Making the Marketplace: Traders, Cadres, and Bureaucratic Documents in Lào Cai City

Bureaucratic paperwork holds an important place in the toolbox of state rule techniques. Drawing on recent anthropological approaches to bureaucratic documentation, this chapter examines the role that the production and circulation of bureaucratic paperwork plays in actually shaping experiential and social realities in the marketplace. The cases presented show that written documents not only enable government officials to establish their positions and authority vis-à-vis their subjects, but also shape the market’s future. In contrast, ordinary people have little opportunity to insert themselves into these streams of bureaucratic paperwork through which authority is established, subjects are governed, and marketplaces are made.