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Volume 5
Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy
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Market Frictions
Trade and Urbanization at the Vietnam-China Border
Kirsten W. Endres
170 pages, 22 illus., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-78920-244-1 $135.00/£99.00 / Hb / Published (June 2019)
eISBN 978-1-78920-245-8 eBook
Reviews
“It is a pleasure to read studies of this quality. The author is an accomplished storyteller and she succeeds admirably in the task she sets herself.” • Chris Gregory, Australian National University, Canberra
"The author skillfully weaves together the study of marketplaces and border politics to advance a new understanding of urban trade, morality, and border subjectivities." • Christina Schwenkel, University of California
Description
Based on ethnographic research conducted over several years, Market Frictions examines the tensions and frictions that emerge from the interaction of global market forces, urban planning policies, and small-scale trading activities in the Vietnamese border city of Lào Cai. Here, it is revealed how small-scale traders and market vendors experience the marketplace, reflect upon their trading activities, and negotiate current state policies and regulations. It shows how “traditional” Vietnamese marketplaces have continually been reshaped and adapted to meet the changing political-economic circumstances and civilizational ideals of the time.
Kirsten W. Endres is Head of the Research Group The Political and Economic Anthropology of Southeast Asia at the Department Resilience and Transformation in Eurasia of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/S. Her previous publications include Performing the Divine. Mediums, Markets and Modernity in Urban Vietnam (NIAS Press, 2011) and the co-edited volume Traders in Motion. Identities and Contestations in the Vietnamese Marketplace (Cornell University Press, 2018).