Domesticating consumer goods in the global economy: Examples from Vietnam and Russia

Abstract

In this article, I compare findings from my own research on consumerism in Ho Chi Minh City to the research of others in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and consider why shoppers in Vietnam and Russia worry about the origins of the products they encounter in their newly marketized economies. Consumer anxieties in both countries reveal a shared crisis of ‘locality’ – a common concern about the movement of goods between spaces designated as ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign;’ at the same time, however, they point to different constructions of these categories in the context of market reform. In conclusion, I argue that, through their consumption practices, shoppers in Vietnam and Russia are reframing socialist and neoliberal notions of self, society, and the market.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 37 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.