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Big Money, New Money, and ATMs: Valuing Vietnamese Currency in Ho Chi Minh City

Markets and Market Liberalization: Ethnographic Reflections

ISBN: 978-0-76231-225-2, eISBN: 978-1-84950-354-9

Publication date: 30 March 2006

Abstract

Reforms of the Vietnamese economy have been widely credited for stabilizing the value of the state-issued currency in the marketplace. Nevertheless, how people evaluate the Vietnamese dong as a symbolic form can be read as a symptom of shifting economic and political forces, above all in Ho Chi Minh City, a city associated with commerce. Through three ethnographic cases – the introduction of “big money,” the scarcity of “new money” in 2002, and the campaign to build Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), this paper analyzes the contentious politics around symbolic exchange that shape confidence in Vietnamese currency.

Citation

Truitt, A. (2006), "Big Money, New Money, and ATMs: Valuing Vietnamese Currency in Ho Chi Minh City", Dannhaeuser, N. and Werner, C. (Ed.) Markets and Market Liberalization: Ethnographic Reflections (Research in Economic Anthropology, Vol. 24), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 283-308. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0190-1281(05)24010-6

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited