• Citer

Silent Dissidence and Everyday Resistance: A Case Study of Single Mothers in Hanoi

par Murru, Sarah ;Polese, Abel
Référence (Frankfurt, Germany), International Conference on International Dissidence: Rule and Resistance in a Globalized World
Publication Non publié, 2017

Publication dans des actes

• Détails
• Contenu

Résumé :

This contribution presents a study on single mothers in Vietnam as a way to challenge the official narrative on family and social policies that have been adopted, and allegedly implemented, by the socialist party since 1986. To serve the State's economic renovation process, characterized by a shift towards a consumer marketed economy, the “Happy Family Campaign" was aimed at asserting the unchallenged and unchallengeable idea of a wealthy heterosexual, married couple with two children, as the fundamental unit of the Vietnamese society. In opposition to this model, our findings show that single mothers are operating a strong deconstruction of the normalized discourse on family. As women are severely subordinated inside the patriarchal family structure, single mothers are constructing for themselves an alternative to it, further forcing the State to adjust its policies and legislation in order to account for this new social category. Based on ethnographic material collected during several stays in 2014 and 2015 in Hanoi, our paper explores the way everyday practices, taking place in public, private, and translocal social spaces, challenge the dominant model of the family enforced by the socialist party over the past thirty years. By doing this, we engage with literature on everyday resistance (Scott 1984, 1991) but also on engagement in corrupted practices as a way to participate in political process by those excluded from them (Gupta 1995). In addition, we offer a gendered analysis of dissidence. We maintain that dissidence can be performed in a variety of ways and we challenge exclusionary views on the production of the political strictly through major and visible actors to expand participation in political processes to “invisible and marginalized" actors that, by force of number, have the potential to impact State instructions.