The Ironies of Freedom: Sex, Culture, and Neoliberal Governance in Vietnam

6 What Kind of Power? Specialization of Intervention and Coexisting Modes of Governance

CHAPTER 6 What Kind of Power? Specialization of Intervention and Coexisting Modes of Governance DURING MARKETIZATION, the rise of medicine as an expert field of knowledgedisciplineddifferentsegmentsof thepopulationthroughits specialized public health intervention. Public health measures taught urban women of the upper and middling classes to become informed consumers of health services and beauty products at the same time as other measures pushed testing and other more invasive procedures on sexworkers,mostof whomcamefromthelowerclasses.Theuseof coercion together with notions of true cultural tradition by the police and the rehabilitation camps allowed the government to cultivate a segment of the population for the demands of the neoliberal global market, namely, to suggest that lower-class Vietnamese women should provide low-wage feminine labor for the global assembly line. It is thus difficult to say that the coercive mode of governance constitutes a vestige from sometotalitarianrule.Rather,repressionasagovernmentaltechnology of rule is produced and reproduced in conjunction with contemporary conditionsof themarket.Thegradationof coercionseemedtoincrease as governmental measures moved from the upper and middle classes to the lower classes, from men to women, and certainly from the medical modeof interventiontopolicingandrehabilitation.Thekindof knowledge imparted to different segments of the population also changed as the government moved across class lines. While medicine still had to rely on individuals making the right choices using information about empiricalrealityandexpertscientificknowledge,albeitwithdifferences across gender and class lines, policing and rehabilitation measures used 144 outrightrepressivetacticstowardlower-classwomenjustifiedbynotions judged to mark true Vietnamese tradition. This chapter searches for an explanation as to how these seemingly contradictorymodesof governanceaimedatproducingadifferentiated population for the market economy could coexist. I suggest that specialization of intervention keeps the logic of one mode of intervention from canceling out the other. The use of specialized or expert knowledge also allows the justification of governmental measures to be taken up by organizations in society as some governmental functions are turned over to society. But at the same time, there is cause to speculate thatspecializationmayallowcritiquesoralternativepracticestoemerge. This discussion begins with how policing had come to rely on specialized knowledge as marketization proceeded through the 1990s. All three areas of intervention—medicine, policing, and rehabilitation— arethentakenuptoconsidertheimplicationsfortheoriesof liberaland neoliberalgovernance,giventhepresenceof contradictorymodesof governance aimed at producing a differentiated citizenry for the neoliberal economy. POLICING VERSUS PUBLIC HEALTH: WHAT KIND OF POWER? Policing of the Social: Specialized Knowledge I make the case that (1) a focus on social problems like prostitution allowed the police to claim a certain expert knowledge on the origins and manifestations of crimes and social disorder and that (2) this representedashiftawayfromtheoldsocialistconceptionof crimeandpolicing . I also explore how specialization allows for public health and policing measures, with their different modes of power, to coexist. Colonel Bùi Quốc Huy, the director of the Ho Chi Minh City bureau of the Ministry of Public Security in 1996, summarizes his visionof policeworkandtheoriginsof crimeinthisway:“Letmeemphasize that the main mission of Regional Police is to provide security, to prevent and stop the emergence and development of crime. The social What Kind of Power? 145 ills of gambling, drug addiction, prostitution, decadent culture are the sources of crime.”1 Reportssummarizingpoliceactionroutinelyacknowledgedarrestsof a host of social-ill targets, among which real criminals were singled out, supporting the view that criminals came from the population of socialill targets. A typical report reads as follows: AccordingtotheKiênGiangPeople’sInspectorGeneral’sreport,the province as a whole has 301 drug addicts, 33 entrepreneurs dealing in decadent and poisonous videos, 1,887 gamblers, 230 prostitutes, 50 madams and pimps, 34 drug traffickers/dealers. From the total of people mentioned above, after participating in drug use, gambling, poisonous video viewing, prostitution, etc., there have been 33 subjectswhocommittedmurder ,robbery,burglary,illegaluseof weapons, public disorder, rape, and 80 subjects who tested HIV positive (we have discovered and managed them).2 Routine news articles in the Public Security presses highlighted how manywomenstartedoutbyprostitutingthemselvesandendeduprunning sex tours or cross-border trafficking in women.3 Once the police established that social ills produced the delinquency behindthecrimes,theyinvitedthemselvestoinvestigateanddiscussthese samesocialproblemsfromasecuritypointof view.Policingasocialproblem like prostitution became an integral part of criminal policing, linkingcriminalpolicingtopoliceviewsof socialorder.Công AnThành PhốHồChíMinhdevotedregularcolumnstodiscussingcivilityinpublic conduct,in“AWayof LifewithCulture”;discussingcommendablegovernment and private charity efforts stemming the tide of social problems , in “Eliminating Hunger and Reducing Poverty”; and making examples out of families that fell apart or became involved in crime or other social ills on account of the temptations of the market, in “The Family in the Market Regime.” Policing social problems allowed the policetoextendtheirprescriptionof desirableconductintosocialareas not covered by criminal laws such as public, personal...