Abstract
How, then, are we to understand Vietnam’s middle class, past and present? As these authors have shown, we would do well to avoid approaches which define a universal “middle class” in terms of income, or political liberalism, since these have arguably hindered efforts by scholars to make sense of the specificity and complexity of their subjects’ lives. In their introduction to this volume, Bélanger, Drummond, and Nguyen-Marshall encourage us, instead, to understand “middle class” not as a clearly-defined category or set of criteria, but as a far more unstable situation, not unlike what Li Zhang, in her research on the middle class in China has called a “process of ‘happening’” (2008, p. 24). Further, they encourage us to see middle class ness as marked, among other things, by practices of consumption, and efforts to acquire, or at least associate oneself with, particular “lifestyles.” In so doing, they draw on the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1984), who argued that class status is formed and maintained through a complex and changing matrix of knowledge and practices, in which mastery of particular aesthetics are as fundamental as access to material wealth. Drawing on the insights of Bourdieu and others, I explore some ways in which this collection of essays might further our understanding of the relationship between consumption, social distinction, and modernity as well as that between consumption, production, the market, and the state. Finally, I consider some of the middle class practices described in this volume in light of recent scholarly discussions about socialism, liberalism and neoliberalism, governmentality, and the public sphere.
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Vann, E.F. (2012). Afterword: Consumption and Middle-Class Subjectivity in Vietnam. In: Nguyen-Marshall, V., Drummond, L., Bélanger, D. (eds) The Reinvention of Distinction. ARI - Springer Asia Series, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2306-1_10
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