The Boss: Conspicuous Invisibility in Ho Chi Minh City

Abstract

This article introduces the figure of the Vietnamese boss, (ông chu ? ), in this case, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of a Ho Chi Minh City securities trading company. The boss's body techniques, lifestyle choices, and movement through different spaces in the city offer a view into the "everyday presentation of wealth" among business leaders who drive much of the economic transformation in contemporary Vietnam. In order to illuminate how the figure speaks to a particular moment in Vietnam's great urban transformation, the essay describes practices of "conspicuous invisibility" through which the boss manages what can and cannot be seen about his wealth. As a figure, the boss stands out against the background of economic privatization, the emergence of a stock market, rapid urbanization, and the changing moral valuation of those who accumulate wealth. The article also suggests that conspicuous invisibility both produces and is produced by new kinds of urban spaces. [Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon, New Urban Zones, elites].

Rethinking Whiteness and Masculinity in Geography: Drinking Alcohol in the Field in Vietnam

“…Groups and individuals within groups regularly challenge one another to drinking contests by declaring that a percentage of the glass of alcohol is to be drunk on the spot (the starting wager is usually 100%, or tr m ph n tr m ). Hierarchies present in the formal workplace are duplicated in drinking spaces: if there is a work‐related social event that includes alcohol, lower ranking members of the group are expected to accept every drinking “challenge” from their higher‐ups (Harms ). These are typically the youngest males or the ones with the least seniority in the group.…”

“…Regarding the decision to participate in these events, if a researcher socializes in the street with alcohol it is likely that consumptive practices will include eating, drinking alcohol, cigarette smoking, and chatting (Harms ; Hoang ). Whiteness and “maleness” are versatile identities in the street drinking spaces of Vietnam but they do not necessarily slip cleanly in to similar categories as they unfold in the global North.…”

“…In this paper the conduct of research ethics is driven and complicated by the consumption of alcohol among and with field participants. In Vietnam, drinking alcohol—wine, beer, and spirits/liquor—is for many an everyday social practice (Harms ; Nguyen‐vo ). Although it is commonplace among young and old, men and women, and rich and poor, it is far from a neutral or even relaxing activity, as research on Vietnam and other countries in Southeast Asia has illustrated (eg Brickell ; Hoang ; Horton and Rydstrom ).…”

Treading water: Street sex workers negotiating frantic presents and speculative futures in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

“…Catherine Earl (2014) shows how humble rural families invest in the education of their daughters, their migration to Ho Chi Minh City and their careers in foreign companies to improve their livelihoods and acquire enduring class dispositions. The entrepreneurial elite colonizes the future through education as well, and by establishing strategic business relations with state entrepreneurs at opulent banquets in entertainment venues (Harms, 2013b;Hoang, 2015), a practice that Nguyẽn-võ Thu Hương (2008) has referred to as "hooking economy." These new lifestyles, consumption and leisure practices serve as inspirational models for the less privileged classes.…”

Immersive invisibility in the settler‐colonial city:

“…Tactics of invisibility can help people access professional opportunities despite their being stigmatized, but the ability to do so is bound up with differences in class and identity. Wealthy urbanites can perform “conspicuous invisibility” to manage what others see and know about them, while cities often force the urban poor into the invisibility of informal spaces (Harms ; Wacquant , 240). In a similar vein, minorities of gender, culture, and religion cannot always control what kind of visibility they command in public (Bayat , 17; Ghorashi ).…”