of the state in the religious realm, suggesting that such acceptance is intended to restore people’s religious legitimacy. However, they tend to limit their understanding of legitimacy to the context of the state order. In contrast, this article demonstrates how the state serves as a source of knowledge to be appropriated in reforming religious practices that reflect and reconstruct local values.

Based on ethnographic research, this article examines the impact of state policies on the Raglai people’s funerary rituals in upland South-Central Vietnam, which are integral to their cosmology and customs (known as adat). These rituals have undergone modifications because of the socioeconomic changes brought about by sedentarization. To legitimize these modifications and maintain the rituals’ efficacy, people have appropriated rhetoric and techniques from the state authorities. This article argues that this is not an attempt to gain recognition from the state but a creative way to reconstruct practices in a manner that aligns with local values that are continuously recreated.

Spirits are ubiquitous and important in the everyday lives of ethnic Lao people. Amongst the most feared of those are ravenous spirits (phi pop), which are believed to use human hosts to cause illness or even kill other humans and livestock by eating their internal organs. Because of the severe danger that ravenous spirits are believed to pose, those believed to be harboring them are typically forced to leave their communities, sometimes permanently. So, where do these ravenous spirits go when they are chased out of their villages? Many accused phi pop from as far north as Luang Prabang and as far south as northeastern Cambodia end up in Nakasang, a bustling trading center on the banks of the Mekong River in Khong District, Champasak Province, in southern Laos. That is because Nakasang—and a few surrounding villages—are well known for welcoming those who are shunned in their own communities. In this article, I describe the process that allows those accused of harboring ravenous spirits to stay in Nakasang, and the cultural healing ritual program that they undergo once they have moved there. More important, I explain how the belief in ravenous spirits allows communities to expel disliked people even when they are not actually phi pop. Indeed, the belief in ravenous spirits has become a convenient way of ridding undesirables, with Nakasang playing a critical role in Lao cultural healing. Cultural healing helps locals deal with phi pop and position themselves in relation to the state.

Authoritarian environmentalism has come under the spotlight. It has often been criticized as accompanying social oppression. However, as some studies have reported an ambiguity in its governance on the ground, which is neither democratic nor authoritarian, its governance process needs further analysis. In particular, little is known about how the authoritarian state compromises with society. Therefore, by unraveling the historical background behind the development of shrimp farming in the mangroves of southern Vietnam, this paper examines the process of establishment of authoritarian environmentalism and considers how the authoritarian state exerts its power in interactions with society. To distinguish features of governance and understand various aspects of interactions among actors, we developed the concept of “ostensible” and “actual” authoritarianism. To this end, we conducted semi-structured interviews with provincial government officials, forest officers, and shrimp farmers in Ca Mau Province and also used secondary materials. The results revealed that mangroves that were previously the frontier until the 1970s had been enclosed by the state, applying modern governing technologies. However, the state failed to optimally utilize its governing power due to an accidental confluence of interests with society and to avoid political instability. Locals also tenaciously coped with top-down governance by adopting unique strategies. These interactions created an informal social order, which ironically created temporal social stability. We conclude that more research is needed to address how the political equilibrium is disturbed or maintained under authoritarian environmentalism.