Policy goals created a self-perpetuating scholarly industry justifying itself.
Evidence
Once it was decided that the country was to be saved from communism and indeed from itself, a whole science of modernization for Vietnam (whose latest and most costly phase came to be known as “Vietnamization”) came into being. Not only government specialists but university experts were involved. In time, the survival of pro-American and anticommunist regimes in Saigon dominated everything, even when it became clear that a huge majority of the population viewed those regimes as alien and oppressive, and even when the cost of fighting unsuccessful wars on behalf of those regimes had devastated the whole region and cost Lyndon Johnson the presidency. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 153
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the broader theme in ‘Covering Islam’ of knowledge-production serving strategic interests, and echoes Chomsky’s manufacturing consent literature. — connects to: Economists’ talk of public good actually means protection of their own professional interests. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 608; Publish-or-perish pressure converts scholarship into a form of oppression. — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 1214; Some policies are self-consciously designed to entrench themselves and their creators.
- DEFINE: Explains how modernization theory operated as a self-justifying frame, with Vietnamization as its costliest phase.