Description
Book SynopsisA bold look at Vietnam's privatized commercial sex market, conflicts surrounding modern prostitution in Vietnam, and the government's efforts to manage the industry.
Trade Review"This is an excellent book and I highly recommend it. Theoretically sophisticated, insightful and well-written, this study draws on a wide range of Vietnamese-language materials and field interviews and experience to develop a clear and strong argument. Skillfully and concisely crafted, The Ironies of Freedom is an important addition to the literatures on sex work, Vietnamese studies and contemporary political economy."
* Journal of Contemporary Asia *
"[T]he rich ethnography allows the author to ground the scholarship on 'governmentality' in context, pressing the limits of received theory with the hard facts of social differentiation and the two faces of Vietnam today. The 'ironies of freedom' are many: self-mastery coexists with conformity; choice with coercion; consumer freedom with social obedience; and today's Vietnamese Marxism allows class prerogatives to dictate unequal governance."
* American Anthropologist *
"Nguyen-Vo uses the commercial sex trade in Vietnam to demonstrate how both the government and individuals have emerged from their dark communist past and adapted to economic, political and social liberalization, market forces, and entrepreneurship. Recommended."
* Choice *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Part One | Sex for Sale: Entrepreneurial and Consumerist Freedom
1. The Hooking Economy: Entrepreneurial Choice and Commercial Sex in the Liberalizing Economy
2. Hierarchy and Geography: Class and National Identity in Sex Consumption
Part Two | The Real and the True: Governing by Choice and Coercion
3. The Rise of the Empirical and the Case of Medical Expertise: A Genealogy of Governance
4. Governing Passion: Consumers' Choice and the Production of a Differentiated Citizenry in Public Medicine
5. Who You Truly Are: Coercion, Culture, and the Global Imaginary in the Governmental Rehabilitation of Sex Workers
6. What Kind of Power? Specialization of Intervention and the Coexisting Modes of Governance
Part Three | To the Real: Ideology and Cultural Production
7. From Antigone to the Kneeling Woman: A Genealogy of the Real from Socialism to the Preparation for Marketization
8. Love in the Time of Neoliberalism: Ideology and the New Social Realism in Popular Culture
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
