The Reinvention of Distinction : Modernity and the Middle Class in Urban Vietnam

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.

Chapter 1: Introduction: Who are the Urban Middle Class in Vietnam? Daniéle Bèlanger, Lisa Drummond, Van Nguyen-Marshall.- Part I: Historical Perspectives.- Chapter 2: Advertising, Modernity and Consumer Culture in Colonial Vietnam: George Dutton.- Chapter 3: Cuisine and Social Status among Urban Vietnamese, 1888-1926: Erica Peters.- Chapter 4: The Associational Life of the Vietnamese Middle Class in Saigon (1950s-1970s): Van Nguyen-Marshall.- Part II: Comtemporary Perspectives: Chapter 5: Middle-Class Landscapes in a Transforming City: Hanoi in the 21st Century: Lisa Drummond.- Chapter 6: Finances, Family, Fashion, Fitness and .....: The Changing Lives of Urban Middle-Class Vietnamese Women: Ann Marie Leshkowich.- Chapter 7: Exhibiting Middleclassness: The Social Status of Artists in Hanoi: Nora Taylor.- Chapter 8: Banking on the Middle Class in Ho Chi Minh City: Allison Truitt.- Chapter 9: When de Dai Gia (Urban Rich) go to the Countryside: Impacts of the Urban-fuelled Rural Land Market in the Uplands: To Xuan Phuc.- Chapter 10: Afterword: Consumption and Middle-Class Subjectivity in Vietnam: Elizabeth Vann