Traders in MotionPub Date : 2018-06-15DOI: 10.7591/cornell/9781501719820.003.0007
Erik Harms
{"title":"Introduction: Moving and Shaking","authors":"Erik Harms","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501719820.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501719820.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter discusses the physical movement of traders throughout Vietnam, and demonstrates that the concept of “market socialism” is a social phenomenon enacted through migration and movement. The essay also introduces the four chapters in section two of the book. Luong’s chapter discusses mobile traders from central coastal Vietnam who mobilize social networks to facilitate business. Nguyen’s chapter discusses junk traders from a Red River Delta village who circulate between Hanoi and their village and other parts of Vietnam before settling down to establish families. Nguyễn Thị Thanh Bình’s chapter discusses peri-urban traders outside Hanoi who respond to urbanization through new spatial practices. Finally, Barthelmes’ chapter discusses Hanoi street vendors who creatively navigate the governing practices of city officials.","PeriodicalId":312832,"journal":{"name":"Traders in Motion","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126683245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Traders in MotionPub Date : 2018-06-15DOI: 10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0009
Minh T. N. Nguyen
{"title":"Money, Risk Taking, and Playing: Shifting Masculinity in a Waste-Trading Community in the Red River Delta","authors":"Minh T. N. Nguyen","doi":"10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the practices of masculinity by male migrant waste traders from a Red River delta district as underscored by the shifting ways in which they conduct their migrant trading activities and live their lives between youth and adulthood. It demonstrates that their practices push the boundaries of normative manhood, and over time help to redefine it, at the same time that they reproduce its symbolic parameters. As such, gender ideas and practices interact with each other to concurrently produce changes to and sustain social structures. The chapter indicates the relational and hybrid nature of masculinity, as well as the ways in which gender identity shapes and is shaped by the men’s participation in the marketplace.","PeriodicalId":312832,"journal":{"name":"Traders in Motion","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129977336","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Traders in MotionPub Date : 2018-06-15DOI: 10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0016
Caroline Grillot
{"title":"Arbitrage over the Beilun/Kalong River: Chinese Adjustments to Border Trade Practices in Vietnam","authors":"Caroline Grillot","doi":"10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0016","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the case of Móng Cái, a Vietnamese city dedicated to border trade with China. Here, Chinese entrepreneurs face restricting local policies and challenging Vietnamese negotiators. To establish sustainable partnerships, Chinese traders must compromise with diverse business ethics and strategies in a context of diplomatic frictions and economic crisis. Border trade practices regarding capital transactions, goods transport, and people’s circulation are all framed in both legal and illicit ways. Their unreliability contributes to conflicting relationships between economic agents and threatens collaborative commercial projects in Vietnam. By looking at transportation logistics, this chapter sheds light on how conflicting approaches of cross-border trade impede the implementation of a regional economic agenda focused on commercial cooperation.","PeriodicalId":312832,"journal":{"name":"Traders in Motion","volume":"58 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121578088","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Traders in MotionPub Date : 2018-06-15DOI: 10.7591/cornell/9781501719820.003.0011
L. Barthelmes
{"title":"Dealing with Uncertainty: Itinerant Street Vendors and Local Officials in Hanoi","authors":"L. Barthelmes","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501719820.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501719820.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"Despite various bans and hostile state policies since the 1990s, mobile street vendors continue to exist in large numbers on Hanoi’s streets. Due to the lack of transparent information about the legal framework in place, itinerant street vendors operate in a political environment that is characterized by uncertainty. This allows local officials a significant level of flexibility, in which they shift between tolerance and discipline. The chapter analyzes the tactics and strategies that Hanoi’s itinerant street vendors employ to deal with this uncertainty. These tactics and strategies range from evasion techniques and moral claims to the performance of “ruralness.”","PeriodicalId":312832,"journal":{"name":"Traders in Motion","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115777926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Traders in MotionPub Date : 2018-06-15DOI: 10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0002
Linda J. Seligmann
{"title":"Introduction: The Spatial Politics of Marketplaces","authors":"Linda J. Seligmann","doi":"10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This essay provides an overview of how development ideologies catalyze diverse displacement and resettlement dynamics among market traders in Vietnam. Case studies presented by authors in this section analyze the kinds of policies and practices that structure market space and the different ways that traders themselves engage the efforts of bureaucrats and state authorities to transform them into malleable citizens. The ethnic identities of traders, their sociopolitical networks, knowledge of complex temporal cycles of trade and spatial mobility, as well as the state’s contradictory objectives create margins in which traders resist state control. The effects of scale, biopolitics, and the power of discourse on the part of traders’ ability to pursue more sustained political mobilization constitute significant future research directions.","PeriodicalId":312832,"journal":{"name":"Traders in Motion","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125352078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Traders in MotionPub Date : 2018-06-15DOI: 10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0004
S. Turner
{"title":"“Run and Hide When You See the Police”: Livelihood Diversification and the Politics of the Street Economy in Vietnam’s Northern Uplands","authors":"S. Turner","doi":"10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores the everyday negotiations required for ethnic minority street vendors working in Sapa, a tourist town in upland northern Vietnam, to eke out a livelihood in an especially prescribed environment. These individuals, mostly women, face a local political environment where access and institutional requirements shift on a near-daily basis due to the impulses of state officials, and where ethnicity is key to determining who gets to vend, where, and how. A focus on the micro-geographies and everyday politics of itinerant trade in this rapidly growing tourist site reveals specific relationships and negotiations regarding resource access, ethnicity, state authority, and livelihood strategies.","PeriodicalId":312832,"journal":{"name":"Traders in Motion","volume":"93 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128453486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Traders in MotionPub Date : 2018-06-15DOI: 10.7591/cornell/9781501719820.003.0008
H. V. Luong
{"title":"A Mobile Trading Network from Central Coastal Vietnam: Growth, Social Network, and Gender","authors":"H. V. Luong","doi":"10.7591/cornell/9781501719820.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501719820.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the significant growth of a mobile Vietnamese trading network in the past two decades, from Ho Chi Minh City to the entire southern half of Vietnam. The prominence of villagers from one lowlands village in the central coastal province of Quảng Ngãi in this trading niche highlights the importance of social network in Vietnamese political economy. About half of the traders in this trading network are male, and half, female, in contrast to the common dominance of women in Vietnamese petty trade. In relation to the literature on gender and trade in Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia, the chapter also examines how malleable gender is in Vietnamese trading activities.","PeriodicalId":312832,"journal":{"name":"Traders in Motion","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115721276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Traders in MotionPub Date : 2018-06-15DOI: 10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0012
C. Gregory
{"title":"Introduction: Constructing, Maintaining, and Navigating Boundaries","authors":"C. Gregory","doi":"10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0012","url":null,"abstract":"This section introduction discusses the themes that surface in section three of the book. The four chapters in this section illustrate the tensions that exist between states and traders. States construct boundaries, define the legal tender that should circulate within these boundaries, and level taxes on profits. Traders, in their quest for profits, engage in trade that transcends boundaries, use gold and other illegal forms of tender when it suits them, and strive to avoid taxes. Morality and legality are matters of judgment, but when the state is the judge then citizens have to find ways of coping with the problematic powers of the state. Some ignore it and engage in dangerous cross-border trade, others work profitably within.","PeriodicalId":312832,"journal":{"name":"Traders in Motion","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121791967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Traders in MotionPub Date : 2018-06-15DOI: 10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0005
C. Bonnin
{"title":"Grand Designs? State Agendas and the Lived Realities of Market Redevelopment in Upland Northern Vietnam","authors":"C. Bonnin","doi":"10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"As part of its ambition to accelerate market integration in the northern uplands, the Vietnamese government has embarked on a scheme to expand and modernize marketplace infrastructure based on standard, state-approved models. Yet, the lived realities of these schemes reveal a clear disconnect whereby the kinds of markets being imagined and promoted by the state often poorly reflect the livelihood needs of the diverse groups of upland traders in this multi-ethnic space. This chapter explores the complex gradations of traders’ contentions to marketplace redevelopment and the reasons behind why so many of these expensive new markets have not taken off. It is suggested that these grand designs as a symbol of state officials’ progress overrides their on-the-ground failure as development projects.","PeriodicalId":312832,"journal":{"name":"Traders in Motion","volume":"84 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114858375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Traders in MotionPub Date : 2018-06-15DOI: 10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0013
Allison J. Truitt
{"title":"Regulations and Raids, or the Precarious Place of Gold Shops in Vietnam","authors":"Allison J. Truitt","doi":"10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7591/CORNELL/9781501719820.003.0013","url":null,"abstract":"In 2014, police raided a gold shop in Ho Chi Minh City and confiscated US dollars, Thai baht, and more than 500 SJC gold bars. The public outcry following the raid underscores the contentious reaction to a 2012 government decree prohibiting gold shops from exchanging foreign currency and gold bars. This chapter examines official justifications for the raid as well as popular perceptions as a means of assessing the vulnerability of gold traders in Vietnam’s shifting monetary landscape.","PeriodicalId":312832,"journal":{"name":"Traders in Motion","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131700591","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}