Innovation, Integration, and Marginality: A Survey of Physicians

Abstract

out, and they commented on the privileges reserved for the American personnel [as] necessary incentives to attract them to this country. Another problem for the national staff members is related not to their own society, but to their adjustment to Americans and to the adjustment of Americans to Vietnamese. Americans are new to Vietnam, and Vietnamese experience with the French in some ways makes understanding of Americans more difficult. While, as this study indicates, much of American behavior appeals to many Vietnamese, some conduct by Americans is considered strange and at times offensive. The imputation that Americans are aloof, inflexible, and do not understand or respect Vietnamese culture, which one hears fairly frequently from educated Vietnamese, points up the inadequacies of Americans abroad.7 If the American overseas, or at least in Vietnam, is not the caricature of certain literary creations, neither has he, with all his good intentions, yet learned to understand or interact adequately with people of a culture greatly different from his own. Such understanding comes fairly slowly. Like most understanding, it requires personal experience on the part of the individual and the cumulative experience of his society, and the ability to interpret behavior and institutions in terms of their cultural setting.