Showing papers in "Journal of Contemporary Asia in 2022"

Higher Education in Indonesia: The Political Economy of Institution-Level Governance

Abstract: ABSTRACT The poor quality of higher education institutions (HEIs) in Indonesia is due in part to failures of governance at the institution level. Drawing on an analysis of conflict and contestation in three Indonesian HEIs, this article argues that these failures reflect the dominance of predatory officials and business groups in institutional governance and the relative marginalisation of elements who support improved research, teaching and community service in line with either neo-liberal or idealist conceptions of quality. It also argues that some degree of change in governance has been possible when reformist elements have gained control of a HEI and driven change from the top down or such elements have challenged predatory HEI management by leveraging support from external actors with influence. Instances of such change hold out hope for improved governance at Indonesian HEIs in the future. But they also indicate that even if the dominance of predatory elements within HEIs can be overcome, further struggle will be required to define the precise nature of governance reform given competing reformist agendas with markedly different implications for how academic quality and integrity are understood, measured and implemented.

Bayspeak: Narrating China’s Greater Bay Area

Abstract: ABSTRACT China’s Greater Bay Area (GBA) initiative is the latest and most ambitious attempt to “regionalise” the development process in the Pearl River Delta, promising to accelerate political-economic integration via an innovation-intensive model of growth. Drawing on the techniques of critical discourse analysis, this article presents a deconstruction of the GBA’s emergent spatial imaginary – “bayspeak” – and the rescaled mode of governance that it portends. By way of an interrogation of texts and contexts relating to the GBA initiative, it is suggested that the plan should be taken seriously, if not literally, in its projection of an encompassing and assimilative, if somewhat intransitive, mode of governance. An effort to constitute a mega-region “for itself,” rather than simply “in itself,” the GBA programme has opened a new space (and scale) for co-ordinated development and growth-coalition building under the auspices of the decentralised party-state. As an emergent discourse, bayspeak can be read as hyperbolic, aspirational and symbolic, but as the benign and developmentalist face of the Communist Party line in this economically important but politically stressed region, it may yet prove to be significant.

Environmentalisms in Twenty-First Century Thailand: Continuities, Discontinuities, and Emerging Trajectories

Abstract: Abstract How have Thailand’s environmental politics changed across the last five decades? How have they remained the same? What role do environmental movements in Thailand play in the country’s current moment of extended military-led rule and global environmental change? This article addresses these questions by presenting a critical genealogy of Thailand’s environmental politics. It begins with a larger framing of environmental movements within the context of Thai history and then traces these struggles through to the twenty-first century. Rather than argue that environmental politics are distinct from other forms of politics, we contend that environmental struggles should be understood as unfolding within and shaping Thailand’s changing social, economic, and political landscape. Although Thailand’s environmental movements have opened new pathways towards more just politics, they have also re-entrenched old political orders and, at times, deepened political divisions. By attending to these complex effects, this article highlights the ambiguous relationship between environmental politics and pro-democracy mobilisation. Rather than assume that environmental activism is inherently progressive, it demonstrates how Thailand’s environmental politics are complex, neither linear nor determined in their relationship with democracy.

Governing the Digital Economy: An Exploration of Blockchains with Chinese Characteristics

Abstract: Abstract In 2019 President Xi Jinping called for the prioritisation of blockchain technology as part of China’s next phase of development. In China, blockchain technologies have been experimentally deployed in various areas including court records, securities exchanges, finance, and food supply chains. The emergence of blockchain as a governmental technology raises numerous questions, including: (i) what are the conditions of emergence and existence of China’s interest in blockchain technology? (ii) what are the features of “blockchains with Chinese characteristics”? (iii) what implications are there for the post-COVID-19 pandemic world, in which technological issues are likely to be pivotal points of contention? This article seeks to examine these questions and frame a research programme that can shed light on how blockchains may impact the evolution and shape of China’s social and economic structure and the interaction of China with the rest of the world, including the prospect of “decoupling” and “deglobalisation.” Examples of blockchain innovation are drawn from food and pharmaceutical supply chains, the Healthy China 2030 policy, the digital RMB/Yuan and the Belt and Road Initiative with attention to the emerging legal and institutional frames that support the application of blockchain technologies.

Buddhist Nationalist Sermons in Myanmar: Anti-Muslim Moral Panic, Conspiracy Theories, and Socio-Cultural Legacies

Abstract: Abstract In Myanmar, Buddhist nationalist movements created a pan-Burmese anti-Muslim moral panic in response to the political and economic liberalisation starting in 2011 and to riots between Buddhists and Muslims that erupted from 2012. Based mainly on Buddhist nationalist sermons and speeches, but also on interviews and fieldwork, the aim of this article is to examine the historical and cultural roots of the anti-Muslim moral panic and its political ramifications. This article argues that Buddhist nationalist sermons contributed to moral panic in three ways. First through aspects of monastic authority by which nationalist, anti-Muslim discourse was authorised. Second, an anti-Muslim conspiracy theory going back to the 1950s and an ingrained historical narrative feeding a sense of collective victimhood and vulnerability among the Buddhist majority created fear that provides justification of discrimination and violence. Third, is a perceived existential threat to Buddhism and Myanmar’s sovereignty considered to be posed by groups of Muslims (local and international) that were interconnected in the nationalist imagination; a sense of threat that was reinforced by a globalised Islamophobia.

The Age of Political Disincorporation: Geo-Capitalist Conflict and the Politics of Authoritarian Statism

Abstract: Abstract This review essay examines two recent volumes on the clash between the USA and China: Clash of Empires by Hung (2022) and Trade Wars are Class Wars by Klein and Pettis (2020). These volumes make a significant contribution to our understanding of the current strategic competition between the US and China. They have the virtue of moving beyond the sterile international relations perspectives and locating these conflicts within the broader structure of capitalist transformation. The framework of inter-imperial conflict is found useful in understanding the conflict between the USA and China. However, a serious lacuna of these approaches is their economism which neglects the political effects of emerging inter-imperial rivalry or modes of geo-capitalist engagement. In particular, this essay argues that the key effects are found in the transformation of the political forms of the state that have enabled the rise of radical right-wing forces and new forms of authoritarian rule. In this new geo-capitalist era, there is likely to be a reassertion of the national state in various new or post-neoliberal guises but such forms are likely to take on the characteristic of deeply coercive authoritarian statism or even post fascism.

Death from Overwork in a Time of Pandemic: How Delivery Work Became a Locus of Public Debate in South Korea

Abstract: Abstract During the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea, the plight of delivery workers suddenly became a locus of public debate. On the surface, this seems puzzling. Although the severely exploitative working conditions of delivery workers have been endemic for decades, these conditions had never before caused a society-wide controversy. Drawing insights from Jeffrey Alexander’s theory of societalisation, this article examines how the global health crisis not only worsened working conditions but also provided opportunities for workers and labour unions to problematise previously neglected aspects of labour exploitation. The analysis identifies three different states of the issue: (i) the disregard for ill-treatment of delivery workers, (ii) the emergence of shocking narratives, and (iii) attempts to regulate the practices of contract-based labour.

Brokered Rule: Militias, Drugs, and Borderland Governance in the Myanmar-China Borderlands

Abstract: Abstract This article develops the concept of brokerage to analyse the systems of borderland governance that have underpinned processes of state formation and capitalist development in the conflict-affected Myanmar-China borderland region of northern Shan State since the late 1980s. It focuses on the brokerage arrangements that have developed between the Myanmar Army and local militias, and how the illegal drug trade has become integral to these systems of brokered rule. This article draws particular attention to the inherent tensions and contradictions surrounding brokerage. In the short term, deploying militias as borderland brokers has provided an expedient mechanism through which the Myanmar Army has sought to extend and embed state authority, and has also provided the stability and coercive muscle needed to attract capital, expand trade, and intensify resource extraction. However, at the same time, militias have sought to use their position as brokers to aggrandise their own power and counter the extension of central state control. In the longer term, brokerage arrangements have thus had the effect of reinvigorating systems of strongman borderland governance, further fragmenting the means of violence and the proliferation of drugs and disempowering non-militarised forms of political negotiation.

Contentious Repertoires: Examining Lennon Walls in Hong Kong’s Social Unrest of 2019

Abstract: Abstract Scholars have examined the mobilising roles of text and images played during social movements. Studies of the Lennon Walls in Hong Kong have also discussed how citizens expressed opinions, shared information, and mobilised support for political reform. Few studies, however, have systematically examined the content of post-it notes and images on Lennon Walls and explored how the persuasive functions of movements have been distributed across text and image. In the research reported in this article, 10,000 post-it notes and 2,076 images collected from Lennon Walls across 18 districts in Hong Kong between June 2019 and April 2020 were coded, revealing important differences not only in the discourses presented but also in the persuasive functions of text and image. This analysis provides a more robust analysis of how the Lennon Walls were shaped by Hong Kong contentious repertoires. Meanwhile, Lennon Walls also served as a site of contention bound by its own specific contentious repertoire which demonstrates the spatial practice of counter-framing. This article examines the segmentation and distribution of the movement’s persuasive functions across textual and visual means of communication, in which the legitimacy, acceptance, and diffusion of actions and claims were extensively utilised during the 2019 social unrest.

Restoring the State Back to Food Regime Theory: China’s Agribusiness and the Global Soybean Commodity Chain

Abstract: Abstract Food regime theory identifies three distinct food regimes on a world scale: the British (1870–1930s), American (1945–1970s), and corporate food regimes (since the 1980s). In the first two regimes, political economic orders were dominated by two separate nation states, whereas the current third regime is dominated by a few mega-corporations. Consequently, traditional super nation states are finding it challenging to use food trade measures to ensure favourable world orders. However, China’s state-owned agribusiness enterprises are quickly joining hands with the corporate food regime. This study aims to answer the following questions: Where is the state in the contemporary corporate food regime? How are these rising Chinese state-owned agribusiness enterprises changing the current food regime context? Applying the food regime theory, this paper aims to analyse the expansion of China’s influence in the global soybean commodity chain, which is driven by four forces from the corporate food regime: liberalisation, technologicalisation, securitisation, and accumulation. These forces lead the Chinese state apparatus to address China’s domestic food needs and then to establish agricultural free trade projects, biotechnology projects, soybean commodity-chain nationalisation projects, and transnational land-grabbing investments. Furthermore, such a dynamic Chinese food security context is gradually moving towards a “state-owned enterprise corporate food regime.”

Capital Accumulation in the “Lucky Country”: Australia from the “Sheep’s Back” to the “Quarry Economy.” Part I: The Colonial Period

Abstract: Abstract Australia is unique as the only ex-colonial economy that has remained throughout its history at the top of high-income countries despite continuously specialising in the production of raw materials for world markets. Conscious of this peculiarity, a Treasurer once warned the nation of the risk of becoming a “banana republic.” This article, the first of a two-part contribution, presents an account of Australia’s economic history that explains that peculiarity as an alternative to mainstream and critical positions. Drawing on Marx’s critique of political economy, it is argued that Australia’s role in the production of surplus-value on a global scale has determined its pattern of economic and political development. Since its creation by British capital, the Australian economy became both a source of raw materials and of ground-rent for appropriation by competing economic actors. After introducing the general theoretical approach to the relationship between global- and national-scale processes of capital accumulation, this article analyses the colonial period. It argues that despite inheriting a variety of political institutions and cultural traditions, British colonialism produced a national economy specialised in, and limited to, the production of low-cost primary commodities and bearers of ground-rent that could be recovered by capital through specific state-mediated dynamics.

Searching for New Political Spaces: Negotiating Citizenship and Transnational Identities on Mongolia’s Mining Frontier

Abstract: Abstract With two of the world’s largest mining projects, Mongolia has become one of Asia’s key mineral producers in the past 20 years. Mongolian pastoralist communities living in the South Gobi region in the vicinity of large-scale mining operations have recently turned to transnational dispute resolution arenas to lodge their grievances and seek redress. Notably, these pastoralists have sought to trigger international grievance mechanisms on the basis of being indigenous people, even though they are not recognised as such by their government. This article situates this contemporary mobilisation of pastoralist communities in relation to large-scale mining projects within a longer history of state (de)regulation of the pastoralist economy. It reflects on the role of non-state legal norms and mechanisms in introducing new forms of legal and political subjectivity into the milieu of discourses surrounding Mongolian pastoralist identity and livelihoods. The article reflects on the potential implications of extractive economy upon transnational identity formation, local/national political spaces, and strategic negotiations with state and corporate power.

Pension Systems and Labour Resistance in Post-socialist China and Vietnam: A Welfare Regime Analysis

Abstract: ABSTRACT Situated within the literature on welfare regimes, this article investigates workers’ contestation of pension arrangements in post-socialist, authoritarian China and Vietnam, and considers the effects of their actions. Scholars have highlighted economic, cultural, political regime type and political institutions as factors crucial to understanding the welfare regimes of China and Vietnam. However, the “labour factor” – that is, how worker resistance and mobilisation shape welfare provisions – has been under-explored. Focusing on pension provisions in China and Vietnam, this article contends that a labour perspective can deepen knowledge of pension systems and welfare regimes in these two countries. Based on case studies of two notable strikes, interviews and documentary research, this article illustrates that, against the background of transitioning from state socialism to market-Leninism, pension provisions and welfare regimes in China and Vietnam have been constantly contested by workers. It also shows that labour resistance has influenced welfare arrangements at various levels in both countries, and that the Vietnamese state was more accommodating to workers’ pension demands than the Chinese state, because of its more strongly redistributive orientation and, relatively, a less controlling political system.

China’s Staff and Worker Representative Congress System and the Management of Teachers’ Performance Pay

Abstract: ABSTRACT Xi Jinping’s government has curtailed some of the ways that China’s workers formerly influenced the management of their workplaces while promoting other forms of rank-and-file participation in enterprise governance. Numerous studies have documented the forms of worker activism that have been curbed but few have discussed the state’s efforts to bolster alternative forms of participatory management. This article addresses this imbalance with evidence that the Staff and Worker Representative Congress system has been empowered under the Xi government in ways that amplify the voice of China’s workers within their enterprises. In advancing this argument, the example of school congresses and the determination of teachers’ performance pay is used. Based on interviews, the study suggests that congresses further the ability of teachers to deliberate, decide and manage the metrics that determine the distribution of performance pay and resolve milder forms of workplace grievances. The findings lend credence to commentators who have suggested the congress system may emerge as a substantial feature of China’s industrial relations system.

Indonesia’s New Developmental State: Interrogating Participatory Village Governance

Abstract: This article analyses the implementation of the New Developmental State in Indonesian politics and development as the realisation of the increasing authoritarianism of President Joko Widodo’s administration. Rather than focusing on the national level, as other studies do, this article focuses on sub-national contexts, particularly at the village level, and the implementation, since 2014, of the world’s largest participatory village governance experiment. Data were collected during three years of longitudinal monitoring and additional ethnographic fieldwork in different parts of Indonesia. Framed in the New Developmental State perspective, this article characterises New Developmental governance in Joko Widodo’s regime as a pragmatic and hybrid approach to village development and governance with roots in New Order developmentalism. Of special importance is the transmission of authoritarian ways from the national to village level through village institutional arrangements. Notably, this new approach to village governance has failed to encourage creative and innovative village governments and has made village democracy vulnerable.

Rescuing Marx from a Ship of Fools

Abstract: Abstract When Marx refers to his Capital as the founding work of a new science, what he is adverting to is the fact of his science uncovering a unique ontological object in the social world with peculiar causal properties which demand a specific set of epistemological and methodological resources to capture in theory and, on that basis, to explain how that object operates and what it does in open systems of the world. Over the history of Marxism, as a body of thought claiming lineage to Marx, Marx’s profound scientific insights have been systematically distorted, even parodied, in ways that blunt the revolutionary potential of Marx’s most fundamental and important writing. This article reviews a major contribution by Thomas Sekine, in his two-volume Dialectic of Capital (2020), to rectify this for Marxian economics and political economy. Sekine has been the foremost exponent of the effort to reconstruct Marx’s Capital, initially undertaken by Japanese Marxian economist Kozo Uno.

“A Road With No End”: Making the South Pacific a Permanent Labour Reserve

Abstract: ABSTRACT Commencing in the 1980s and picking up pace over the last two decades, there has been a systematic campaign to construct a specific form of labour market in the South Pacific. Unskilled and semi-skilled workers are recruited on short-term contracts to work in agricultural industries in Australia and New Zealand. While the employment is on a casual basis, with workers required to return to home countries upon the completion of contracts, there is nothing temporary about the intent behind what are termed labour mobility programmes. This article examines the conditions in countries from which workers are recruited, where non-development reigns. Continuing internationalisation of agriculture, logging, mining, oil and gas production has undercut whatever existed as late colonial policy to bring national development. Low rankings on international indicators of health and literacy, widespread unemployment and under-employment, characterise populations where majorities are reproduced for the forms of labour required by labour mobility programme recruiters, local and international. Continuous shortages of labour for fruit picking and packing in the region’s two largest economies are joined with relative surplus populations in nearby South Pacific countries. Temporary work is married to permanent accumulation on a road with no obvious end.

Preventing Communal Violence in Myanmar: Power and Legitimacy in Local Conflict Prevention

Abstract: Abstract Violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar again reached international attention in 2017 when the newly elected democratic government failed to protect Rohingya Muslims from persecution. While inter-group violence is endemic, however, there are clear and strong examples of peaceful co-existence. This article draws on interview and ethnographic evidence from a case of prevented violence in Mingalar Taung Nyunt, Yangon, in 2017, to argue that engaging with the local, complex, and dynamic process of communal violence prevention can enrich contemporary theories of communal violence. The article draws specifically on insights from the theories of political manipulation and civic engagement to argue that the most effective analysis of communal violence will focus on the power dynamics that shape local responses to escalating threat. In Mingalar Taung Nyunt, violence was prevented through the concerted effort of individuals in unique positions that provided them with the legitimacy and political power that allowed them to successfully de-escalate tensions. The article contributes to the understanding of communal violence by emphasising how the role and importance of inter-group associations, government bodies, and others is shaped by the laws and norms of the community in which violence is escalating. The article’s conclusions furthermore outline how the recent military coup in the country will destabilise local peace-keeping efforts in central Myanmar and how such institutions may be rebuilt.

Beijing’s Changing Hong Kong Policy: The Rise and Fall of Pragmatism

Abstract: Abstract Through a historical account of Beijing's Hong Kong policy since the Sino-British negotiations in the early 1980s, the article attempts to analyse its major considerations and limitations. This analysis is intended to shed light on the contradictions between the Chinese authorities and Hong Kong people, and especially the local pro-democracy movement. The performance of civil society organisations, and Hong Kong people’s values and attitudes as reflected by public opinion surveys are also considered. Significant emphasis is accorded to the recent political suppression in Hong Kong following the Occupy Central Campaign. While Beijing is now in control, the heavy political price it will pay is also examined.

Buddhist Majoritarian Nationalism in Thailand: Ideological Contestation, Narratives, and Activism

Abstract: Abstract This article examines the narratives that underpin the activism of Buddhist nationalist movements in Thailand. In arguing that these movements represent an emerging strand of Thai nationalism – Buddhist majoritarian nationalism – the focus is on three discursive components that shape the contours of the movements’ narratives. The first component regards a two-prong threat against Buddhism: political elites subservient to the Muslim minority and the latter’s growing influence. Second, averting these threats necessitates a new form of national consciousness that places Buddhism and Buddhists as the country’s majority at the centre of national identity. Third, this ideological position accompanies the movements’ aspiration to further conflate religion and polity. This argument is situated in the historical inter-relationship of the state, nationalism, and Buddhism, while tracing how recent political upheavals, including political polarisation, influence the movements’ organisational development and discourses. The latter has been mainly promulgated online, but at times have inspired offline protest activism. The Thai movements display various commonalities with their counterparts in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, but their ability to challenge royal nationalism and influence explicitly religious policies remains to be seen.

COVID-19 and the Pathologies of Australia’s Regulatory State

Abstract: Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has elicited a wide range of national responses with an even wider range of outcomes in terms of infections and mortalities. Australia is a rare success story, keeping deaths comparatively low, and infections too, until the Omicron wave. What explains Australia’s success? Typical explanations emphasise leaders’ choices. We agree, but argue that leaders’ choices, and whether these are implemented effectively, is shaped by the legacy of state transformation. Decades of neo-liberal reforms have hollowed out state capacity and confused lines of control and accountability, leaving Australia unprepared for the pandemic. Leaders thus abandoned plans and turned to ad hoc, simple to implement emergency measures – border closures and lockdowns. These averted large-scale outbreaks and deaths, but with diminishing returns as the Delta variant took hold. Conversely, Australia’s regulatory state has struggled to deliver more sophisticated policy responses, even when leaders were apparently committed, including an effective quarantine system, crucial for border controls, and vaccination programme, essential for exiting the quagmire of lockdowns and closed borders, leading to a partial return to top-down governing. The Australian experience shows that to avoid a public health catastrophe or more damaging lockdowns in the next pandemic, states must re-learn to govern.

A Stage in Rio De Janeiro? Ho Chi Minh’s Maritime Journeying and Latin America Networks

Abstract: Abstract The presence of Ho Chi Minh in Rio de Janeiro at the end of one of his early seafaring journeys is taken as an article of faith by a spectrum of opinion in Brazil today. But what is the source material that lends credence to such a view? As this article exposes, the legend originally emerged in 1968 with the publication of two pieces of writing linked with a reported encounter between Ho Chi Minh and two Communist Party of Brazil leaders in Moscow in 1924. In that year, Ho Chi Minh published a French-language typescript titled “Solidarité de Classe,” relating to a violent class action in Rio de Janeiro port. Looking deeper into this obscure text – never since reprinted – the present article appraises the possibility of a Ho Chi Minh visit to Latin America as well as pointing to the deeper importance of his maritime networking, here taken as another instance of praxis in the further awakening of his socialist internationalist worldview and future direction.

Hardening National Boundaries in a Globally-Connected World: Technology, Development and Nationalism in China

Abstract: ABSTRACT How do information and communication technologies (ICTs), which seemingly bring people to a boundless world, contribute to the reproduction of the imagined community of a nation? Challenging the conventional approach that sees ICTs as merely the channel through which nationalism or activism is expressed or mobilised, this article draws on anthropological and historical studies of technology to develop a conceptual mapping of the important factors that configure specific nation-bounded, ICT-centric socio-technical imaginaries. Taking as the entry point technological nationalism in the context of the Sino-American trade war in recent years and based on long-term fieldwork in the Pearl River Delta region, this ethnographic study explores how ICTs have become the lens through which educated professionals imagine China’s transition from sweat-shop modernity toward techno-modernity. This socio-technical imaginary is shaped by larger forces including the state discourse, political economy, material culture, and the platformised lifestyle, and mediated through work experience and consumer choices. Nationalism driven by this ICT-centric imaginary is subjected to state manipulation for the reproduction of political legitimacy. This study sheds light on larger conceptual questions on how ordinary citizens experience and make sense of ICTs and how such meaning-making processes sustain, challenge and reconfigure political processes.

The Politics of De-Privatisation: Philippine Higher Education in Transition

Abstract: Abstract While many higher education systems across the world have expanded through privatisation, the Philippines is doing the opposite. Unlike similar Asian countries with private mass higher education such as Japan and South Korea, the Philippines is expanding tertiary education enrolment through “de-privatisation.” But little is known as to why and how this system transition is occurring. This article analyses the decline in private higher education enrolment as it relates to the increasing public spending for higher education and growing subsidisation of private education. It identifies policy legacies that constrain the greater participation of public higher education institutions (HEIs). The earlier effort to marketise public universities, however, turned them into demand-absorbing institutions while deregulation allowed private HEIs to increasingly cater to specific, niche demands of the market such as migrant worker education. The Philippine government overcame the legacy of a mass private higher education by providing more state assistance through subsidies to private schools. The article highlights the often-ignored role of policy legacy and policy feedback in the study of the politics of higher education.

Active Defense: China’s Military Strategy Since 1949

Abstract: swered. For example, how to proceed from acknowledging the need for de-demonisation to actually implementing it, which is the real challenge? Further research is also needed on the question of connecting the humanisation process to human rights and human development issues. These are broadly respected regardless of regime types or cultural peculiarities. Even with different descriptions or paths to achieve, these values/goals are not necessarily incompatible with such a widely embraced traditional notion of the Mandate of Heaven or other philosophies in East Asia. The volume initiates a much-needed conversation in the current discourse on the East–West divide, dominated by one-dimensional and dangerously uncritical thinking. This is a must-read for anyone interested in North Korea, China and East Asian affairs.

Between Theory and Praxis: Ho Chi Minh’s Parisian Networks, Intellectual Production and Evolving Thought

Abstract: ABSTRACT The writings of Ho Chi Minh have obviously gone through many officially approved refinements but, as this article queries, what were his prime intellectual influences during his formative years in France between mid-1919 and mid-1923, at least the most transformative period of his life? What were his signature publications during this period? How do they fit into the Marxist-Leninist lexicon and how do they translate into his “thought?” To answer these questions the article gives special attention to Ho Chi Minh’s research and writing in Paris of a manuscript that would only see publication in 1926 albeit, as discussed in a conclusion, one of several possible versions, yet in fact his magnum opus. As the article also sets down, no less important in charting his future direction were a broader spectrum of activities and influences in Paris, namely his little-studied liaisons with others from French colonies in forging anti-colonial, anti-imperialist networks and strategies.

Politics Through Precarity: Tech Workers’ Unions in India During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract: The Indian technology industry is an economic asset for the State. Successive governments and corporations identify tech workers as privileged and their mobilisation as unnecessary. High-skilled tech workers are apparently different from non-tech workers and remain secluded from politics. Tech workers’ trade unions, however, can decisively subvert these claims. From three tech unions’ Facebook posts in 2020, the first COVID-19 year, this study finds that politics remains central to their discourses. Even though tech workers are understood to be “apolitical,” their trade unions have been interacting with political institutions, ministers, bureaucrats, and other non-tech trade union organisers. Some of these tech unions are even affiliated to political parties. The article also identifies some explicit similarities between the unions of tech and non-tech workers in India, and politicised labour movements worldwide. The continuing precarity of unemployment, overwork, and drastic pay cuts that peaked during the pandemic has exposed the tenuous structures of white-collar privilege. By affecting workers in all industries, oppressive neoliberal forces have ironically paved the way for labour solidarity through political resistance.