Reconfiguring Families in Contemporary Vietnam chronicles and analyzes
the most significant change for families in Vietnam's recent past - the
transition to a market economy, referred to as Doi Moi in Vietnamese
and generally translated as the "renovation". Two decades have passed
since the wide-ranging institutional transformations that took place
reconfigured the ways families produce and reproduce. The downsizing of
the socialist welfare system and the return of the household as the unit
of production and consumption redefined the boundaries between the
public and private.
This volume is the first to offer a multidisciplinary perspective that
sets its gaze exclusively on processes at work in the everyday lives of
families, and on the implications for gender and intergenerational
relations. By focusing on families, this book shifts the spotlight from
macro transformations of the renovation era, orchestrated by those in
power, to micro-level transformations, experienced daily in households
between husbands and wives, parents and children, grandparents and other
family members.