| Based on 13 months of ethnographic research among shoppers and sellers in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, this dissertation engages two broad, but related issues. First, it shows that the "global" reach of brands is not synonymous with a "global consumer culture," thus challenging corporate claims that consumers everywhere employ a universal market logic. Second, it complicates our understanding of "authenticity" in the commercial sphere by revealing an alternative, Vietnamese framework for determining product legitimacy.; I begin by tracing two, competing ways of conceptualizing production and consumption. Chapter Two describes a kind of reasoning I call "brand logic," which posits a particular relationship between products, brands, and corporations, and which has come to dominate Western-led capitalist enterprise. In Chapter Three, I outline an historical Vietnamese alternative to the development of "brand logic"---a pre-colonial economic system that was grounded in village manufacture, origin stories about technical knowledge, and trade secrets---that continues to shape how people in Ho Chi Minh City make sense out of commercial activities.; Chapters Four, Five, and Six examine three aspects of current consumption practices in Ho Chi Minh City. In Chapter Four, I show how shoppers use their knowledge of site-specific production practices (rather than brands) to evaluate famous brand name products. Chapter Five discusses the importance of social relationships to product legitimacy and consumer confidence, and reveals how goods can be categorized differently, depending upon their position within social networks. In Chapter Six, I show that, in contrast to the Western category of "counterfeits," the goods shoppers call "mimic" goods are considered "real" and "legitimate" products that follow the standards set by "model" goods.; In Chapter Seven, I use the case of "China bikes"---Chinese-made motorbikes that "mimic" the style of Japanese-brand motorbikes---to explore further many of the issues raised in previous chapters, and their implications for people's everyday lives and for "global" capitalism.; I conclude by reviewing how shoppers in Ho Chi Minh City think about and practice consumption, and by reflecting upon what these patterns can tell us about competing "rules" of capitalism and about Vietnam's position in the "global" economy. |
