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"My husband doesn't have a head for business," complained Ngoc, the
owner of a children's clothing stall in Ben Thanh market.
"Naturally, it's because he's a man." When the women who sell in Ho
Chi Minh City's iconic marketplace speak, their language suggests
that activity in the market is shaped by timeless, essential
truths: Vietnamese women are naturally adept at buying and selling,
while men are not; Vietnamese prefer to do business with family
members or through social contacts; stallholders are by nature
superstitious; marketplace trading is by definition a small-scale
enterprise. Essential Trade looks through the facade of these
"timeless truths" and finds active participants in a political
economy of appearances: traders' words and actions conform to
stereotypes of themselves as poor, weak women in order to clinch
sales, manage creditors, and protect themselves from accusations of
being greedy, corrupt, or "bourgeois" - even as they quietly slip
into southern Vietnam's growing middle class. But Leshkowich argues
that we should not dismiss the traders' self-disparaging words
simply because of their essentialist logic. In B?n Thanh market,
performing certain styles of femininity, kinship relations, social
networks, spirituality, and class allowed traders to portray
themselves as particular kinds of people who had the capacity to
act in volatile political and economic circumstances. When so much
seems to be changing, a claim that certain things or people are
inherently or naturally a particular way can be both personally
meaningful and strategically advantageous. Based on ethnographic
fieldwork and life history interviewing conducted over nearly two
decades, Essential Trade explores how women cloth and clothing
traders like Ng?c have plied their wares through four decades of
political and economic transformation: civil war, post-war economic
restructuring, socialist cooperativization, and the frenetic
competition of market socialism. With close attention to daily
activities and life narratives, this ground-breaking work of
critical feminist economic anthropology combines theoretical
insight, vivid ethnography, and moving personal stories to
illuminate how the interaction between gender and class has shaped
people's lives and created market socialist political economy. It
provides a compelling account of post-war southern Vietnam as seen
through the eyes of the dynamic women who have navigated forty
years of profound change while building their businesses in the
stalls of Ben Thanh market.
With essays covering diverse topics, from seafood trade across the
Vietnam-China border, to street traders in Hanoi, to gold shops in
Ho Chi Minh City, Traders in Motion spans the fields of economic
and political anthropology, geography, and sociology to illuminate
how Vietnam's rapidly expanding market economy is formed and
transformed by everyday interactions among traders, suppliers,
customers, family members, neighbors, and officials. The
contributions shed light on the micropolitics of local-level
economic agency in the paradoxical context of Vietnam's socialist
orientation and its contemporary neoliberal economic and social
transformation. The essays examine how Vietnamese traders and
officials engage in on-the-ground contestations to define space,
promote or limit mobility, and establish borders, both physical and
conceptual. The contributors show how trading experiences shape
individuals' notions of self and personhood, not just as economic
actors, but also in terms of gender, region, and ethnicity. Traders
in Motion affords rich comparative insight into how markets form
and transform and what those changes mean. Contributors: Lisa
Barthelmes, Christine Bonnin, Gracia Clark, Annuska Derks, Kirsten
W. Endres, Chris Gregory, Caroline Grillot, Erik Harms, Esther
Horat, Gertrud Huwelmeier, Ann Marie Leshkowich, Hy Van Luong, Minh
T. N. Nguyen, Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh, Linda J. Seligmann, Allison
Truitt, Sarah Turner
With essays covering diverse topics, from seafood trade across the
Vietnam-China border, to street traders in Hanoi, to gold shops in
Ho Chi Minh City, Traders in Motion spans the fields of economic
and political anthropology, geography, and sociology to illuminate
how Vietnam's rapidly expanding market economy is formed and
transformed by everyday interactions among traders, suppliers,
customers, family members, neighbors, and officials. The
contributions shed light on the micropolitics of local-level
economic agency in the paradoxical context of Vietnam's socialist
orientation and its contemporary neoliberal economic and social
transformation. The essays examine how Vietnamese traders and
officials engage in on-the-ground contestations to define space,
promote or limit mobility, and establish borders, both physical and
conceptual. The contributors show how trading experiences shape
individuals' notions of self and personhood, not just as economic
actors, but also in terms of gender, region, and ethnicity. Traders
in Motion affords rich comparative insight into how markets form
and transform and what those changes mean. Contributors: Lisa
Barthelmes, Christine Bonnin, Gracia Clark, Annuska Derks, Kirsten
W. Endres, Chris Gregory, Caroline Grillot, Erik Harms, Esther
Horat, Gertrud Hüwelmeier, Ann Marie Leshkowich, Hy Van Luong,
Minh T. N. Nguyen, Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh, Linda J. Seligmann,
Allison Truitt, Sarah Turner
When Hong Kong entrepreneur David Tang opened his Shanghai Tang
boutique on New York's Madison Avenue, it was not an isolated
example of the globalization of Asian fashion. Further evidence is
written on the labels in our closets, and paraded in the form of
salwaar-kameez and silk sarongs by the rich and famous of London.
The phenomenon merits scrutiny. This vanguard attempt points to the
colonial era as the origin of fashion globalization, and describes
its development as paralleling the gradual take-over of Asian daily
wear by Western dress. From indigenous Batak weavers to Hong Kong
designers, and from Indonesian businesswomen's power suits to
Korean feminists' national costume, this book explores the
sartorial interface of East and West.The globalization of Asian
dress needs to be understood as part of an ongoing Orientalism that
construes Asia as a feminine Other to the masculine West. The
conventional Orientalist definition of fashion as an exclusively
Western phenomenon has proved self-fulfilling in both East and West
so that the conceptual boundary between the two is continually
reasserted by design. Paying close attention to Asians' decisions
about what clothing to make, sell, buy, and wear, the case studies
in this book challenge Orientalist stereotypes of Asian style as
passive and traditional and highlight how these actions are often
made invisible by global cultural, rhetorical, and material
practices that feminize Asia and the fashion world. This timely
book will be of interest to dress and fashion theorists,
anthropologists, sociologists, historians, art historians and all
those interested in globalization, Orientalism and their effects.
When Hong Kong entrepreneur David Tang opened his Shanghai Tang
boutique on New York's Madison Avenue, it was not an isolated
example of the globalization of Asian fashion. Further evidence is
written on the labels in our closets, and paraded in the form of
salwaar-kameez and silk sarongs by the rich and famous of London.
The phenomenon merits scrutiny. This vanguard attempt points to the
colonial era as the origin of fashion globalization, and describes
its development as paralleling the gradual take-over of Asian daily
wear by Western dress. From indigenous Batak weavers to Hong Kong
designers, and from Indonesian businesswomen's power suits to
Korean feminists' national costume, this book explores the
sartorial interface of East and West.The globalization of Asian
dress needs to be understood as part of an ongoing Orientalism that
construes Asia as a feminine Other to the masculine West. The
conventional Orientalist definition of fashion as an exclusively
Western phenomenon has proved self-fulfilling in both East and West
so that the conceptual boundary between the two is continually
reasserted by design. Paying close attention to Asians' decisions
about what clothing to make, sell, buy, and wear, the case studies
in this book challenge Orientalist stereotypes of Asian style as
passive and traditional and highlight how these actions are often
made invisible by global cultural, rhetorical, and material
practices that feminize Asia and the fashion world. This timely
book will be of interest to dress and fashion theorists,
anthropologists, sociologists, historians, art historians and all
those interested in globalization, Orientalism and their effects.
“My husband doesn’t have a head for business,” complained
Ngoc, the owner of a children’s clothing stall in Bȇn
Th nh market. “Naturally, it’s because he’s a man.”
When the women who sell in Ho Chi Minh City’s iconic marketplace
speak, their language suggests that activity in the market is
shaped by timeless, essential truths: Vietnamese women are
naturally adept at buying and selling, while men are not;
Vietnamese prefer to do business with family members or through
social contacts; stallholders are by nature superstitious;
marketplace trading is by definition a small-scale enterprise.
Essential Trade looks through the façade of these “timeless
truths” and finds active participants in a political economy of
appearances: traders’ words and actions conform to stereotypes of
themselves as poor, weak women in order to clinch sales, manage
creditors, and protect themselves from accusations of being greedy,
corrupt, or “bourgeois” – even as they quietly slip into
southern Vietnam’s growing middle class. But Leshkowich argues
that we should not dismiss the traders’ self-disparaging words
simply because of their essentialist logic. In B?n Th nh
market, performing certain styles of femininity, kinship relations,
social networks, spirituality, and class allowed traders to portray
themselves as particular kinds of people who had the capacity to
act in volatile political and economic circumstances. When so much
seems to be changing, a claim that certain things or people are
inherently or naturally a particular way can be both personally
meaningful and strategically advantageous. Based on ethnographic
fieldwork and life history interviewing conducted over nearly two
decades, Essential Trade explores how women cloth and clothing
traders like Ng?c have plied their wares through four decades of
political and economic transformation: civil war, post-war economic
restructuring, socialist cooperativization, and the frenetic
competition of market socialism. With close attention to daily
activities and life narratives, this ground-breaking work of
critical feminist economic anthropology combines theoretical
insight, vivid ethnography, and moving personal stories to
illuminate how the interaction between gender and class has shaped
people’s lives and created market socialist political economy. It
provides a compelling account of post-war southern Vietnam as seen
through the eyes of the dynamic women who have navigated forty
years of profound change while building their businesses in the
stalls of Bȇn Th nh market.
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