| This study examines the inclusion of people with disabilities into Vietnamese social and educational systems. Using a Foucauldian perspective on discourse, power, and the governing of individuals in the modern context, I trace the shift in the global and local policies on disability and inclusion through three levels of analysis: global, national, and educational. At the global and national levels, I argue that this shift in social and educational policy has reconstructed a vision about disability and citizenship through the forces exercised by global and local institutions. This is indicated by the formulation of a rights discourse about disability, as well as by the institutionalization of social and educational programs that support people with disabilities.;However, situated within the development context, the politics of inclusion is demonstrated by the influences of neo-liberal ideologies, as well as by the shift in disability policies that has been in place since the 1990s in Viet Nam. Using historiography, policy studies, visual studies, and site visits as the major methodological approaches to observe the ideological implications and the effects of inclusion on student participation, I argue that the political agenda of inclusion in Viet Nam in the current context is associated with neo-liberal ideologies of governmentality and modern development. This is demonstrated by the re-formulation of policies and laws which foster individual rights, in line with economic development, and the institutional process of normalizing people with disabilities through social and political programs. The fusion of global and local ideologies of citizenship entitlement, normalization, and development has the effect of re-constructing inclusion and exclusion in the Vietnamese context of social change.;Within the process of institutional change, the educational system plays an essential role in fostering inclusion. Inclusive education forms an integral part of this social process. The contemporary discourse of inclusive education in Vietnamese education is filled with echoes of the special education discourse of the past and the rights and development discourses in the present. This discourse institutionalizes the politics of inclusion through the provision of educational programs for children with disabilities in public education. However, the inclusion of students with disabilities into public education, driven by neo-liberal ideologies, has continued to perpetuate exclusion in education. Thus, I argue that inclusion is challenged by the exclusionary policies and practices, as well as by the reconstruction of policies which entitle new forms of exclusion in education.;Finally, by mapping out the re-conceptualization of disability discourse in the modern context, I argue that our knowledge about individual difference is not objective, natural, or free of bias. It is, rather, a process socially, historically, and politically constructed by our values, beliefs, and social action. Thus, although inclusion has an important impact on the participation of people with disabilities in the mainstream educational system, the bio-political agenda of inclusion and management needs to be interrogated as a new way of governing disability issues in social and educational arenas. Therefore, the study constructs an historical account that opens up new ways of thinking about inclusion and exclusion in the global and local context of development, wherein education plays a part in formulating institutional policies and practices. |
