‘A Force for Good’: The Narrative Construction of Ethical EU–Vietnam Trade Relations
分析了欧盟委员会如何通过叙事构建，将欧盟与越南的贸易协议包装成“向善的力量”，以应对越南人权问题引发的批评，对研究贸易政治和话语策略的学者有参考价值。
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.