Civil Society and Political Culture in Vietnam

5 Civil society and political culture in Vietnam Nadine Reis Introduction The idea that a vibrant civil society is beneficial for the political and social development of a nation has been popular at least since de Tocqueville’s (2008 [1835]) analysis of nineteenth century America. In the twentieth century, the idea of civil society has gained popularity in particular due to the democratic movements in Eastern Europe since the 1970s, making it a central point of reference in the debate about democratization processes (cf. <do you really mean ‘compare’ here??> cf. can be deleted Klein 2001: 19). Further, Putnam’s work on Italy and the US has been highly influential, showing the positive relationship between high levels of civic engagement, a strong associational life, and the functioning of political institutions (Putnam 1993, 2000). Civil society has consequently entered Western governments’ and international organizations’ political agenda in developing countries, considered ‘the key ingredient in promoting democratic development’ (Jenkins 2001: 251). In short, ‘civic groups figure large in visions of a better society’ (Lichterman 2005: 395). Problematic about such expectations is not only to which extent civil society can meet them, but also the assumption that civil society is a universal concept. International donors mostly understand the concept of civil society in general terms; as ‘the wide array of non-governmental and not-forprofit organizations that have a presence in public life, expressing the interests and values of their members or others, based on ethical, cultural, political, scientific, religious or philanthropic considerations’ (World Bank 2010). Dalton and Ong (2005) question whether such a definition can capture civic engagement in a one-party system like Vietnam, and in particular, whether the mere existence of civic organizations can be seen as a step towards democracy. As Lichterman suggests, civic engagement is not the same everywhere, but ‘means very different things in different settings, with different consequences for public discussion and intergroup ties’ (Lichtermann 2005: 394). Different settings may also create different civic customs that ‘carry different potentials for realizing different kinds of collective goods’ (ibid.: 389). How can we conceptualize the different settings under which civil society exists and operates? What kinds of ‘collective goods’ or social processes can be expected to emerge from civic engagement in Vietnam? One way of understanding the diversity of civil society is to approach it from the perspective of (political) culture. Following Archer’s critical realist approach to social theory, ‘culture’ is defined as ‘referring to all intelligibilia, that is to any item that has the dispositional ability to be understood by someone’, while a Cultural System is ‘that subset of items to which the law of contradiction can be applied’ (Archer 2005: 24). This chapter analyses the cultural dimension of civic engagement: the system of meanings and values under which citizens engage in their society as well as the knowledge that underpins the practices of active citizenship, and thus builds the situational basis for societal elaboration. Next to material-structural conditions, such as available resources, infrastructure, or limits posed by physical violence, cultural conditions are vital for civic engagement, since they shape social practices just like material structures do. [T]he [Cultural System] is the product of historical [Socio-Cultural] interaction, but having emerged (cultural emergence being a continuous process) then qua product, it has properties but also powers of its own kind. Like structure, some of its most important causal powers are those of constraints and enablements. In the cultural domain these stem from contradictions and complementarities. (Archer 2005: 25) The question is thus how a specific Cultural System enables or constrains civic action in Vietnam, and how the practices of civic engagement may in turn reproduce or change it. The chapter begins by outlining the emergence of the idea of civil society. I argue that the ‘social imaginary’ (Taylor 2004) is a particularly relevant element of political culture on which civic action draws. The idea of civil society is based on the historical legacy of the development of an independent economic sphere in Europe and the ideas accompanying this process. In making central the idea of free and equal individuals together making up society for mutual benefit, the modern social imaginary fundamentally differs from the Vietnamese social imaginary – which is based on the idea of hierarchical differentiation. After analysing the implications for the forms and meanings of civil society in Vietnam, I will discuss the constraints and possibilities for the rapidly increasing number of civic groups to bring about change. Civil society in the ‘modern social imaginary’ Political culture theory suggests that differences in attitudes about authority and power are key to the analysis of political systems and their development (cf. delete cf. Pye 1985; Bukovansky 2002). Therefore, an assessment of the potential of civil society for political development in Vietnam requires an understanding of the substantive content of the Cultural System in which the idea of civil society emerged, particularly attitudes to power. The idea of civil society is part of a Cultural System that Taylor (2004) describes as the ‘modern social imaginary’, which is ‘the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations’ (ibid.: 23). The social imaginary can thus be understood as the way(s) in which humans are imagined as social beings. The social imaginary of Western societies started its ‘long march’ in Renaissance times and, over the centuries, turned from an elite idea into the common way in which ordinary people imagine their social surroundings (ibid.: 32ff.). The core of the idea is that of human beings forming society as free and equal individuals for their mutual benefit (ibid.: 4). The presumption of equality fundamentally distinguishes the new social imaginary from earlier ones. Premodern social imaginaries .<th>.<th>. were structured by various modes of hierarchical complementarity. The hierarchical differentiation is seen as the proper order of things. It was part of the nature or form of society. Any attempt to deviate from it turned reality against itself, society would be denatured.<th>.<th>.<th>.The modern idealisation of order departs radically from this. Whatever distribution of functions a society might develop is deemed contingent. It cannot itself define the good; the basic normative principle is, indeed, that the members of society serve each other’s needs, help each other, in short, behave like the rational and sociable creatures they are. The modern order vies no ontological status to hierarchy or any particular structure of differentiation. (Taylor 2004: 11f.) This social imaginary is the core of the ‘system culture’ (Almond 1989: 28) of modern Western societies,1 in which the idea of civil society plays a significant role. In its classical meaning ‘civil’ was a quality of society – the opposite of ‘uncivilized’ society (Kumar 1993: 376ff.). The privatization of economic activity, and the advent of the idea of a society formed of free and equal individuals in the eighteenth century, shifted its meaning. Civil society came to mean a societal sphere distinct from the state. Civil society is ‘interpreted to signify a reality’; state and civil society are not only categories to be distinguished analytically, but also seen as referentially discrete or even causally independent (Dunn 2001: 53). The semiotic separation of state and civil society in the West means that the idea of civil society is an element of a specific Cultural System in which ‘the state’ is seen to exist for the benefit of free and equal individuals.2 As a sphere independent of the state, the privatized economy laid the ground for the second dimension of civil society, namely the notion of the public sphere, within which the requirements of privatized societal reproduction were secured. With the detachment of the economic sphere from the polity, a common interest of individuals emerges for the first time, which manifests in the central significance of the rule of law. Political interventions in a market without laws are incalculable, and thus fundamentally run counter to the degree of rationality required by individuals who are privately acting market participants. For the law to become law, that is, to apply to all without exception, the public itself, comprised of private individuals, has to take charge of legislation (Habermas 1989: 80ff.). This moment signified the final break with the imaginary of a hierarchically differentiated society, where authority (Herrschaft) is conferred only to a specific group of people. After all, [i]n its intention, the rule of the law aimed at dissolving domination altogether; this was a typically bourgeois idea insofar as not even the political safeguarding of the private sphere emancipating itself from political domination was to assume the form of domination. The bourgeois idea of the law-based state, namely, the binding of all state-activity to a system of norms legitimated by public opinion (a system that had no gaps, if possible), already aimed at abolishing the state as an instrument of domination altogether. (Habermas 1989: 81ff.) Civil society not only achieved an identity different from the polity, but became, through its function of creating the public sphere, a moral requirement for the legitimacy of the state. The core requirement of this idea is the sovereignty of the people: all state activities are only legitimate when based on the opinion of the public. The public sphere stands, ‘mentally, outside of the polity, as it were, from which to judge its performance’ (Taylor 2004: 87). Government is then not only wise to follow [public] opinion; it is morally bound to do so. Governments ought to legislate and rule in the midst of a reasoning public. In making its decisions, Parliament or the court ought to be concentrating together and enacting what has already been emerging out of enlightened debate among the people.<th>.<th>.<th>.The public sphere is, then, a locus in which rational views are elaborated that should guide government. (ibid.: 88ff.) Civil society thus became a sphere whose function lies in the political intermediation between state and society (Klein 2001: 31). However, in the modern idea, civil society is not only bound to the legitimization of the state as viewed in deliberative political theory. In occupying the domain between the individual and the state, civil society also invokes an idea of salvation. It is ‘the attempt to grapple with the central problem of modern society: how to find a “third way” between “the atomization of competitive market society”, on the one side, and a “state dominated existence”, on the other’. Most commonly, this has referred to the space of groups and organizations where ‘the individual develops the sense of social solidarity and civic participation’ (Kumar 1993: 380). Investigations of ‘civic culture’ (Almond and Verba 1963) found that the ‘rationality-activist’ model of citizenship cannot be seen as the only element of a functioning democratic state. ‘Only when combined in some sense with its opposites of passivity, trust, and deference to authority and competence was a viable, stable democracy possible’ (Almond 1989: 16). The idea of deliberative democracy has been further criticized for being naïve in that it believes too much in the power of public debate (Ottmann 2006: 319). It would thus be too simplistic to view Western political culture(s) as devoid of passive subjects who trust or even subordinate themselves to political authority. Nevertheless, this does not affect the conception of civil society as a sphere distinct from the state, in and through which the moral idea of a society existing of equal individuals is continuously expanding, both in extensity (more people are claiming it) and in intensity (its demands are heavier) (Taylor 2004: 5). Today, this materializes in the claim of rights to privacy, property, publicity (free speech and association) and equality before the law (Cohen and Arato 1992: 345). As a discursive structure, ‘civil society’ has spread from Europe around the world with the advent of colonialism. By establishing ‘states’, there was already an ‘implicit distinction from civil society’ (Kaviraj and Khilnani 2001: 4): [T]he language used to describe, evaluate and express the experiences of politics are the same everywhere. For historical reasons, nearly all societies speak a Western language. It is a language which identifies states and civil societies, speaks of bureaucracies, political parties, parliaments, expresses political desires for the establishment of liberal, Communist or socialist political forms, and evaluates political systems in terms of democracy and dictatorship. To what extent has the dissemination of terminology gone along with the dissemination of culture? How is society imagined in Vietnam, and what is the prevailing idea of the state? The idea of the state in Vietnam Traditional Vietnamese society and its political system were based on Confucian political philosophy, which employed the patriarchal family as the basic model for the political system and did not concede any political or civil rights to citizens. During the 1829–41 Minh Mang regency, printing was restricted based on the idea that ordinary people were incapable of making decisions and did not need to know how to write or read (Porter 1993: 4). A hierarchically structured society is traditionally believed to be in ‘the nature of things’, to represent ‘the intrinsic structure of the universe’ (Jamieson 1993: 16). Attitudes to power in Vietnam also involve a great deal of non-Confucian, in particular Buddhist, cultural heritage (Pye 1985: 238ff.). Nevertheless, the overall political Cultural System still differs fundamentally from the Western one in that it is of a distinctively hierarchical kind. The view of power and authority is paternalistic in emphasizing ‘dependency and .<th>.<th>. expecting superiors to be nurturing and generously supportive in both strength and wealth’ (Pye 1985: 239). At the heart of the Vietnamese cultural heritage is also the idea that only proper social relationships following this natural order ‘will produce social harmony, creating happy and prosperous families, villages and nations’ (Jamieson 1993: 12). The rejection of Confucianism by the Communist movement did not mean the end of this imaginary. Like Confucianism, Marxism-Leninism gave legitimacy to the claims of the collective and the society over those of the individual.<th>.<th>.<th>.For the fund of ancient wisdom and practice on which the legitimacy of the traditional Confucianist elite was based, the Vietnamese Communist movement substituted a ‘scientific’ system of thought that gave party leaders the ability to discern the truth and to point to the correct path. (Porter 1993: 7ff.) Hue-Tam Ho Tai (1992: 259ff.) demonstrates that the victory of MarxistLeninist ideology over liberalist and individualistic ideas in the 1920s can largely be attributed to its ability to unite the ‘ingrained elitism’ among the revolutionary vanguard with the promise of national independence (‘the victory of the oppressed masses’). By emphasizing the importance of class at the expense of the individual, Marxism-Leninism brushed aside the humanist concerns – in particular the desire for personal freedom and moral autonomy as distinct from social justice, equality, or political independence – that had brought so many young Vietnamese into revolutionary politics. (Hue-Tam Ho Tai 1992: 262ff.) In spite of the liberalist movement in which the revolution originated, it finally ended in the reproduction of a Cultural System that placed the individual in the service of the collective. Elitism and anti-liberalism were deeply ingrained in the new leading ideology. As Lenin saw it, the selected cadre of vanguard revolutionaries was to take over the role of teachers who dictate the uneducated masses which way to go (Scott 1998: 148). the ‘masses’ in general and the working class in particular become ‘the body’, while the vanguard party is ‘the brain’.<th>.<th>.<th>.[T]he vanguard party not only is essential to the tactical cohesion of the masses but also must literally do their thinking for them.<th>.<th>.<th>.Its authority is based on its scientific intelligence.<th>.<th>.<th>.There is no need for politics within the party inasmuch as the science and rationality of the socialist intelligentsia require instead a technically necessary subordination; the party’s judgments are not subjective and value laden but objective and logically inevitable. (Scott 1998: 149ff., citing Lenin) Ho Chi Minh’s political thought and the foundation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1954 embraced the decisively authoritarian Soviet model, in which human freedom was subordinated to the (party-defined) interests of the collective (Brocheux 2007: 187). This model, incorporating the idea of the infallibility of the Party, was strongly supported by the neoConfucian principle of Chính nghĩa (exclusive righteousness) of the political elite, which, in this form, lived on in spite of the significant ideological differences between Confucianism and Marxist-Leninism (Gillespie 2002: 183). As Metzger (2001: 230ff.) assessed in the case of China, in addressing the question of political improvement, modern Chinese political thought has not turned toward a non-utopian, bottom-up approach. Based on the traditional optimism about political practicability, it still reflects the traditional paradigm of a morally and intellectually enlightened elite working with a corrigible political centre morally to transform society, instead of emphasising the organisational efforts of free but fallible citizens forming a civil society with which to monitor an incorrigible political centre. This assessment resonates strongly with the Vietnamese case and explains the ethical justification of hierarchical differentiation in society. As in the Western imaginary, political decision-making should be based on a rational, enlightened view of the world. However, it is not public opinion that is enlightened, it is the political authorities (cf. delete Taylor 2004: 88). In contrast, it is the Party that is the embodiment of reason. This worldview prevails until today, explaining why the very notion of an oppositional sphere, or a domain outside of the state, remains anathema – an affront even .<th>.<th>. [T]he idea of an oppositional sphere simply does not fit with the philosophical underpinnings in which the Communist Party of Vietnam is rooted and still draws. To suggest otherwise is insulting because it is to question the party’s commitment to the people. (Gainsborough 2005: 37) If Vietnamese political culture differs in such a substantial way from the Western one, can civil society still be thought to exist, and in what sense? Civil society in Vietnam Unlike other international development terminology that has entered Vietnamese policy discourse, ‘civil society’ is normally not used in official documents or in the media (Hannah 2007: 103; cf. delete Phuong Le Trong, this volume). Nevertheless, group membership is significantly higher in Vietnam than in other Asian and even Western countries (Dalton and Ong 2005: 33; Norlund 2007: 78). Moreover, the popularity of ‘civil society’ in international policy discourse has significantly increased the number of community-based organizations (CBOs) in Vietnam through donor engagement (Thayer 2008: 5ff.). Vietnamese mass organizations, as well as other organizations, ‘try to pass themselves off as “genuine” civil society groups out of self-interest’ (ibid.: 13). In what way do civil society practices in Vietnam differ from those in the West, and what is their foreseen and actual role in society? From a cultural perspective, the answer to this question lies in the ways civic engagement ‘fits’ the Cultural System.3 Two ‘ideal types’ of active citizenship in Vietnam can be identified. The first type, foremost manifested in the mass organizations (Women’s Union, Farmers’ Union, Youth Union and Veterans’ Union) and professional organizations (cf. Bach Tan Sinh, this volume), has to be understood in relation to the role of the public sphere. The public sphere in Vietnam cannot be understood as an independent, public expression of private people in opposition to the state. In the democratic West, the public can be regarded as part of the societal sphere of private persons (cf. delete Habermas 1989: 30). In Vietnam the public cannot be seen as such, since there is no binary idea of state and society as separated spheres. The public in Vietnam, rather, must be viewed as a sphere of education: there is no private, and thus no public, independent of the party state. Public discourse is not debate between private individuals, but rather public opinion controlled through the state apparatus. The public sphere is, so to speak, the sphere where the one-party state accesses the people, and where the party’s policies and values are transmitted to the different groups in society (cf. leave in Rittersporn et al. 2003: 14). Therefore, the government’s strategy is to initiate and direct the participation of citizens in social groups (Dalton and Ong 2005: 33). The mass organizations are, next to the state and party organizations at every administrative level, the core instrument for ensuring the effective education of the masses. This is evident, for example, in water supply and sanitation, where it is the task of the Women’s Union to communicate party views on environmental and hygiene issues to the people, following a clear top-down approach. The Women’s Union has the function of mobilization and communication on good hygiene and sanitation, improving the awareness of the people, training.<th>.<th>.<th>.We get the decision about the strategy from the provincial People’s Committee. (interview, Women’s Union, Tra Vinh province, 10 July 2008) We train and mobilize the women [on district level] to become facilitators in communication and education for rural water supply and sanitation. The rural women should participate in the protection of the environment, improvement of hygienic latrines, collecting waste, digging holes for collecting chicken and duck droppings, and establishing families with good health. (interview, Women’s Union, Can Tho province, 3 June 2008) We try to communicate about environmental issues to all members of the Women’s Union. To protect health, the people have to use well water, install hygienic latrines and drink boiled water. [NR: How do you cooperate with the Women’s Union on provincial level?] Cooperation is not the right expression. We get the decision from the provincial level and we follow. (interview, Women’s Union, Co Do district, Can Tho province, 11 July 2008) Women’s Union officers are appointed by the party. [NR: How did you become the leader of the WU?] Previously, I worked in the hamlet, then the commune suggested that I work in the commune. I became the deputy manager, and after a few years, I became the leader. [NR: Who from the commune suggested you for the commune Women’s Union, was it the People’s Committee?] No, it was people from the party. [NR: Does the party always appoint the leader of the Women’s Union?] Yes. [NR: Do you have to be a party member to become the leader of the Women’s Union?] I have been a member since 1998. (interview, Women’s Union leader, Truong Xuan commune, Co Do district, Can Tho province, 23 October 2008) The mass organizations can thus be seen as the ‘civil arm’ of the party apparatus, through which the political elite propagates its views on virtually all aspects of life. To illustrate, the Women’s Union is also responsible for ‘communicating’ the party’s two-child policy to the population through ‘birth control officers’ active in the communes. Hence, the Vietnamese social imaginary implies that the public, in the sense of society as a whole, is fully entitled to control the private (cf. leave in Rittersporn 2003: 413). The second ‘ideal type’ of active citizenship in Vietnam relates to the moral imperative for devoting oneself to the wellbeing and harmony of the societal whole. One of the components of the Vietnamese Cultural System, with origins in Buddhist rather than Confucian thought, is a morality steeped in self-sacrifice and ‘destruction of the ego’ (Pye 1985: 238ff.). Civic engagement can thus be seen as a way of becoming a ‘good’ citizen. The agents of this project of civic engagement can be individuals as well as collectives. On the individual side, the water sector can exemplify the cultural representation of this kind of civic engagement. In order to supply the rural areas in Can Tho City with clean domestic water, provincial authorities began to install water supply stations with piped networks at the end of the 1990s (cf. delete Reis 2012: 74ff.). However, as research has revealed, the budget of the provincial agency responsible for rural water supply is so low that the operation and management of the local water supply stations is essentially dependent on the commitment of individuals. The stations are commonly constructed on the property of a household willing to donate a piece of land (usually in their back yard) for constructing the station; they then take over its management. The task involves maintaining the station and tubes, washing the water container, collecting water fees from households, implementing minor repairs and installing household connections. However, the station managers are not government employees, and only receive a small allowance of VND140,000 (approx. USD7.43) per month. In addition, they receive VND2,500 for every household that uses more than 3m3; i.e. a manager whose piped water is used by 100 households can receive VND390,000VND (approximately USD20.72) per month. How many days the station managers work for the water supply station depends on how often the water container is cleaned and how frequently repairs are needed. Station managers stated that they worked between three and 16 days per month,4 and represented their work as a personal commitment for the community. I do not consider the money from [the government agency] as a salary. It is just for serving the people. (Station manager, Thanh Quoi commune, Vinh Thanh district, 23 September 2008) I do not consider the money I get as a salary, I just do it because I want to serve the people. (Station manager, Truong Xuan commune, Co Do district, 23 October 2008) The salary for the station management is not too much; but because the government invested to serve the people, I also work to serve the people. (Station manager, Truong Long commune, Phong Dien district, 28 October 2008) The salary of the managers is very little considering the considerable responsibility. Proper operation of the stations effectively depends on the commitment of the station managers. For example, the water quality depends on how often the container is cleaned. Therefore, authorities select families with a strong sense of civic duty. The land is usually offered by the families. They have to choose a family which has high social spirit. The area is usually 48 m². [NR: What are the important characteristics of the families?] High social spirit, responsibility, good health. If the guy is drunk all the time it is not good! [laughing].<th>.<th>.<th>.In this area, the social spirit is the most important. (President, PC Thoi An ward, O Mon district, 15 September 2008) The station managers in Can Tho are very kind. They have good social spirit. They manage the public property very well. The manager is supported by the local authorities and the communities very much. (Head of Office, provincial water supply agency, 15 October 2008) Similar to the idea of ‘social spirit’, the morality of civic engagement is illustrated by the conception of a ‘good hamlet’ (Ấp văn hóa). Becoming a ‘good hamlet’ is achieved by ‘creating a culture among the people’ (interview, People’s Committee Troung Long commune, Phong Dien district, Can Tho City, 2 March 2009). The culture of ‘serving’ the wellbeing of society also materializes in CBOs, many of which were established after 1986 (Wischermann and Nguyen Quang Vinh 2003: 186). CBOs fulfil a prominent role in the policy of ‘socialization’. The government encourages the establishment of non-profit organizations providing public services to citizens that the government is not able or willing to provide (CIEM/FES 2006: 19ff.). In 2005 an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 such groups existed in Vietnam; working in the health, education, environmental and religious sectors (Norlund 2007: 13). As pointed out by Waibel and Benedikter (this volume), in the case of irrigation management CBOs play a key role in the implementation of government policy. It is necessary to clearly emphasize that socialization is to mobilize material, intellectual, and spiritual strength of the whole society to better meet daily demands of people on education, healthcare, culture, gymnastics and sports, [and to] better implement social equality in these fields. (address of Prime Minister Phan Van Khai to the National Conference, 26 July 2005, cited in CIEM/FES 2006: 23) These words of the Prime Minister make the case for viewing CBOs as vicarious agents of the government, and as a manifestation of the idea that civic engagement is to serve the wellbeing of the society at large. Discussion and conclusion In the Vietnamese social imaginary, civic engagement takes place within the boundaries of the party state. Therefore, if ‘civil society’ exists in Vietnam, it cannot be seen as a sphere outside of the state, or even a sphere in which the activities of the state are guided and judged. On the contrary, ‘active citizenship’ in Vietnam functions as an important mechanism for the reproduction of the social imaginary, which can be understood to be the ‘cultural property’ of the one-party state (cf. delete Reis 2012: 215ff.). How does this analysis assess the changes in Vietnam since the economic liberalization of the late 1980s? Waibel and Benedikter (this volume) show that the reform process has produced a growing number, and new types, of civic organizations, such as religious groups, environmental groups, educational/cultural groups and business organizations. Thayer (2008: 13) recognized an increasing number of ‘explicitly political organizations dedicated to the promotion of democracy, human rights and religious freedom’ in Vietnam. Religious leaders and networks have been a particularly active source of political unrest.5 Will these new groups initiate political change and transform Vietnam into a democracy? A simple answer would be that only history will tell: society is an open system. The political Cultural System is a structural condition, not a determinant, which means that the exercise of its causal powers is dependent upon their activation by people (Archer 2005: 25). Nevertheless, as a structural condition, the Cultural System exercises its own powers on socio-cultural interaction because it engenders specific mechanisms that enable or constrain the variation, selection and retention of social practices. Social imaginaries possess discursively selective powers (Jessop 2008: 239). The key driver for the reproduction of the political Cultural System through civic action is that people become carriers of various structures as their behaviour is formed by processes of socialization, in particular cultural and cumulative social learning (cf. delete Eckstein 1988: 792). It is for this reason that Dalton and Ong (2005: 41) found that civic groups in Vietnam, instead of developing political skills and interests (as postulated by classical civil society theorists), ‘convey the values of hierarchy and collective decisionmaking that underlie the current communist regime’. What if ideas that contradict the prevailing social imaginary still emerge? Clearly the reproduction of the Cultural System also depends on material-structural forces and the interests associated with them. ‘Although there may be a plurality of ideas and interests at play in any given sociopolitical structure, the dominant legitimacy conceptions and rules constituting that structure will favor some sorts of interests and modes of action over others’ (Bukovansky 2002: 43). In Vietnam the cultural properties of the state are carried by the interests of one societal group, one which has expanded numerically with economic liberalization but one which has not diversified to the extent that conflicting political ideas would gain weight (Reis 2012: 217). The concentration of resources within a single elite, and its strong interdependence with a longestablished idea of the state, creates a strong incentive for closing off the system against alternative ideas. The modern idea of equality has to be suppressed because it is subversive to the core features of social order. Hence, the prevailing Cultural System is protected, most notably, by the hindering or closing off information sources, anti-pluralist propaganda, and finally, physical violence against political dissidents.6 In summary, the properties of the cultural and material structures of the Vietnamese state system provide more reason to assume that civil society actors will continue to contribute to the reproduction of social and political order rather than to democratic transformation. Nevertheless, there are signs that civic action in Vietnam could push forward the ‘modern idea’ in a more modest sense. The central features of the Vietnamese Cultural System, emphasizing the creation of harmony through hierarchical order and elitist paternalism, may also be seen as a ‘primary civilizational layer’ (Arnason 2003: 17) that is not only exceptionally capable of absorbing external ideas without disruption,7 but also of adapting (to a certain extent) to new social realities. Until now, the strategy of the majority of civic organizations for introducing change has consisted of pushing the Cultural System to its internal limits rather than challenging the system by exploiting potential contradictions. [T]hey view themselves as representative of marginalized groups and lobby the state for change in policy. In this role Vietnamese NGOs attempt to negotiate and educate state officials rather than confront them as a tactic to bring about change. In other words, their activities were in direct support of existing government programs or in support of larger state-approved policy goals (national development or poverty alleviation). (Thayer 2008: 9) By focusing on cultural complementarities instead of contradictions, their practices have strengthened the dominant Cultural System, but at the same time they may be able to initiate processes of structural elaboration. Rather than initiating a radical transformation process, civil society actors could bring about gradual change towards less controversial views in certain societal spheres. The first signs of such elaboration may be glimpsed in the field of environmental management (cf. delete Wells-Dang, this volume), gender relations, and people living with HIV/AIDS (cf. delete Wischermann 2011). It remains to be seen, however, to what extent the idea of equality (and which facets of it) can be accommodated and manifested within the Vietnamese social imaginary. To conclude, the cultural conditions under which civic engagement takes place in Vietnam differ fundamentally from those in which the concept of civil society originated, and civic action thus also takes on different forms and meanings than in Western societies. By analysing the meanings of civic engagement in Vietnam, it has become clear that there is no automatic logic that ‘civil society’ functions for increased citizen participation in political decision-making and democracy. Rather, it depends on the demands civic actors make of their political leaders, and to what extent the Vietnamese state will become more of a project of the people than the project of a selfproclaimed enlightened elite. Notes 1 In the following, the term ‘modern’ is used (in line with Taylor 2004) with reference to the dominant, European form of modernity, leaving open whether modernity can also exist in other forms (cf. leave in Eisenstadt 2000). 2 I leave aside the debate on concepts of ‘freedom and equality’ in Western capitalism, and the practices of the idea/ideology of civil society in Western societies. This chapter focuses on how structures of meaning (or ideologies) emanating from a particular cultural setting find application in other contexts, like Vietnam. 3 The empirical material presented derives from a year of field research in the Mekong Delta on policy practices in domestic water supply and sanitation. 4 It is unclear how many hours they work per day. 5 See, e.g., UCA News <is this a publication?> It is an online newspaper article 2012. 6 For information on government restrictions and suppression in Vietnam see Human Rights Watch (2012). In response to recent popular movements in the Arab world, the VCP has, in particular, increased surveillance and repression of bloggers (Thayer 2012). 7 On the absorption of Western donor terminology as ‘mobilising metaphors’ (Mosse 2004: 663) in development cooperation in Vietnam, see Reis (2012: 185ff.). References Almond, G.A. (1989) ‘The intellectual history of the Civic Culture concept’ in G.A. 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