Understanding protest in a collectivist and authoritarian context

• In Event: Higher education’s resistance of new authoritarianism, hegemony, and the erosion of democracy

Proposal

This presentation examines how democratic traditions associated with free speech and free inquiry at U.S. universities might be (re)conceptualized and translated in an academic environment where dissent is discouraged, and individual autonomy is relatively constrained. In so doing, it challenges Western assumptions about the nature of collective action and public protest and expands the possibilities for how social change can be understood. The presentation is based on a a qualitative study that draws from the experiences of 27 Vietnamese students and scholars who have been exposed to U.S. academic culture through government-sponsored scholarships and then returned to Vietnam to teach and do research. It has two parts. First, drawing from theories of international relations and globalization, it uses actor-network theory to consider how (if at all) actions taken by individual participants have contributed to social change via a multiplier effect over a 30-year period, with an emphasis on three spheres of operation: teaching, research, and policy. This analysis sheds light on the various roles performed by exchange alumni upon return to Vietnam, making visible a broader range of potential outcomes, as opposed to an analysis based on whether exchange programs achieve pre-determined desired outcomes. It then takes a close-up look at how one university has introduced liberal education and academic freedom as core institutional values and its implications as a potential catalyst for change.
Vietnam has long viewed “learning from abroad” as a strategy for self-preservation but the collective impact of academic exchange – and the nature of collective action – remain largely unexplored in Vietnam. Trần et al. (2017) and Phạm Thị Liên (2019), for example, have described actions taken by internationally trained lecturers primarily as a collection of individual people performing individual acts, with scant attention paid to whether or how their individual actions and interactions intersect to contribute to broader reforms. This study offers evidence of how the micro-processes that contribute to social change encourage a broader understanding of what protest looks like and suggests the need for alternative and more nuanced definitions of collective action and public protest. It suggests that individual actions that have taken place independently, in different spaces and different times, gain momentum over time as ideas are shared, discussed, and advanced via conferences, mass media, social media, research papers, and policy discussions with the government. Drawing from Lo (2011), it also calls for a more critical understanding of distinctions between neocolonialism and self-determination. The study offers insights into how international education can be a catalyst for change and calls for a more flexible understanding of how the capacity for protest might be understood differently in different sociopolitical contexts. In particular, it invites further discussion about the nature of collective action, and encourages scholars to acknowledge and explore how collective action might be understood in a collectivist culture.

Author

• Mary Beth Marklein, George Mason