The Reinvention of Distinction

This pioneering collection brings together an international group of scholars to explore the Vietnamese middle class. From the leisure pursuits of the colonial middle class to the impact of the new urban rich on landscape of the countryside, this interdisciplinary volume explores the ways in which middle classness has been practiced in a wide range of contexts throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. In addition to offering insights into how middle classness was and is constituted and negotiated, this collection illuminates the cultural and social conditions of two distinctive periods in Vietnamese history. Three historical chapters consider how middle class status was experienced and displayed under French colonialism and in 1960s republican. These chapters offer examinations of middle classness through recreation, consumption, and associational life. Six contemporary studies examine the modes of experimentation and practice within middle class urban Vietnam. Still a sensitive topic politically, the contemporary middle class, nascent but increasingly powerful, is exerting a strong impact on the shape of contemporary society and culture, as well as on urban and rural landscapes. This volume offers a series of studies which critically interrogate the practices of those who engage in or aspire to urban middle-class lifestyles in Vietnam both in the past and in the present.

First major examination of the middle class in Vietnam Based on innovative data analyses (historical chapters) and fieldwork (contemporary chapters) Offers historical and contemporary studies of the middle class in northern and southern Vietnam Brings together leading Vietnam Studies scholars from a range of disciplines (history, anthropology, geography, demography, sociology)

Contenu

Chapter 1: Introduction: Who are the Urban Middle Class in Vietnam? Daniéle Bèlanger, Lisa Drummond, Van Nguyen-Marshall.- Part I: Historical Perspectives.- Chapter 2: Advertising, Modernity and Consumer Culture in Colonial Vietnam: George Dutton.- Chapter 3: Cuisine and Social Status among Urban Vietnamese, 1888-1926: Erica Peters.- Chapter 4: The Associational Life of the Vietnamese Middle Class in Saigon (1950s-1970s): Van Nguyen-Marshall.- Part II: Comtemporary Perspectives: Chapter 5: Middle-Class Landscapes in a Transforming City: Hanoi in the 21st Century: Lisa Drummond.- Chapter 6: Finances, Family, Fashion, Fitness and .....: The Changing Lives of Urban Middle-Class Vietnamese Women: Ann Marie Leshkowich.- Chapter 7: Exhibiting Middleclassness: The Social Status of Artists in Hanoi: Nora Taylor.- Chapter 8: Banking on the Middle Class in Ho Chi Minh City: Allison Truitt.- Chapter 9: When de Dai Gia (Urban Rich) go to the Countryside: Impacts of the Urban-fuelled Rural Land Market in the Uplands: To Xuan Phuc.- Chapter 10: Afterword: Consumption and Middle-Class Subjectivity in Vietnam: Elizabeth Vann.