"Cultural additivity" and how the values and norms of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism co-exist, interact, and influence Vietnamese society: A Bayesian analysis of long-standing folktales, using R and Stan

Every year, the Vietnamese people reportedly burned about 50,000 tons of joss papers, which took the form of not only bank notes, but iPhones, cars, clothes, even housekeepers, in hope of pleasing the dead. The practice was mistakenly attributed to traditional Buddhist teachings but originated in fact from China, which most Vietnamese were not aware of. In other aspects of life, there were many similar examples of Vietnamese so ready and comfortable with adding new norms, values, and beliefs, even contradictory ones, to their culture. This phenomenon, dubbed "cultural additivity", prompted us to study the co-existence, interaction, and influences among core values and norms of the Three Teachings--Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism--as shown through Vietnamese folktales. By applying Bayesian logistic regression, we evaluated the possibility of whether the key message of a story was dominated by a religion (dependent variables), as affected by the appearance of values and anti-values pertaining to the Three Teachings in the story (independent variables).Comment: 8 figures, 35 page

"Cultural additivity" and how the values and norms of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism co-exist, interact, and influence Vietnamese society: A Bayesian analysis of long-standing folktales, using R and Stan

Every year, the Vietnamese people reportedly burned about 50,000 tons of joss papers, which took the form of not only bank notes, but iPhones, cars, clothes, even housekeepers, in hope of pleasing the dead. The practice was mistakenly attributed to traditional Buddhist teachings but originated in fact from China, which most Vietnamese were not aware of. In other aspects of life, there were many similar examples of Vietnamese so ready and comfortable with adding new norms, values, and beliefs, even contradictory ones, to their culture. This phenomenon, dubbed “cultural additivity”, prompted us to study the co-existence, interaction, and influences among core values and norms of the Three Teachings –Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism–as shown through Vietnamese folktales. By applying Bayesian logistic regression, we evaluated the possibility of whether the key message of a story was dominated by a religion (dependent variables), as affected by the appearance of values and anti-values pertaining to the Three Teachings in the story (independent variables). Our main findings included the existence of the cultural additivity of Confucian and Taoist values. More specifically, empirical results showed that the interaction or addition of the values of Taoism and Confucianism in folktales together helped predict whether the key message of a story was about Confucianism, β{VT ⋅ VC} = 0.86. Meanwhile, there was no such statistical tendency for Buddhism. The results lead to a number of important implications. First, this showed the dominance of Confucianism because the fact that Confucian and Taoist values appeared together in a story led to the story’s key message dominated by Confucianism. Thus, it presented the evidence of Confucian dominance and against liberal interpretations of the concept of the Common Roots of Three Religions (“tam giáo đồng nguyên”) as religious unification or unicity. Second, the concept of “cultural additivity” could help explain many interesting socio-cultural phenomena, namely the absence of religious intolerance and extremism in the Vietnamese society, outrageous cases of sophistry in education, the low productivity in creative endeavors like science and technology, the misleading branding strategy in business. We are aware that our results are only preliminary and more studies, both theoretical and empirical, must be carried out to give a full account of the explanatory reach of “cultural additivity”

A Bibliometric Analysis of the Global Research Trend in Child Maltreatment

Child maltreatment remains a major health threat globally that requires the understanding of socioeconomic and cultural contexts to craft effective interventions. However, little is known about research agendas globally and the development of knowledge-producing networks in this field of study. This study aims to explore the bibliometric overview on child maltreatment publications to understand their growth from 1916 to 2018. Data from the Web of Science Core Collection were collected in May 2018. Only research articles and reviews written in the English language were included, with no restrictions by publication date. We analyzed publication years, number of papers, journals, authors, keywords and countries, and presented the countries collaboration and co-occurrence keywords analysis. From 1916 to 2018, 47, 090 papers (53.0% in 2010–2018) were published in 9442 journals. Child Abuse & Neglect (2576 papers; 5.5%); Children and Youth Services Review (1130 papers; 2.4%) and Pediatrics (793 papers, 1.7%) published the most papers. The most common research areas were Psychology (16, 049 papers, 34.1%), Family Studies (8225 papers, 17.5%), and Social Work (7367 papers, 15.6%). Among 192 countries with research publications, the most prolific countries were the United States (26, 367 papers), England (4676 papers), Canada (3282 papers) and Australia (2664 papers). We identified 17 authors who had more than 60 scientific items. The most cited papers (with at least 600 citations) were published in 29 journals, headed by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) (7 papers) and the Lancet (5 papers). This overview of global research in child maltreatment indicated an increasing trend in this topic, with the world’s leading centers located in the Western countries led by the United States. We called for interdisciplinary research approaches to evaluating and intervening on child maltreatment, with a focus on low-middle income countries (LMICs) settings and specific contexts

The Entrepreneurial Facets as Precursor to Vietnam’s Economic Renovation in 1986

In this research, we aim to develop a conceptual framework to assess the entrepreneurial properties of the Vietnamese reform, known as Doi Moi, even before the kickoff of Doi Moi policy itself. We argued that unlike many other scholars’ assertion, economic crisis and harsh realities were neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for the reform to take place, but the entrepreurial elements and undertaking were, at least for case of Vietnam’s reform. Entrepreneurial process on the one hand sought for structural changes, kicked off innovation, and on the other its induced outcome further invited changes and associated opportunities. The paper also concludes that an assessment of possibility for the next stage of Doi Moi in should take into account the entrepreneurial factors of the economy, and by predicting the emergence of new entrepreneurial facets in the next phase of economic development.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

The Entrepreneurial Facets as Precursor to Vietnam’s Economic Renovation in 1986

In this research, we aim to develop a conceptual framework to assess the entrepreneurial properties of the Vietnamese reform, known as Doi Moi, even before the kickoff of Doi Moi policy itself. We argued that unlike many other scholars’ assertion, economic crisis and harsh realities were neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for the reform to take place, but the entrepreurial elements and undertaking were, at least for case of Vietnam’s reform. Entrepreneurial process on the one hand sought for structural changes, kicked off innovation, and on the other its induced outcome further invited changes and associated opportunities. The paper also concludes that an assessment of possibility for the next stage of Doi Moi in should take into account the entrepreneurial factors of the economy, and by predicting the emergence of new entrepreneurial facets in the next phase of economic development.Economic Reform; Transition Economies; Vietnam’s Doi Moi; Entrepreneurship; Economic Crisis; Government Policy; Communist Countries

"Cultural additivity" and how the values and norms of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism co-exist, interact, and influence Vietnamese society: A Bayesian analysis of long-standing folktales, using R and Stan

Every year, the Vietnamese people reportedly burned about 50,000 tons of joss papers, which took the form of not only bank notes, but iPhones, cars, clothes, even housekeepers, in hope of pleasing the dead. The practice was mistakenly attributed to traditional Buddhist teachings but originated in fact from China, which most Vietnamese were not aware of. In other aspects of life, there were many similar examples of Vietnamese so ready and comfortable with adding new norms, values, and beliefs, even contradictory ones, to their culture. This phenomenon, dubbed "cultural additivity", prompted us to study the co-existence, interaction, and influences among core values and norms of the Three Teachings –Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism–as shown through Vietnamese folktales. By applying Bayesian logistic regression, we evaluated the possibility of whether the key message of a story was dominated by a religion (dependent variables), as affected by the appearance of values and anti-values pertaining to the Three Teachings in the story (independent variables). Our main findings included the existence of the cultural additivity of Confucian and Taoist values. More specifically, empirical results showed that the interaction or addition of the values of Taoism and Confucianism in folktales together helped predict whether the key message of a story was about Confucianism, β{VT ⋅ VC} = 0.86. Meanwhile, there was no such statistical tendency for Buddhism. The results lead to a number of important implications. First, this showed the dominance of Confucianism because the fact that Confucian and Taoist values appeared together in a story led to the story’s key message dominated by Confucianism. Thus, it presented the evidence of Confucian dominance and against liberal interpretations of the concept of the Common Roots of Three Religions ("tam giáo đồng nguyên") as religious unification or unicity. Second, the concept of "cultural additivity" could help explain many interesting socio-cultural phenomena, namely the absence of religious intolerance and extremism in the Vietnamese society, outrageous cases of sophistry in education, the low productivity in creative endeavors like science and technology, the misleading branding strategy in business. We are aware that our results are only preliminary and more studies, both theoretical and empirical, must be carried out to give a full account of the explanatory reach of "cultural additivity".info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

“文化可加性”以及儒教，佛教和道教的价值观和规范如何共存，相互作用和影响越南社会: 用R和Stan对于长期民间故事进行贝叶斯逻辑回归 的分析

据报道，越南人每年焚烧大约5万吨香纸，不仅是纸币形式， 还有iPhone、汽车、衣服， 甚至是管家形，希望取悦死者。 这种做法被错误地归因于传统的佛教教义，但大多数越南人都不知道它的起源來自于中国。 在生活的其他方面，越南也有许多类似的例子， 他们乐于對自己的文化增添新的规范、价值和信仰，甚至相互矛盾的東西。 这种被称为“文化可加性”的现象促使我们研究越南民间故事所显示的三教（儒教、佛教和道教）的核心价值观和规范之间的共存、相互作用和影响。通过应用贝叶斯逻辑回归，我们评估了一个故事的关键信息是否受宗教（因变量）支配的可能性，還是受到三个教义有关的价值和反价值在表面的影响（自变量）。 我们的主要发现包括儒教和道教价值在文化上可加性的存在。更具体地说，实证结果表明，道教和儒教的价值观在民间故事中的相互作用或相加， 有助于预测故事的关键信息是否与儒教思想有关，β_{VT⋅VC} = 0.86。 同时，佛教却没有这样的统计趋势。 这些结果有一些重要意义。 首先，这表明了儒教思想的综治地位，因为儒教和道教的价值在一个故事中一起出现，导致了这个故事有儒学主导的关键信息。 因此，它表明了儒学支配地位的证据，并反对对三大宗教的共同根源，或是“三教同源” （“tam giáo đồng nguyên”） 概念的自由解释，认为宗教有统一性或唯一性。 其次，“文化可加性”概念有助于解释许多有趣的社会文化现象，就是越南社会没有不容忍和极端主义的宗教， 在教育里离谱诡辩的现象，科学技术的努力创造的效果低下， 商业中的误导品牌战略。我们知道我们的结果只是初步的， 并且必须进行更多的理论研究和实证研究， 以对 “文化可加性”有充分的解释

Factors associated with substance use and sexual behavior among drug users in three mountainous provinces of Vietnam

Due to their geographical characteristics, the mountainous areas of Vietnam are particularly vulnerable to illicit drug use. Drug users in remote areas are also more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors. This study aimed to describe the prevalence and characteristics of substance use and sexual behaviors and explored their related factors among newly admitted drug users in three mountainous provinces of Vietnam. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 300 newly-admitted drug users registering for Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT) at 6 clinics in three provinces: Dien Bien, Lai Chau and Yen Bai from October 2014 to December 2015. Information about the socio-demographic characteristics, history of substance use, and sexual behaviors were collected. The multivariate logistic regression model was used to identify potential predictors of four outcomes, which included: drug injection, re-use of needles, using condoms during the last time of having sex, and having sexual intercourse with female sex workers. The proportion of injecting drug users was 68.3%; of those 9% never re-used needles. Of note, 69% of those who reported having sex with female sex workers in the last month did not use condoms. Regression models showed that those who injected drugs and had health problems in last 30 days had greater odds of having sex with female sex workers. Drug users in mountainous settings acknowledged the high prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-related risk behaviors and a demand for physical and psychological care. Scaling up MMT services is key to approaching this high-risk group; however, at the same time, comprehensive harm-reduction interventions, counseling, and health care services should also be made accessible and effective in this setting.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe