Vietnam’s War on COVID-19: an Ethnography of Pandemic in Ho Chi Minh City

Tough, Rachel Anne (2025) Vietnam’s War on COVID-19: an Ethnography of Pandemic in Ho Chi Minh City. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

Preview

PDF Download (11MB) | Preview

Abstract

This thesis presents new knowledge of how state-society relations function in contemporary Vietnam by analysing everyday negotiations around the implementation of the country’s Zero-COVID policy. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in and around one of Ho Chi Minh City’s most coronavirus-impacted neighbourhoods across 18 months between 2021 and 2023 through participant observation, interviews, life histories, and a participatory photography project with local university students, the study is one of a limited number of ethnographies of the pandemic informed by data obtained through in situ anthropological research methods.

The analysis focuses on three themes emerging from the ethnography. A chapter is devoted to each. Saigon is bleeding (Sài Gòn đổ máu) considers norms and values around the just distribution of resources that emerged as the state failed to feed citizens during lockdown. The theory of moral economy that James C. Scott applied to analyse Vietnamese peasants’ subsistence ethic fifty years earlier holds true for an urban setting in contemporary Vietnam, it is shown.

Mētises meet metrices problematises theorisations of top-down planning that dichotomise officials and subalterns by revealing how low-level officials exploit their embodied knowledge to improvise workable compromises in day-to-day regulation situations. I develop the concept of có lý có tình (being right but reasonable) to capture the qualities of Vietnamese officials who prosecute the state’s agenda in a manner acceptable to both the public and their bureaucratic masters.

Interpellation by infection considers how state-society relations are mediated through ideological discourse. I introduce two new theoretical takes on Louis Althusser’s concept of interpellation. Interpellation by infection expresses how citizens were rendered subjects via Vietnam’s uniquely comprehensive coronavirus contact tracing system. De-interpellation accounts for the societal discombobulation when that system and the subject-effect it produced suddenly ended.

By showing how the state’s coronavirus control policy was adapted and contested at the everyday level, the ethnography contributes to developing a more accurate understanding of how power really operates in Vietnam.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Global Development (formerly School of International Development)
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	15 May 2025 10:38
Last Modified:	15 May 2025 10:38
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/99277
DOI:

Downloads

Actions (login required)

View Item