Civil society action: Another formation of civil society in Vietnam (The case studies of environmental protection in Dong Nai River Basin, Vietnam)

Abstract

Most research on civil society in Vietnam tends to equate civil society with registered civil society organizations. This seems to provide an inadequate understanding of the civil society in Vietnam. To fill this gap, this research adopts the action-based approach that underlines civil society action-another formation of civil society in Vietnam. This approach is examined via the contrast cases between a foreign-invested company and a state-owned enterprise that were a better understanding about the formation and contribution of civil society action on Vietnam’s environmental issue. My findings confirmed that civil society in Vietnam is not only in the form of organizations but also the action via utilizing the chain of activities based on the voluntariness in public space toward common interest and it exists in the Vietnamese color. At the end of this article, I will discuss the implications of this study for the effective contributions of civil society in Vietnam.