Future-making Tactics: Exploring Middle-class Living and Green Practices in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Practices of environmental sustainability in Vietnam are not new, although these may align to managing austerity and rural living. In Ho Chi Minh City, tactics deployed by middle-class professionals shaping their futures involve conscious choices about transport, manual labour, consumption, and relations with the natural world for a more sustainable city. Such choices are constrained by frictions, such as lacking capital or rejecting globalised phenomena. Drawing on sensory anthropology and new mobilities, firstly, I argue that focusing on place-specific values may overlook pervasive influences of rurality and globalisation on relations that transform urban living unevenly and unequally. Secondly, I propose that it is not simply the ‘hard’ built environment that offers a resource in articulation and materialisation of transitions to more sustainable and liveable urban places. The discussion reveals that middle-class desires to experience comfortable living shape tactics that, while mitigating uncertainty or demonstrating resilience, are not simply individual choices.
Source: Ethnos
Author: Catherine Earl
Institution: Federation University
Language: English
Subfield: Urban Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2912432071