Democracy after ‘the end of history’
Vietnamese diasporic liberalism in Poland
in Social Anthropology/Anthropologie socialeSearch for other papers by Grażyna Szymańska‐Matusiewicz in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
All currencies in US Dollar
This paper traces the evolution of discourse about liberal democracy among Polish‐Vietnamese pro‐democracy activists, since their original mobilisations in the 1990s until today. Documenting what I call the two waves of Polish‐Vietnamese activism, I describe how their ‘diasporic liberalism’ shifted from a stance of opposition to communist ideology, and from a belief in the ‘end of history’, to an approach focused on bottom‐up democratisation and embrace of transnational frames of environmentalism, rule of law, rights and ‘civil society’. Such evolution of activists’ discourses and networks ultimately tracks the transformation of Western liberalism itself, both in terms of the ascendancy of neoliberal imagery of ground‐up citizenly empowerment and, more recently, the emergent right‐wing challenge to liberal‐democratic order in Europe, in response to neoliberal dislocation of the traditional working class. Analysing the activists’ shifting engagements with Polish liberal thought and Vietnam’s socialist democracy, this paper makes the case for thinking of liberalism as lacking an original or essential form. Rather it can be thought of in diaspora‐like terms, as a ‘globally mobile category’, brought into existence in varied, situated ways through ongoing mobilisation.