Preface Field Research Researching People on the Move Credits and Acknowledgements Introduction Migrant Labor under Market Socialism: The Rise of the Peasant Entrepreneur Waste Global: Geographies of Recycling and Human Economies The Political Economy of Remaking Morality and Political Economy Waste, Labor and the Politics of Value --Revaluing Waste --The Labor of Waste: Gender, Class, and Performance Exemplary Society and the Politics of Morality Desires, Aspirations, and Fictional Expectations Overview of the Chapters PART I: WASTE Chapter 1. Mobility, Networks, and Gendered Householding Householding, Networks, and Reciprocity Cities as the New Economic Zone Waste Networks: Money, Reciprocity, and Distance Staying at Home and Going Outside: Choice, Decision and Power Inside and Outside: The Gender of Space "Going Outside" and Remaking Gendered Spaces Negotiating Boundaries and Remaking Gendered Ideals Gendered Mobility and Generation Sons, Daughters and the Limits of Mobility Waste as a Frontier of Patrilineal Family Conclusion: Translocality, Networks, and the Remaking of Gendered Spaces Chapter 2. Labor, Economy and Urban Space The Itinerant Junk Trader and Changing Urban Waste Production The Waste Hierarchy and the Promiscuity of Waste Waste, Migrant Labor, and the Spatialization of Class in Hanoi Gendered Performance of Class as Access to Urban Spaces The "Miserable Migrant": Stereotype as Bargaining Chip Appliances versus Junk: Technology, Gendered Spaces, and Value The Waste Depot: Place Making, Gender, and Class Place Making in Ambiguous Spaces Inside and Outside, Again Moving Up: Matters of Dirt and Labor Conclusion: Class, Gender and Urban Space Remaking Chapter 3. Uncertainty, Ambiguity and the Ethic of Risk-Taking Economy of Uncertainty: Pricing, Tenure and Geography of Urban Waste Dangers in the Zones of Ambiguity Fake Waste State Agents Stolen Goods and Thugs Men on the Highway and the Art of Making Law Conclusion: Ambiguity, Risk Taking, and Remaking the Urban Order PART II: WEALTH Chapter 4. Mobility, Moral Discourses, and the Anxiety of Care Is It Better to be Uneducated and Rich? Mutually Exclusionary Discourses Caring and Being Cared For in Translocal Households Who Cares for the Kids? Grandparenting, Gender, and Never-Ending Worries When Grandparents Need Care "Social Evils" and the Disruption of Care Conclusion: Care, Anxiety and the Remaking of Moral Obligations Chapter 5. Rural Entrepreneurship, Local Development and Social Aspirations A Shifting Approach to Local Development Building the New Countryside from Urban Waste Story of Thu and Ngoan: The Poetry of Rabbit Meat Story of Xuân and Dai Love of the Land Conclusion: Value, Entrepreneurship, and the Remaking of the Countryside Chapter 6. Money and Consumption: Gendered Desires, Class Matters Money, the Gods, and the Anxiety of Mobility "Civilized" Living and Vacant Houses Consuming the City and the Gender of Desire Becoming Urban? Class Matters Conclusion: Fictional Expectations and the Remaking of Gendered Desires Chapter 7. An Exemplary Person, the Poor and the Limits of Remaking Socialization and the Ethic of Striving Vignette 1: The Queen of Waste and the Spirit of Giving Vignette 2: In Support of the Poor Households Ten Signatures and One Candidate for a Housing Grant Who Deserves to Be Poor? Conclusion: The Production of Success and Failure and the Limits of Remaking Conclusion: The Political Economy of Remaking The Waste Economy, Mobility and Globalization Labor, Gender, and Class Value and Morality The Moral Personhood of Market Socialism Notes References Index

Waste and Wealth is a fascinating ethnography, which provides detailed accounts of the lives of migrant waste traders in postsocialist Vietnam. Against the backdrop of Vietnam's transition from a centrally planned to a market economy, Minh T. N. Nguyen seeks to illustrate how the entanglement of global market forces and Vietnamese sociocultural norms shapes the moral lives of waste traders.

"Waste and Wealth is a fascinating ethnography, which provides detailed accounts of the lives of migrant waste traders in postsocialist Vietnam. Against the backdrop of Vietnam's transition from a centrally planned to a market economy, Minh T. N. Nguyen seeks to illustrate how the entanglement of global market forces and Vietnamese sociocultural norms shapes the moral lives of waste traders." -- Justin Lau, Exertions "Waste and Wealth is an outstanding ethnography brimming with vivid details and insights about the lives of Vietnamese waste traders. Tracing the livelihood strategies, hopes, dreams, and struggles of Spring Village traders, Minh Nguyen takes readers on a riveting series of journeys throughout the nation's capital city, Hanoi, and surrounding areas. It is a story of hard, dirty labor, but also of resilience, social mobility, and economic uplift. The waste traders in this book are not only turning waste into gold, but literally remaking themselves, their village, and Vietnam's new rural economy."--Erik Lind Harms, Yale University "With this compellingly written and highly original ethnography, Nguyen shows how informal recyclers remake themselves, their relationships, and their circumstances, laying to rest the assumptions that waste is inherently worthless and that those who work with it are doomed to abject poverty. The book is clearly written, demonstrating complex entanglements of dirty work, class aspirations, and gender politics in a post-socialist context."--Joshua Reno, Binghamton University "The ethnography is skillfully crafted, drawing readers into people's lives with a keen appreciation of how they juggle competing moralities and demands on their lives. Nguyen's theoretical contribution is deft, efficient, and--as with the best ethnography--lightly and dexterously woven through her material."--Catherine Alexander, Durham University

Minh T. N. Nguyen is Professor of Social Anthropology at Bielefeld University in Germany. She is also Visiting Professor at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, and an Associate of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale), Germany.