Phothiyarom, Uer-Aree (2013) Vietnam as a Counter-Developmental State: The Paradox of the Development of Information Technology. PhD thesis, University of Leeds.
Abstract
In the course of the global transformation from industrial to post-industrial economies during the twentieth century, the roles of computer technologies have changed. Whereas these technologies began as tools for industrial engineering, as enabling mechanisms to redefine industrial production processes, they eventually became a significant industry in themselves: hence the post-industrial economy has also become known as the information economy. Concurrently, the roles of the state in relation to economic development have been challenged by new conditions shaped by the continuously evolving characteristics of information technology. Against this backdrop, the thesis explores some different technologies in the IT industry to examine how the post-industrial characteristics of these technologies interplay with technology-upgrading approaches conducted by various actors in Vietnam. The thesis also examines how these technology-upgrading approaches relate to the Vietnamese state’s economic developmentalism. The thesis examines four sectors of Vietnam’s IT industry: outsourcing, cloud computing, the app economy and online games. The thesis finds that technology-upgrading approaches for each of these four sectors were conducted in different ways. Moreover, the roles of the Vietnamese state also differed in relation to each of these four technologyupgrading approaches. Based on these findings, the thesis presents three arguments. Firstly, the relationships between technology-upgrading approaches and the state in Vietnam are different from what the literature suggests. Secondly, technology is not simply an instrument of the state to be used for economic development; technology is also a structure shaping the role of the state in economic development. Finally there can be more than one role for the state in the IT industry, and these competing multiple roles can actually jeopardise state economic developmentalism. The thesis characterises this phenomenon as the ‘counter-developmental state’.
Metadata
Supervisors: | Harlen, Christine and McCargo, Duncan |
---|---|
ISBN: | 978-0-85731-719-3 |
Awarding institution: | University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) (Leeds) |
Identification Number/EthosID: | uk.bl.ethos.808642 |
Depositing User: | Repository Administrator |
Date Deposited: | 01 Jul 2020 14:32 |
Last Modified: | 11 Jul 2020 09:53 |
Download
Final eThesis - complete (pdf)
Filename: Phothiyarom_U-A_POLIS_PhD_2013.pdf
Licence:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License
Export
Statistics
You do not need to contact us to get a copy of this thesis. Please use the 'Download' link(s) above to get a copy.
You can contact us about this thesis. If you need to make a general enquiry, please see the Contact us page.