Spectacular infrastructure and its breakdown in socialist Vietnam

No material resource and public good is more critical to sustaining urban life than water. During postwar reconstruction in Vietnam, planners showcased urban infrastructure as a spectacular socialist achievement. Water-related facilities, in particular, held the potential for emancipation and modern...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American ethnologist Vol. 42; no. 3; pp. 520 - 534
Main Author: SCHWENKEL, CHRISTINA
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Arlington Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.08.2015
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Subjects:
Breakdown
Cities
Emancipation
Ethnology
Housing
Infrastructure
Modernity
Postwar reconstruction
Public goods
Public infrastructure
Socialism
Tenants
Urban areas
Urbanism
Urbanization
Vietnam
Water
Water Supply
Vietnam
ISSN:0094-0496, 1548-1425
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:No material resource and public good is more critical to sustaining urban life than water. During postwar reconstruction in Vietnam, planners showcased urban infrastructure as a spectacular socialist achievement. Water-related facilities, in particular, held the potential for emancipation and modernity. Despite East German-engineered systems, however, taps remained dry in socialist housing. Lack of water exposed existing hierarchies that undermined the goal of democratic infrastructure yet enabled new forms of solidarity and gendered social practice to take shape in response to the state's failure to meet basic needs. Infrastructural breakdown and neglect thus catalyzed a collective ethos of maintenance and repair as the state shifted responsibility for upkeep to disenchanted tenants. I track these processes in a housing complex in Vinh City, where water signified both the promises of state care and a condition of its systemic neglect.
Bibliography:ArticleID:AMET12145
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ISSN:0094-0496
1548-1425
DOI:10.1111/amet.12145