T his massive volume of more than six hundred pages includes four parts: "Politics and Society" (... more T his massive volume of more than six hundred pages includes four parts: "Politics and Society" (seven chapters), "Economy and Society" (nine chapters), "Social Life and Institutions" (fourteen chapters), and "Culture in Motion" (seven chapters). Editor Jonathan D. London was clearly striving for comprehensive, if not exhaustive, coverage. From Vietnamese cuisine to the Vietnamese Communist Party, from family to foreign direct investment, and from the military to marriages and masculinity, readers can feast on a full buffet of information about contemporary Vietnam. The diversity of topics, despite a clear imbalance in favor of society and culture, is commendable. In a relatively small field like Vietnamese studies, it is also impressive for London to have gathered such a large team of forty contributors, of whom eleven are women and fifteen are Vietnamese nationals from or based in Vietnam. Many contributors are senior Vietnam experts such as Hy Van Luong, Ann Marie Leshkowich, and Carlyle Thayer, whose research is wellknown in the field. Others are generalists or policy analysts and not necessarily Vietnam experts, such as Prema-chandra Athukorala and Gisle Kvanvig. The strong representation of Vietnamese nationals, most of whom are relatively young and well-trained in various disciplines, is another strength of the volume. The chapters I read (mostly in parts and ) are generally informative, accessible, and nuanced. For example, Kvanvig writes the following on 209
This article examines the emerging infrastructure and market for automobiles in Vietnam as it tra... more This article examines the emerging infrastructure and market for automobiles in Vietnam as it transitions from a long history of motorbike mobility following Đổi Mới market renovation and peaking after the country's accession to the World Trade Organization. Considering the context of recent free trade Agreements including the ASEAN Free Trade Area that are opening Vietnam's markets to automobile imports and causing Vietnamese domestic car manufacturers to reconsider their production and marketing strategies, I argue that anticipations of impending transportation and mobility transformations are being undertaken on multiple yet intersecting levels. Understanding these intersections through the lens of stakeholder knowledges, projections and affectsranging from those of potential automobile consumers to specialists and strategists laboring in future mobility and automotive design labs, offers insight into the agencies and contingencies of actors and actants participating within infrastructural networks that are reshaping mobility behaviors and options. Interventions to recuperate and connect the often atomized agents within modal mobility production assemblages will be critical to influence the infrastructural contours of transportation development in emerging markets like Vietnam, and promote a sustainability model that goes beyond technological innovation and upgrade consumption.
Populations and Precarity During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Southeast Asian Perspectives (ISEAS Press), 2023
Over the last generation the Vietnamese migrant population in South Korea has grown significantly... more Over the last generation the Vietnamese migrant population in South Korea has grown significantly and become quite visible. Vietnamese in South Korea number over 170,000 and now count as the largest expatriate population in the country after Chinese (Park 2018). One of the most significant remittance corridors is now South Korea-Vietnam, which has outpaced Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) flows. The majority of Vietnamese in Korea tend to fall into three categorieslabour migrants, spouses, and students. Migrant labour from Vietnam to South Korea dates to the 1990s, and since 2004 an E-9 Employment
TRaNS: Trans -Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, 2021
Remittances from the Vietnamese diaspora have played an important role in Vietnam's post-Cold War... more Remittances from the Vietnamese diaspora have played an important role in Vietnam's post-Cold War economic development, providing important inputs to a range of household spending areas, from education to health care. In the case of Vietnam, however, remittances are also caught up with memories and traumas of war, betrayal, separation, and exodus. This article traces that history and illustrates how Vietnam's particular postwar refugee and remittance situations and channels illuminate networks and exacerbate inherent contradictions and comparisons in the mobile flows of finance, people, and goods across borders. Examining genealogies of remittance reception and management offers insight and intervention into analytical assumptions of the distancing and mediating functions inherent to classic conceptions of money, as well as the reciprocity and recognition perceptions mapped onto gift economies.
This series is more an agenda-setting enterprise than a mere book series. It promises to be the m... more This series is more an agenda-setting enterprise than a mere book series. It promises to be the most important scholarly initiative to come from the Global South in a very long time; one that is sure to change how we think about the world at large, about economy and humanity. JOHN COMAROFF, Harvard University Those social sciences and humanities concerned with the economy have lost the confidence to challenge the sophistication and public dominance of the field of economics. We need to give a new emphasis and direction to the economic arrangements that people already share, while recognizing that humanity urgently needs new ways of organizing life on the planet. This series examines how human interests are expressed in our unequal world through concrete economic activities and aspirations.
International remittances to Vietnamincluding family, charitable, investment and gray matter kn... more International remittances to Vietnamincluding family, charitable, investment and gray matter knowledge flowsare significant, growing, and primarily oriented by Vietnam's post-1975 war history of exodus and refugee migration to the United States and other western countries.
Since 2008, new financial regulations have reformatted the channels of global remittances. This a... more Since 2008, new financial regulations have reformatted the channels of global remittances. This article examines how the Vietnamese diaspora is navigating this changing landscape of regulatory chokepoints.
This article examines emergent consumption patterns in Vietnam's shifting transportation market a... more This article examines emergent consumption patterns in Vietnam's shifting transportation market and then considers them within broader design and marketing infrastructures shaping emerging markets in the Southeast Asian region. First, I explore the strategies and histories of Vietnamese buyers and sellers participating in the transportation commodity market starting with the motorcycle and transitioning to the automobile, demonstrating how they are entangled with a range of practical, affective, and symbolic valuations. However, shifts in manufacturing and recent regional and international trade agreements mandating tariff reductions are delinking informal consumption and valuation practices while also reorienting material and temporal relations to the market. Moving from micro examinations of transportation user experiences to macro perspectives on market design, I discuss how a transnational transportation industry is anticipating and engaging new consumer publics in not only Vietnam but the Asia region more broadly through an exploration of affective notions of mobility, and in the process framing and projecting an emerging Asian cultural market infrastructure. I suggest that identifying collaborative opportunities for stakeholders in academia, industry, and policy to explore emergent issues of transportation and mobility preferences and developments in Asia may be a productive arena for further lateral learning and analytic insight.
T his essay considers the place of transnational gift exchange in cultivating, maintaining and st... more T his essay considers the place of transnational gift exchange in cultivating, maintaining and straining social networks and reflexive identities in and beyond Vietnam. The focus of this examination is remittance economies. 1 Remittances [kiều hối] are typically understood as a phenomenon in which diasporic subjects send financial, material, and social gifts to their "homeland" counterparts. Vietnam, with an overseas population of over three million, percent of whom are associated with the postwar refugee exodus, and remittances estimated at . billion dollars annually or . percent of the GDP, is a productive site to explore the social dimensions of remittance exchange. 2 This includes reasons of not only historical circumstance and the emotionally textured memories associated with them, but also the unique contextual features of Vietnamese geography and rapid late socialist capitalist transformations.
Things move, people move, and increasingly we take note. What are the observational and analytic ... more Things move, people move, and increasingly we take note. What are the observational and analytic infrastructures and frames that drive such notice? The interdisciplinary arena of mobility studies, spearheaded by scholars and research centers devoted to the study of connections between and theorizations of movement, 1 is growing, often with the support of external state, foundation, and corporate funding and grants to academic institutions. While the mobility studies fi eld has traditionally been pioneered by European scholars in disciplines such as sociology, geography, and urban planning, there has also recently been a shift of attention toward Asia and the inclusion of other disciplines ranging from anthropology to science and technology studies.
T his massive volume of more than six hundred pages includes four parts: "Politics and Society" (... more T his massive volume of more than six hundred pages includes four parts: "Politics and Society" (seven chapters), "Economy and Society" (nine chapters), "Social Life and Institutions" (fourteen chapters), and "Culture in Motion" (seven chapters). Editor Jonathan D. London was clearly striving for comprehensive, if not exhaustive, coverage. From Vietnamese cuisine to the Vietnamese Communist Party, from family to foreign direct investment, and from the military to marriages and masculinity, readers can feast on a full buffet of information about contemporary Vietnam. The diversity of topics, despite a clear imbalance in favor of society and culture, is commendable. In a relatively small field like Vietnamese studies, it is also impressive for London to have gathered such a large team of forty contributors, of whom eleven are women and fifteen are Vietnamese nationals from or based in Vietnam. Many contributors are senior Vietnam experts such as Hy Van Luong, Ann Marie Leshkowich, and Carlyle Thayer, whose research is wellknown in the field. Others are generalists or policy analysts and not necessarily Vietnam experts, such as Prema-chandra Athukorala and Gisle Kvanvig. The strong representation of Vietnamese nationals, most of whom are relatively young and well-trained in various disciplines, is another strength of the volume. The chapters I read (mostly in parts and ) are generally informative, accessible, and nuanced. For example, Kvanvig writes the following on 209
This article examines the emerging infrastructure and market for automobiles in Vietnam as it tra... more This article examines the emerging infrastructure and market for automobiles in Vietnam as it transitions from a long history of motorbike mobility following Đổi Mới market renovation and peaking after the country's accession to the World Trade Organization. Considering the context of recent free trade Agreements including the ASEAN Free Trade Area that are opening Vietnam's markets to automobile imports and causing Vietnamese domestic car manufacturers to reconsider their production and marketing strategies, I argue that anticipations of impending transportation and mobility transformations are being undertaken on multiple yet intersecting levels. Understanding these intersections through the lens of stakeholder knowledges, projections and affectsranging from those of potential automobile consumers to specialists and strategists laboring in future mobility and automotive design labs, offers insight into the agencies and contingencies of actors and actants participating within infrastructural networks that are reshaping mobility behaviors and options. Interventions to recuperate and connect the often atomized agents within modal mobility production assemblages will be critical to influence the infrastructural contours of transportation development in emerging markets like Vietnam, and promote a sustainability model that goes beyond technological innovation and upgrade consumption.
Populations and Precarity During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Southeast Asian Perspectives (ISEAS Press), 2023
Over the last generation the Vietnamese migrant population in South Korea has grown significantly... more Over the last generation the Vietnamese migrant population in South Korea has grown significantly and become quite visible. Vietnamese in South Korea number over 170,000 and now count as the largest expatriate population in the country after Chinese (Park 2018). One of the most significant remittance corridors is now South Korea-Vietnam, which has outpaced Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) flows. The majority of Vietnamese in Korea tend to fall into three categorieslabour migrants, spouses, and students. Migrant labour from Vietnam to South Korea dates to the 1990s, and since 2004 an E-9 Employment
TRaNS: Trans -Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, 2021
Remittances from the Vietnamese diaspora have played an important role in Vietnam's post-Cold War... more Remittances from the Vietnamese diaspora have played an important role in Vietnam's post-Cold War economic development, providing important inputs to a range of household spending areas, from education to health care. In the case of Vietnam, however, remittances are also caught up with memories and traumas of war, betrayal, separation, and exodus. This article traces that history and illustrates how Vietnam's particular postwar refugee and remittance situations and channels illuminate networks and exacerbate inherent contradictions and comparisons in the mobile flows of finance, people, and goods across borders. Examining genealogies of remittance reception and management offers insight and intervention into analytical assumptions of the distancing and mediating functions inherent to classic conceptions of money, as well as the reciprocity and recognition perceptions mapped onto gift economies.
This series is more an agenda-setting enterprise than a mere book series. It promises to be the m... more This series is more an agenda-setting enterprise than a mere book series. It promises to be the most important scholarly initiative to come from the Global South in a very long time; one that is sure to change how we think about the world at large, about economy and humanity. JOHN COMAROFF, Harvard University Those social sciences and humanities concerned with the economy have lost the confidence to challenge the sophistication and public dominance of the field of economics. We need to give a new emphasis and direction to the economic arrangements that people already share, while recognizing that humanity urgently needs new ways of organizing life on the planet. This series examines how human interests are expressed in our unequal world through concrete economic activities and aspirations.
International remittances to Vietnamincluding family, charitable, investment and gray matter kn... more International remittances to Vietnamincluding family, charitable, investment and gray matter knowledge flowsare significant, growing, and primarily oriented by Vietnam's post-1975 war history of exodus and refugee migration to the United States and other western countries.
Since 2008, new financial regulations have reformatted the channels of global remittances. This a... more Since 2008, new financial regulations have reformatted the channels of global remittances. This article examines how the Vietnamese diaspora is navigating this changing landscape of regulatory chokepoints.
This article examines emergent consumption patterns in Vietnam's shifting transportation market a... more This article examines emergent consumption patterns in Vietnam's shifting transportation market and then considers them within broader design and marketing infrastructures shaping emerging markets in the Southeast Asian region. First, I explore the strategies and histories of Vietnamese buyers and sellers participating in the transportation commodity market starting with the motorcycle and transitioning to the automobile, demonstrating how they are entangled with a range of practical, affective, and symbolic valuations. However, shifts in manufacturing and recent regional and international trade agreements mandating tariff reductions are delinking informal consumption and valuation practices while also reorienting material and temporal relations to the market. Moving from micro examinations of transportation user experiences to macro perspectives on market design, I discuss how a transnational transportation industry is anticipating and engaging new consumer publics in not only Vietnam but the Asia region more broadly through an exploration of affective notions of mobility, and in the process framing and projecting an emerging Asian cultural market infrastructure. I suggest that identifying collaborative opportunities for stakeholders in academia, industry, and policy to explore emergent issues of transportation and mobility preferences and developments in Asia may be a productive arena for further lateral learning and analytic insight.
T his essay considers the place of transnational gift exchange in cultivating, maintaining and st... more T his essay considers the place of transnational gift exchange in cultivating, maintaining and straining social networks and reflexive identities in and beyond Vietnam. The focus of this examination is remittance economies. 1 Remittances [kiều hối] are typically understood as a phenomenon in which diasporic subjects send financial, material, and social gifts to their "homeland" counterparts. Vietnam, with an overseas population of over three million, percent of whom are associated with the postwar refugee exodus, and remittances estimated at . billion dollars annually or . percent of the GDP, is a productive site to explore the social dimensions of remittance exchange. 2 This includes reasons of not only historical circumstance and the emotionally textured memories associated with them, but also the unique contextual features of Vietnamese geography and rapid late socialist capitalist transformations.
Things move, people move, and increasingly we take note. What are the observational and analytic ... more Things move, people move, and increasingly we take note. What are the observational and analytic infrastructures and frames that drive such notice? The interdisciplinary arena of mobility studies, spearheaded by scholars and research centers devoted to the study of connections between and theorizations of movement, 1 is growing, often with the support of external state, foundation, and corporate funding and grants to academic institutions. While the mobility studies fi eld has traditionally been pioneered by European scholars in disciplines such as sociology, geography, and urban planning, there has also recently been a shift of attention toward Asia and the inclusion of other disciplines ranging from anthropology to science and technology studies.
as the embodiment not of private capital, but of respect, honor, and the legacy of collectivism. ... more as the embodiment not of private capital, but of respect, honor, and the legacy of collectivism. This set of qualities is unquantifiable. It is priceless. Furthermore, after years of living in Quang Trung, people who built the housing blocks developed a strong affinity for the place that affected them deeply, especially women, who organized resistance to reject the spectacle of a new tower and to negotiate for what is acceptable. The conclusion states that Vinh is a city "that had come and gone all too quickly," but perhaps it is more accurate to say that it has lived on in the memories of people in Vinh. They will remember (and hopefully will tell the young people of Vinh) that once they had a collective dream, so powerful that it was materialized, no matter how imperfectly. Building Socialism is a keeper of that memory. It is also an indispensable addition to our understanding of urban Asia.
Currencies of Imagination: Channeling Money and Chasing Mobility in Vietnam (Cornell University Press), 2019
The writing of this book has been a remarkable academic, personal, physical, and intellectual jou... more The writing of this book has been a remarkable academic, personal, physical, and intellectual journey back and forth across the Pacific on multiple occasions, and I have many people to thank for inspiring and sharing the voyage. First of all, I carry a great debt of gratitude to my graduate school advisers, who helped guide me through the initial stages of this project while earning a PhD at Cornell University. I could not have asked for a more patient, encouraging, and inspirational mentor than Andrew Willford. I can only hope to emulate his compassion, kindness, humility, and brilliance in my own professional and personal trajectory. James Siegel was a guiding inspiration, teaching me to appreciate the intellectual apprehension that comes at the limits of comprehension, where thinking and seeing begins anew. Shelley Feldman was a dynamic interlocutor, offering an important intellectual bridge between anthropology and development sociology, a field this book also seeks to address. Keith Taylor pushed me to conduct careful scholarship informed by deep geographical, literary, and historical understanding, and I appreciate his commitment to speaking across disciplinary boundaries. During a trip to Vietnam in 2003 I met two graduate students in the field whose spirited conversations motivated me to pursue doctoral research in Vietnam-related studies in the first place, Erik Harms (now at Yale University) and Matt Masur (now at Saint Anselm College). At Cornell, I fondly remember my colleagues in the Anthropology Department. It would be impossible to name them all, but Reighan Gillam from my initial graduate cohort started and continues this academic journey with me, and we meet annually at the national anthropology meetings but also outside of them to celebrate all of life's professional and personal milestones. Cornell's Southeast Asia Program was also formative in helping me think comparatively about Vietnam within Southeast Asia, and I will always be nostalgic about the close-knit scholarly community I belonged to there. I thank
UCI Social Sciences, Questions and Answers with Money at the Margins (Berghahn 2018) co-editors B... more UCI Social Sciences, Questions and Answers with Money at the Margins (Berghahn 2018) co-editors Bill Maurer, Smoki Musaraj and Ivan V. Small.
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