Wandering Ghosts of Late Socialism: Conflict, Metaphor, and Memory in a Southern Vietnamese Marketplace

Abstract

In the late 1990s, a marketplace trader in Hồ Chí Minh City reported being plagued by wandering ghosts. The postwar Vietnamese landscape teems with angry spirits who died violently without descendents to honor them, but the trader's wandering ghosts were living: male market officials who demanded that merchants, most of them women, pay a fee for use rights to their stalls. Examining the conflict that ensued, this article argues that the wandering ghosts metaphor aptly captures the bitter struggles over resources and status that have accompanied late socialist economic reforms. More subtly, the metaphor also alludes to lingering wartime animosities. Market officials supported the victors, whereas many traders sided with the losers. Although daily interactions have intersubjectively reworked these tensions so that they seem instead to reflect gender differences, “ghosts” inevitably emerge: odd fragments of memory that wander homeless in the wake of social and individual efforts to render the past coherent.Most traders have paid up simply to avoid the market management boarde's harassment. It's money sacrificed to appease the wandering ghosts[tiền thí cô hồn].—Bến Thành market trader, Hồ Chí Minh City

‘The Red Seedlings of the Central Highlands’: Social Relatedness and Political Integration of Select Ethnic Minority Groups in Post-War Vietnam

“…As a Bahnar female doctor told us: 'Since they know about my past they deny my [professional] endeavours.' Similar to observations made by Anne Leshkowich (2008) on the experiences of small traders in Hồ Chí Minh City, past relations still have a bearing on the current life of Bahnar individuals. This reflects what Jayne Werner (2006) has identified as a genealogy of current tensions.…”

Making Law: Small-Scale Trade and Corrupt Exceptions at the Vietnam-China Border

“…In southern Vietnam, similar practices evolved during the cooperativization of private trade in the 1980s. Ann Marie Leshkowich (:23) relates that traders at Bến Thành market (Hồ Chí Minh City) “today joke that one of the great ironies of the central government's cooperative system was that the primary cooperation it fostered was between traders and market management in outwitting the state.”…”

“…As Leshkowich () has pointed out, the performance of weakness in the context of dealing with state officials is also profoundly gendered. Kusakabe () made a similar point with regard to women traders using gender stereotypes in negotiating with officials at the Thai–Lao border.…”

Tourism and Entrepreneurialism in Southeast Asian Cities

“…In the first place, it is incorrect to presume that voices outside of the governments of Southeast Asia are not represented in public opinion and policy. Evidence from Vietnam and Cambodia (among others) attests to this point (Kwon 2008;Leshkowich 2008;Springer 2009b).…”