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Conclusion: Consumption, Sustainability and the Political Economy of Consumer Socialism

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Consumption and Vietnam’s New Middle Classes

Part of the book series: Consumption and Public Life ((CUCO))

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Abstract

This concluding chapter brings together the many discussions introduced throughout the book. The chapter starts by recapping the main ambitions of the book and placing the book in the larger field of consumption research, before summarizing the findings, structured around what is labelled as ‘variegated transformations’ and ‘change and continuity’. Towards the end, the chapter includes some reflections on the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and some of the real and potential impacts it has had on consumption globally and how it has been experienced by Vietnam’s middle classes. Finally, the chapter reflects on further knowledge needs on consumption and sustainability in Asia and beyond.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Parts of the chapter draw on arguments made in my PhD thesis (Hansen, 2016a).

  2. 2.

    The lesser known sixth stage in Rostow’s classic stages of growth model is called ‘beyond consumption’. Rostow claimed the US was reaching the point where the economy could not be built around people buying more stuff, since ‘everyone’ had a TV and a car and so on. History of course showed that there was little reason to worry from a macro-economic point of view.

  3. 3.

    There are certainly exceptions, and the work of the likes of Rick Wilk (2006) in Belize, Hal Wilhite (2008) in India, and Tanja Winther (2008) in Zanzibar are key sources of inspiration.

  4. 4.

    See also Nguyen and Hansen (2021) for a defense of the motorbike in Hanoi

  5. 5.

    See https://everydaylifeinapandemic.wordpress.com/

  6. 6.

    Among the many optimistic reports coming out of the Covid pandemic, was a much-read Bloomberg article saying that the pandemic led to the biggest reduction in meat consumption globally in decades (Bloomberg News, 2020). It does seem, however, that it forgot to factor in the massive impact of the African Swine Fever, which caused the culling of hundreds of millions of pigs in East Asia and a significant reduction in pork consumption in some of the major pork consuming countries in the world, such as China and Vietnam (see Hansen et al., 2021).

  7. 7.

    The year 2022 has however also seen the arrest and imprisonment of several leading environmental activists in what appears as yet another crackdown on civil society in Vietnam (see Wee, 2022).

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Hansen, A. (2022). Conclusion: Consumption, Sustainability and the Political Economy of Consumer Socialism. In: Consumption and Vietnam’s New Middle Classes. Consumption and Public Life. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14167-6_8

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