Afterword

Abstract

This commentary discusses parallels between these studies of Vietnam and prominent studies of African contexts with comparable themes and methods of historical and transnational analysis. Despite dramatic contrasts with the particularities of African history and societies, traders, their customers and their regulators navigate similar material and conceptual landscapes. Shifting public policies and trading practices invoke and enact highly charged dichotomies: urban and rural identities, socialist and modernist virtues, or globalism and indigeneity. These nuanced analyses show diverse actors internalizing and also strategically manipulating and redefining alternative ideals and ideologies of gender, adulthood, kinship, parenthood, neighborhood, technology, and tradition.