Paul Horton

Heterosexual Masculinity in Contemporary Vietnam: Privileges, Pleasures, and Protests

By drawing on ethnographic data collected in two different settings in northern Vietnam, this article considers the ways in which heterosexual masculinity is configured by younger men. The intersection between heterosexuality and masculinity, the article argues, epitomizes a site of contestations between moral ideals, expectations about gendered support, and sexual pleasures disguised as protests. In introducing into a Southeast Asian context, the Latin American term machismo, understood as an expression of male-centered privileges and the ways in which they foster men’s chauvinism against women (or other men), the article explores how local assumptions about the natural quintessential drive of male sexuality as well as a wife’s obligations to comply with his sexual needs together provide men with morally legitimized explanations for the buying of various kinds of female sexual services.

Portraying monsters: framing school bullying through a macro lens

This article critically considers the discourse on school bullying through the conceptual framework of lenses and argues that a macro lens has been utilised by school bullying researchers to bring into focus the characteristics of the individuals involved and the types of actions used. By considering earlier understandings of bullying, the article illustrates how this macro lens has become a metalens through which school bullying is understood. This has had implications for how bullying is understood and addressed, as well as for how vast numbers of school-aged children are perceived and treated. The article argues that the macro lens needs to be replaced with a wide-angle lens, so as to bring the social, institutional and societal contexts into view.

Bullying the Meek: A Conceptualisation of Vietnamese School Bullying.

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at three lower secondary schools in the northern Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Haiphong, this article provides a contextually nuanced conceptualisation of Vietnamese school bullying. In doing so, the article not only addresses the lack of knowledge about Vietnamese school bullying, but also poses a number of critical questions about how school bullying is more widely understood. The descriptions of school bullying provided by teachers and students in this article suggest that school bullying cannot be reduced to the negative actions and aggressive intentionality that are so often used to define it in the mainstream literature. Instead, these actions are perceived as instruments for bullying that serve a function in the social and institutional context of the school. Furthermore, the descriptions provided by teachers and students challenge the view of meekness (the passive victim) as an individual personal trait. While they suggest that students who are perceived as meek in the social context of the school are most likely to be bullied, they also highlight that some students accede to the demands of their peers in order to escape being subjected to more direct negative actions. The study thus suggests that a key for understanding the role that bullying plays in students’ day-to-day life at school is to acknowledge the function of ‘meekness’ in bullying situations and to thus place more focus on the social and institutional context within which bullying occurs.

'I thought I was the only one': the misrecognition of LGBT youth in contemporary Vietnam.

While recent LGBT rights demonstrations and discussions about same-sex marriage have thrust the issue of homosexuality into the spotlight, it was not long ago that the issue of homosexuality was notable by its absence in Vietnam. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with young gay, lesbian and bisexual people in Vietnams capital city Hanoi, this paper considers the increasing visibility of homosexuality through the theoretical lens of recognition, and illustrates the heterosexist misrecognition that LGBT young people have been subjected to in legislation, the media, their families, and through the education system. Drawing on the narratives of LGBT young people, the paper highlights the potentially negative impact such misrecognition may have on psychological and social wellbeing.

Contesting heteronormativity: the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition in India and Vietnam

Recent public debates about sexuality in India and Vietnam have brought the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people sharply into focus. Drawing on legal documents, secondary sources and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the urban centres of Delhi and Hanoi, this article shows how the efforts of civil society organisations dedicated to the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights have had different consequences in these two Asian contexts. The paper considers how these organisations navigated government regulations about their formation and activities, as well as the funding priorities of national and international agencies. The HIV epidemic has had devastating consequences for gay men and other men who have sex with men, and has been highly stigmatising. As a sad irony, the epidemic has provided at the same time a strategic entry point for organisations to struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition. This paper examines how the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition has been doubly framed through health-based and rights-based approaches and how the struggle for recognition has positioned lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in India and Vietnam differently.

Note passing and gendered discipline in Vietnamese schools

While researchers agree that note passing is predominantly an activity engaged in by girls, there has been relatively little consideration of why this is the case. In this article, I argue that gendered expectations about the appropriate characters of boys and girls in Vietnam are incorporated into the disciplinary framework of schools, and that note passing provides the means for girls to adjust to the gendered disciplinary techniques to which they are subjected. The article is based on extended ethnographic fieldwork conducted within two ninth-grade classes at two lower secondary schools in the northern Vietnamese port city of Haiphong.

Generationing School Bullying: Age-Based Power Relations, the Hidden Curriculum, and Bullying in Northern Vietnamese Schools

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in two schools in northern Vietnam, this chapter suggests understanding and addressing school bullying as a generational problem rather than one of individual children. It demonstrates that school bullying is intricately connected to manifestations of power in the deeply generational organisation of schools, and to the ways in which both children and adults exercise their agency in this social environment by drawing on age-related hierarchies, bodily size, and physical strength. Employing the concept of the hidden curriculum, the chapter suggests that some students learn to utilise bullying as a means through which they can influence the behaviour of others and thus more easily navigate their way through school, both socially and scholastically.

The bullied boy: masculinity, embodiment, and the gendered social-ecology of Vietnamese school bullying

ABSTRACT This article considers the ways in which school bullying is both gendered and embodied. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two lower-secondary schools in northern Vietnam, the article focuses on the experiences of one ninth-grade boy, who was regularly bullied by his classmates, and whose experiences of bullying appeared to be embodied for all to see. Inspired by Arthur Brittan’s notion of masculinism, Elizabeth Grosz’s use of the möbius strip metaphor for understanding embodiment, and Urie Bronfenbrenner’s conceptualization of the ecological environment, I argue that school bullying needs to be understood not only in terms of the interactions between individuals or groups of individuals, but also in terms of the specific gendered social-ecological environment within which those interactions occur.

Bullying: experiences and discourses of sexuality and gender

field, the reader should keep in mind that the book is intended to serve as a topical collection of works that fortify Connell’s position that sociology and social science have a place at the table for emergent thought about the impact of neoliberal globalisation. Because Connell makes it very clear in her introduction that the text essentially is a reflection of her recent career, this limitation is a mild inconvenience as readers can find tremendous examples of theory-to-practice, the emergence of knowledge and philosophy during, because of, and to prompt research, and the importance of interrogating the Eurocentric and neoliberal influence on the perceptions and practices of equality globally. The book ‘Confronting Equality: Gender, Knowledge and Global Change’ should be embraced by radical thinkers and engaged learners alike. Connell’s hunger for the emergence of knowledge is contagious and would likely engross like-minded activists, and provide wonderful fodder for debate in educational environments, such as graduate programs in sociology, education, gender studies, and other social sciences or interdisciplinary curriculums. Connell’s work is inspiring, intriguing, and delivers on her promise to present the reader with some ‘Clarity and depth of understanding on social issues’ (6).