How to Forge a Creative Student-Citizen: The Challenges of Achieving in Today's Vietnam
| Dates: | 20 October 2014 |
|---|
| Times: | 15:00 - 17:00 |
|---|
| What is it: | Seminar |
|---|
| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
|---|
| Who is it for: | University staff |
|---|
| Speaker: | Prof. Susan Bayly |
|---|
|
The exaltation of achievement as a measure of collective and individual worth and moral agency has been one of the defining features of Asian developmentalism. Yet in today's age of globalized neoliberal attainment monitoring, the question of who and what achievers actually are within an achievement-conscious society is far from straightforward. In late-socialist Vietnam, the notion of doing well and creditably for self and nation can be deeply problematic for those called on to embody qualities of attainment and creditable life-course functioning in ways recognisable to those who reward and monitor aspiring achievers in both official and household contexts. Building on recent fieldwork in Vietnam, this paper explores the ways young Hanoians have engaged with a rapidly changing set of ideas about how the country's tightly regulated school and exam system can both unleash and constrain the potential for 'creative' forms of attainment on the part of aspiring citizen-achievers.
Speaker
Prof. Susan Bayly
Organisation: University of Cambridge
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
2.016/2.017
Arthur Lewis Building
Manchester
