1st Edition
Vietnam’s Socialist Servants Domesticity, Class, Gender, and Identity
1. Introduction 2. Live In, Live Out, Live In the Middle of Nowhere: Labour Regimes and Market Structure 3. Power at Work: Between Harmony and Hierarchy 4. Unruly Servants, Erotic Bodies and Cultural Delinquents: The Representation of Domestic Service 5. Needs, Consumption, and Domestic Service 6. Between Work and Home: Boundaries, Connections and Gendered Expectations Chapter 7. Narrating Identity: the Power and Limits of Individual Life Choice 8. Domesticity, Gender, Class, and Identity
Biography
Minh T. N. Nguyen is a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany.
"This is an easy-to-read work with engaging stories that do not damage its academic rigor. It provides us a window into understanding current Vietnamese society, gender relations, and daily family life. I learned a lot from this book regarding cultural practices and I trust that readers will also find many parts of this work very useful in their research into gender, labour, or migration." - Hong-zen Wang, Pacific Affairs: Volume 89, No. 3 – September 2016
"This is but one of the many striking insights Nguyen presents in her study, which I regard as a significant contribution to the anthropology of Vietnam, as well as to the global literature on migration and social reproduction. As studies of domestic work elsewhere have shown, maids frequently act as a catalyst for anxieties around status, class boundaries and gender roles in contexts of rapid social change. Nguyen’s work offers us a fascinating insider account of how these contradictions play out in both familiar and unique ways in the Vietnamese context." - ASHLEY CARRUTHERS, Australian National University, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
