Vietnamese citizenship and citizenship curriculum: An examination of peoplehood stories

• In Event: Collective memory in the Mekong: schooling, history, and politics in an era of regionalization

Proposal

Since Vietnam’s major economic renovation (doi moi) officially launch in 1986, the Communist Party, which controls the State, continues to promote socialist citizenship while simultaneously embracing a market economy. Much well-appreciated research has explored the evolving political dynamics associated with market-based reforms under socialist governance in Vietnam. However, there has been little attention to comprehending the ways in which Vietnamese socialist citizenship as a political identity and as an educational aim have changed. This presentation draws in part on my dissertation research which seeks to understand the evolution of Vietnamese citizenship and citizenship education. The research builds on Smith’s (2001; 2003) notion of a peoplehood perspective, which views the formation of collective identity as a political construction. Peoplehood stories are central to the processes of building and sustaining a political community. In these processes, political leaders make efforts to advance and institutionalize stories of peoplehood, accounts that inspire “a sense of trust and worth among a critical mass of supporters for particular visions of common membership” (Smith, 2003, p. 129). This presentation specifically focuses on discursive and conceptual changes to the official discourse on citizenship during the country’s period of transition between 1986-2016. It takes a critical discourse analysis approach in examining government archives, including education policy documents, citizenship curricula, and textbooks in the Vietnamese language. Through the lens of peoplehood stories, the presentation sheds light on changes and continuities in mainstream conceptions of Vietnamese citizenship and visions of citizen and citizenship education pre-, during and post-doi moi. It also demonstrates how historical memories embedded in state-produced hegemonic narratives were employed to sustain and (re)define distinct senses of Vietnamese collective political identity.

Author

• Hang B. Duong, Lehigh University