‘A Force for Good’: The Narrative Construction of Ethical EU–Vietnam Trade Relations

Camille Nessel and Elke Verhaeghe

Journal of Common Market Studies, 2022, vol. 60, issue 3, 741-758

Abstract: Political representation of problems includes an aim to control an audience's impressions and create a societally‐acceptable social reality. This paper analyses the narrative construction of ethical trade between the European Union (EU) and Vietnam. As an undemocratic Other, Vietnam has been sharply criticized for its human rights record by civil society and Members of European Parliament. Yet, the EU recently concluded two trade agreements with Vietnam. We argue that, unchallenged by the European Parliament, the European Commission created a performative 'story of change' for its European audience by simultaneously appealing to underlying 'neoliberal' and 'development' paradigms. In this narrative, the EU and Vietnam star as the main characters, who, in their joint attempts to make bilateral trade 'a force for good', live moments of heroism, encounter fleeting instances of victimhood, and defeat villains on the path to ethical trade.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13284

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:60:y:2022:i:3:p:741-758

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0021-9886

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Common Market Studies is currently edited by Jim Rollo and Daniel Wincott

More articles in Journal of Common Market Studies from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().