Geometries of Fractals and Power: Transnational Marriages, Translocal Marriages, and Asia's Global Ruralities

Abstract:In much of the mobilities literature, a dichotomy exists between the urban and rural. The bulk of studies view the urban as a receiving center, one that is cosmopolitan, diverse, and dynamic, while conflating the rural into its opposite: a backward, boring, and unchanging place that sends people away. This split ignores the similarities between the urban and the rural and the complexities of the modern rural. This study, based on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork, uses a rural community in Vietnam as a node to explore the interconnecting transformations among Asia's rural areas. Findings reveal how rural changes in South Korea have created corresponding changes in rural areas in Vietnam through transnational and translocal rural marriages. Given the nuanced revelations of the ways in which the rural forms and changes, this article calls for its reconceptualization and demonstrates that, similar to the urban, the rural too can be global, heterogeneous, and transformative.