One of the struggles between East and West is taking place in South Vietnam, an area whose culture has been virtually unknown to scholars. The author has used the small village of Khanh Hau, in the Mekong River delta southwest of Saigon, as a microcosm for the study of the rural physical setting, the beliefs and customs of the several religions that exist here side by side, the kinship and family pattern, the crops and agricultural methods, the economic, administrative, the legal systems, and the socioeconomic structure and mobility.ethnology -- vietnam, anthropology, cultural, mekong river, khanh hau