Nguyen Van

This article examines how legality is constituted beyond formal adjudicative settings through everyday culinary practice in Hanoi. Drawing on fifteen months of ethnographic research in three craft villages—Phu Thuong, Thanh Tri, and Uoc Le—the study analyzes how ritual memory, communal reciprocity, and bureaucratic certification converge in the regulation of heritage foods. Rather than treating cuisine solely as cultural heritage or economic commodity, the analysis approaches culinary production as a site where normative authority becomes socially recognizable. The findings identify a configuration described as tri-anchored legality, in which sacred obligation, communal practice, and administrative classification interact without forming a strict hierarchy. Sensory judgment—touching rice grains, spreading batter, assessing elasticity, and evaluating aroma—functions as an embodied mechanism through which authenticity and compliance are verified. Communal practices of redistribution, hospitality, and ritual gifting further structure recognition by marking inclusion and reinforcing social equilibrium. Certification markers such as OCOP logos, hygiene documents, and traceability codes introduce a bureaucratic layer that renders products legible within contemporary regulatory frameworks. Taken together, these elements demonstrate how legality in culinary heritage settings emerges through the alignment of ritual memory, communal recognition, and institutional regulation. Law here does not operate primarily through textual rule or customary sanction alone. It is enacted through the interaction of embodied competence, shared expectations, and administrative classification within everyday practice.

A ascensão do populismo na Europa e na América do Norte ao longo da última década reflete uma crise profunda nos fundamentos da democracia liberal moderna. Este artigo argumenta que o populismo contemporâneo deve ser compreendido como uma reação aos colapsos políticos, econômicos e morais causados pelo neoliberalismo, um sistema que mercantilizou a vida social, erodiu as instituições públicas e exauriu a imaginação democrática dos cidadãos. Recorrendo a duas grandes tradições filosóficas do século XX, o Pragmatismo (John Dewey, Richard Rorty) e a Teoria Crítica (Jürgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser, Axel Honneth), o artigo propõe uma abordagem combinada que é, ao mesmo tempo, crítica e reconstrutiva. No nível crítico, a Teoria Crítica ajuda a revelar como a lógica sistêmica do neoliberalismo fragmentou o “mundo da vida” (lifeworld) e substituiu a racionalidade comunicativa pela racionalidade instrumental. No nível reconstrutivo, o Pragmatismo sugere possibilidades para restaurar a confiança cívica e a comunidade democrática por meio da educação, do diálogo e da ação coletiva. A partir disso, o artigo sustenta que a combinação de um espírito crítico e um espírito pragmático pode fornecer um arcabouço teórico abrangente para compreender e responder à crise democrática na era pós-neoliberal.

O Confucionismo, originário dos ensinamentos de Confúcio entre os séculos V e VI a.C., desempenhou um papel determinante na formação das bases culturais, sociais e políticas da Ásia Oriental. No século XXI, sua influência expandiu-se muito além das suas raízes históricas, à medida que estudiosos e governos reinterpretam os princípios confucionistas para enfrentar questões contemporâneas em governança, educação, liderança e desenvolvimento ético. Valores centrais como humanidade, integridade moral, harmonia e responsabilidade filial passaram a aparecer em debates globais sobre sustentabilidade, coesão social e liderança responsável. Baseando-se em pesquisas interdisciplinares da filosofia, sociologia, ciência política e estudos de gestão, a produção acadêmica recente destaca a crescente relevância do Confucionismo na legitimidade política, transformação educacional, ética empresarial e ética global baseada em virtude. Apesar de suas contribuições, ainda há preocupações quanto ao uso político indevido da retórica confucionista, à persistência de normas hierárquicas e à sua compatibilidade com os ideais democráticos. Ainda assim, a tradição continua demonstrando adaptabilidade, sugerindo que sua influência global se expandirá contanto que os valores confucionistas sejam criticamente reinterpretados e integrados às necessidades das sociedades modernas e diversas.

This review article focuses on Matteo Pasquinelli’s recent work, The eye of the master: A social history of Artificial intelligence, which offers a politicized genealogy of AI and highlights the inseparability of AI’s ontology from the social and political conditions that produce its algorithms. Here, we use Hybrid Semantic Formalism, a hybrid language that utilizes generative AI strength of manipulating symbols and tokens, to create a logic map of Pasquinelli's categorization of social algorithm, formal algorithm, and automated algorithm. Crucially, Pasquinelli connects Babbage’s labor theory of automation and principle of labor calculation to Marx’s concept of the general intellect and reveals how various forms of machine intelligence mirrors, embodies, and amplifies the analytical intelligence of collective labour. Pasquinelli traces AI’s history alongside labour analysis, psychometrics, and the drive for a ‘control revolution,’ unpacking technical concepts such as self-organization and cybernetics to show that capitalist technologies are fundamentally sociomorphic and sociogenic: they formalize proven patterns of social cooperation rather than the biomorphic replication of how an individual’s mind performs a given task. This article argues that Pasquinelli’s analysis contributes vital insights into AI’s sociopolitical underpinnings and thus, advocating for democratic technopolitical practices to reshape algorithmic governance. This article concludes with four recommendations from Pasquinelli’s account for the development of Vietnam and the country’s searching for a vision of human-AI coexistence.

In the context of globalization and the subsequent transformations of this process, a cross-cultural and cross-social understanding between Eastern and Western philosophies appears inevitable. Concepts and elements, formerly separate, interweave and blend together. But the absence of a true synthesis of philosophical conceptions of human beings has not helped to overcome the spiritual and existential crises of modernity. In this paper, an examination of Buddhist and Heideggerian existentialist conceptions of human beings, human suffering and liberation is conducted, followed by identification of key similarities and differences between them. The paper compares the similarities between Buddhism’s Nāma-Rūpa (mind-body interdependence) with Heidegger’s Dasein (being-there), and divergences between the former’s communal ethics of the Noble Eightfold Path with the latter’s individualistic “resolve” (“Entschlossenheit”). The concept of “cultural additivity” and syncretic tradition of Tam Giáo are applied to further mediate ideas from Buddhism and Heidegger through an integration of Taoism.

Ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) is gaining popularity due to its superior mechanical properties, including high strength, toughness, durability, and excellent seismic performance. However, the risk of explosive spalling in UHPC structures exposed to fire poses a significant challenge, fundamentally hindering comprehensive studies on fire safety and limiting the broader engineering applications of UHPC. In this study, the mixture proportion of UHPC was developed and optimized by comparing the usage of yellow river and standard sands, different types of chemical admixtures, and different curing regimes. Furthermore, a sensitive case study was also conducted to optimize the calcined bauxite content to improve UHPC's fire resistance. For these purposes, 189 UHPC cubes, incorporating variations in particle types, superplasticizer types, and curing regimes, were tested under three thermal levels, such as 200℃,400℃, and 600℃. The microstructural evolution of heated cube specimens was then observed using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) examination. Calcined bauxite was then considered to replace the standard sand to improve the fire resistance of UHPC and enhance the residual compressive strength of cube specimens under thermal conditions. For this purpose, 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, and 100% calcined bauxite content was designed as six case studies. Furthermore, the degradation of UHPC strength was also investigated for the corresponding six case studies by conducting the uniaxial compressive experiments. Finally, the microstructural evolution under both thermal conditions and calcined bauxite content was observed and discussed.