Policing in a changing Vietnam

Abstract

Knowledge about policing has been produced and disseminated unevenly so that our understanding comes from a skewed emphasis on the Western (largely Anglo-American) experience. Whilst such literature usually does not openly declare to be making claims of universal validity, it often does so by implication. Fortunately, more empirical research is being undertaken outside the global North. The present study adopted an ethnographic approach to explore the nature of policing and police culture in Vietnam. The origins of the Vietnamese police (according to our modern understanding) are located in a war against colonialism and for national independence emerging in the 1940s in northern Vietnam with officers now required to pledge loyalty to the ruling Communist Party. Over the past three decades, the country has undergone rapid economic and social change. Nevertheless, amid this increasing prosperity, the police confront new challenges.

Fieldwork was undertaken over a six-month period in 2016 (and a visit in 2017) with approval from the Ministry of Public Security – a first in Vietnam. The theoretical framework addresses weaknesses in current theorising of policing by proposing a Southern Policing perspective. I offer an extension of the interactive model of police culture and practice developed by Chan (1997; Chan et al., 2003) which draws on Bourdieu’s (1990a) conceptualisations of field and habitus as a relational dynamic. The framework is useful because it provides flexibility for explaining police practices in both Northern and Southern contexts. It can also account for differences in cultural knowledge and institutionalised practices. A Southern Policing perspective also recognises that capital comes in forms which may depart from those identified in previous studies.

By applying a Southern Policing perspective to Vietnam, the study reveals variations in the field which illustrate that some assumptions about policing do not necessarily hold for a globally inclusive/comprehensive account of policing. Specifically, I address assumptions about relationships between the police, political system, broad societal culture, legal frameworks, organisations, the community, and gender. These variations have to be understood not as deviations from Anglo-American normality but as significant separate practices and traditions of policing from which the North may have something to learn.