Heritage as Civic Pedagogy: Affective Governance and Ritual Learning in Post-Socialist Hanoi
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15503/jecs2026.1.913.926Keywords:
civic education, affect and heritage, emotional pedagogy, post-socialism, Temple of LiteratureAbstract
Aim. This article examines how heritage functions as a mode of civic learning in post-socialist Vietnam through an ethnographic study of the Temple of Literature in Hanoi. Rather than treating heritage as a passive site of remembrance, the study explores how ritual atmospheres, embodied conduct, and affective coordination quietly train people to sense what is appropriate, trustworthy, and morally shared within rapidly transforming urban life.
Methods. The research draws on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2024, combining participant observation, affective fieldnotes, emotional diaries, on-site recordings, and thirty-five semi-structured interviews with students, teachers, pilgrims, guides, and heritage staff. Analysis focused on affective rhythms, embodied adjustments, and moments where emotion organized moral recognition before explicit interpretation emerged.
Results. The findings identify three interrelated mechanisms of civic learning. First, visitors learn embodied discipline through silence, slowed movement, and self-regulated conduct. Second, collective attunement emerges through shared affective adjustments that align strangers without direct instruction. Third, ethical reflexivity develops as individuals continue to participate in ritual practices while remaining simultaneously aware, uncertain, and reflective about belief itself. Together, these processes enable heritage to operate as a moral infrastructure that stabilizes forms of civic coexistence under post-socialist conditions of social acceleration and uncertainty.
Conclusions. The study argues that heritage functions not only as cultural memory but as an affective technology through which civic sensibilities are continuously recalibrated. This perspective repositions civic learning beyond institutional education and suggests that moral life may be sustained through shared atmospheres, ritual rhythms, and everyday practices of affective coordination.
Downloads
References
Anderson, B. (2009). Affective atmospheres. Emotion, Space and Society, 2(2), 77–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2009.08.005
Balcerzak, A. (2021). “The charm of the PRL”. Memory culture, (post)-socialist nostalgia and historical tourism in Poland. Slovenský národopis/Slovak Ethnology, 69(2), 255-273. https://doi.org/10.2478/se-2021-0014
Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel optimism. Duke University Press.
DeLanda, M. (2016). Assemblage theory. Edinburgh University Press.
DeSilvey, C. (2017). Curated decay: Heritage beyond saving. University of Minnesota Press.
Forest, B., & Johnson, J. (2002). Unraveling the threads of history: Soviet–era monuments and post–Soviet national identity in Moscow. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92(3), 524–547. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8306.00303
Fortier, A.-M. (2010). Proximity by design? Affective citizenship and the management of unease. Citizenship Studies, 14(1), 17–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621020903466258
Harrison, R. (2015). Beyond “natural” and “cultural” heritage: Toward an ontological politics of heritage in the age of Anthropocene. Heritage & Society, 8(1), 24–42. https://doi.org/10.1179/2159032X15Z.00000000036
Illouz, E. (2007). Cold intimacies: The making of emotional capitalism. Polity Press.
Larkin, B. (2013). The politics and poetics of infrastructure. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42, 327–343. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522
Millei, Z., Silova, I., & Piattoeva, N. (Eds.). (2018). Childhood and schooling in (post)-socialist societies: Memories of everyday life. Springer.
Ocón, D. (2021). Digitalising endangered cultural heritage in Southeast Asian cities: Preserving or replacing? International Journal of Heritage Studies, 27(10), 975–990. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2021.1883711
Sandlin, J. A., O’Malley, M. P., & Burdick, J. (2011). Mapping the complexity of public pedagogy scholarship: 1894–2010. Review of Educational Research, 81(3), 338–375. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311413395
Smith, L. (2006). Uses of heritage. Routledge.
Waterton, E., & Watson, S. (Eds.). (2016). Heritage, affect and emotion: Politics, practices and infrastructures. Routledge.
Zembylas, M. (2022). Affective pedagogies in civic education: Contesting the emotional governance of responses to terrorist attacks. British Journal of Educational Studies, 70(1), 21–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2020.1870929
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Quoc Viet Tran, Thi Thanh Hoa Nguyen, Van Tuan Bui, Van Phuong Nguyen, Thi Anh Tuyet Dang
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
CC-BY
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. All authors agree for publishing their email adresses, affiliations and short bio statements with their articles during the submission process.
