Van Nguyen-Marshall

Lisa B. Welch Drummond

Danièle Bélanger

This pioneering collection brings together an international group of scholars to explore the Vietnamese middle class. From the leisure pursuits of the colonial middle class to the impact of the new urban rich on landscape of the countryside, this interdisciplinary volume explores the ways in which middle classness has been practiced in a wide range of contexts throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. In addition to offering insights into how middle classness was and is constituted and negotiated, this collection illuminates the cultural and social conditions of two distinctive periods in Vietnamese history. Three historical chapters consider how middle class status was experienced and displayed under French colonialism and in 1960s republican. These chapters offer examinations of middle classness through recreation, consumption, and associational life. Six contemporary studies examine the modes of experimentation and practice within middle class urban Vietnam. Still a sensitive topic politically, the contemporary middle class, nascent but increasingly powerful, is exerting a strong impact on the shape of contemporary society and culture, as well as on urban and rural landscapes. This volume offers a series of studies which critically interrogate the practices of those who engage in or aspire to urban middle-class lifestyles in Vietnam both in the past and in the present.

Modernity and the Middle Class in Urban Vietnam

The Reinvention of Distinction

In Search of Moral Authority: The Discourse on Poverty, Poor Relief, and Charity in French Colonial Vietnam is a pioneering exploration of the discourses on poverty and poor-relief activities in early twentieth-century Northern Vietnam. Treating poverty as a socially constructed idea, Van Nguyen-Marshall argues that poor relief was a domain where both French colonialists and Vietnamese intellectuals vied for moral authority. For the French colonial officials, poor relief fell within the purview of the French «civilizing» mission, the official justification for imperialism. However, the colonial agenda, racial prejudices, and the French administrators' own ambivalent attitudes toward the poor made any attempt at poor relief doomed for failure. For Vietnamese intellectuals, the discourse and activities on poor relief became a rallying call for patriotism, nationalism, and, for some, anti-colonialism. In Search of Moral Authority deals with social issues such as charity and poor relief, as well as the construction of national and gender identity by Vietnamese intellectuals. This book is essential reading for students and specialists of Vietnamese history as well as those interested in issues of poverty, public welfare, and charity.

Van Nguyen-Marshall

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