“I choose fish”: Understanding informal civil society in Vietnam through environmental grievances and actions

Quoc, Thai Nguyen Van; Trell, Elen‐Maarja

doi:10.1177/23996544221148032

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The use of social media, particularly Facebook, to assign a variety of problem-making claims about the disaster allowed the development of a connection action network that was far more individualised and technologically organised than traditional collective actions networks (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012). The #ichoosefish was associated with different interpretations of the grievances, and allowed a variety of Facebook and Twitters users to form perception of and attachment to the marine disaster and its many consequences (Nguyen Van Quoc and Trell, 2020). The abstractness of environmentalism or anti-Chinaism thus became personalised, rendering a broader population of users acceptive to mobilisation.[…] ‘environment’ is too generic and broad, so a specific narrative would be easier to attract attention.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We also look into the on-going struggles along the Mekong River, exemplified by the severe drought in 2016, which received considerable attention at policy levels yet little from the bottom-up. Our previous analysis found that despite their silence due to the political sensitivity, institutionalised actors did attempt to get involved and assert influence on the marine disaster (Nguyen Van Quoc & Trell, 2020). This prompted the question of the relationship between environmental politicisation and the corresponding public reaction, particularly from the communities at risk and the activists involved.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Activism and non-activism: The politics of claiming environmental justice in Vietnam

Quoc

Turhan

Holzhacker

2022

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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This paper aims to explore how under authoritarian regimes, undergoing reform processes, divergent forms of environmental activism may emerge. Two severe cases of environmental degradation serve as our starting points: the marine disaster in the central coast of Vietnam in 2016 and the Mekong Delta's ongoing environmental degradation. While the former offers a case of rural grievances over mass fish death in Central Vietnam triggering protests on a national scale, the latter presents a continuum of environmental changes leading to serious impacts on deltaic livelihoods, albeit with no observable efforts of activism compared to the situation in other countries along the Mekong Delta. Drawing from in-depth interviews and participant observation with NGO workers in Vietnam who focus on environment and community development, we unravel the conditions, methods and rationalities behind their engagement (or lack thereof) with environmental activism in each case. We argue that the difference between the cases can be explained by tracing the process of politicising environmental grievances, taking into consideration culinary nationalism, anti-China nationalism and political opportunities under authoritarianism. Moving beyond current literature on activism under authoritarian regimes which relies mainly on institutional and/or social network approaches, our analysis helps further shed light on how contemporary environmental activism is mobilised in Vietnam from a geographically and politically grounded as well as culturally embedded position.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Activism and non-activism: The politics of claiming environmental justice in Vietnam

Quoc

Turhan

Holzhacker

2022

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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The violent turn in non‐violent collective action: What happens?

Ng,

Platow

2024

Asian J of Social Psycho

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Collective actions (e.g., protest marches, social movements) that begin peacefully sometimes turn into violent clashes between demonstrators and police, with alarming consequences. Research on the violent turn, informed by intergroup social psychology and micro‐sociology, has made significant but separate advances. We review them jointly to form an integrated, fuller understanding of the violent turn and promote interdisciplinary dialogue by discussing their respective strengths and identifying areas where they complement each other. For these purposes we first extract from the psychology of interpersonal aggression literature a three‐phase temporal pattern of aggression escalation to provide a common reference for reviewing representative studies and theories in intergroup social psychology (e.g., elaborated social identity model of crowd rioting, intergroup emotions theory) and micro‐sociology (e.g., micro‐sociological theory of violence, emotional dynamics and behavioural dynamics). The results of our analysis show a sequence of events beginning from instigators and their impellance in the early phase of the violent turn, psychological transformations forming a proclivity to aggress in the middle phase, and collective empowerment that disinhibits violence in the late phase. Group power and, to a less extent, group emotions permeate all phases. The sequence of events reveals transitional points where intervention may be applied to avert or abort violence.

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More than keyboard heroes? #ichoosefish, disaster framing, and environmental protests in Vietnam

Nguyen Van Quoc,

Trell,

Mallon

2024

Media, Culture & Society

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This paper investigates the role of social media in mobilizing environmentalism amid authoritarian restrictions, focusing on the Vietnam coastal pollution of 2016. It contributes to current academic debates by showing how elements that are apparently mundane and irrelevant become the stage for political action within social media. We examined the interface of connective actions (social media activism) – collective actions (protests) and the role of food symbolism in translating digital activism into physical resistance that bridges the distance between rural and urban areas. Data were collected from Facebook and Twitter, as well as semi-structured interviews, policy documents, and national newspapers and broadcasts. Food symbolism, exemplified by #ichoosefish, helped personalize grievances and materialize protest actions amid the government’s countermeasures. The results further show that by using social media, especially Facebook, the activists managed to rationalize their political engagement in a non-participatory context and mobilize protests during political restrictions by arguing that their ‘apolitical’ actions were motivated by food-based grievances associated with personal, environmentalist and nationalist concerns. Food symbolism is thus essential in transitioning from connective actions to collective actions.

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“I choose fish”: Understanding informal civil society in Vietnam through environmental grievances and actions

Cited by 3 publications

References 64 publications

Activism and non-activism: The politics of claiming environmental justice in Vietnam

Activism and non-activism: The politics of claiming environmental justice in Vietnam

The violent turn in non‐violent collective action: What happens?

More than keyboard heroes? #ichoosefish, disaster framing, and environmental protests in Vietnam

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