Governing Music in Vietnam: From Socialist to Post-socialist Use of Nationalism
- ISBN-10
- 1109508182
- ISBN-13
- 9781109508185
- Pages
- 149
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2009
- Publisher
- University of California, Irvine
- Author
- Nhu-Ngoc Thuy Ong
Description
After the war and the failed experiment of socialism in the South, the Vietnamese government opened up doors for the logic of the market to enter to correct for the unintended consequences of a planned economy. When the market found its way into the socialist system, almost everything that could be sold was sold. There is a market of governance, where the government engages in the buying and selling of its own authority, for instance, in the form of permission for self-expression, in both the official and the unofficial realms. There are also domestic and international markets for the nation and the representation of history as approved by the Party. In this thesis, I looked at the music industry in Vietnam, which represents a microcosm of the hybrid extension of socialism, one previously unaccounted for in the literature of democratization theories. Instead of following a neat trajectory from a Leninist totalitarian regime with a command economy to a post-socialist regime that accepts and practices market economy, which ultimately leads to democratization of the political system, as many democratization and modernization theorists claim, the Vietnamese government shows its strong resistance to democratic changes. In fact, after nearly a quarter of a century from the time the Vietnamese government decided to incorporate the logic of the market in 1986, the political regime remains steadfast in its control of freedom of expression and freedom of speech.
