Introduction

As Vietnam has signed multiple regional and superregional free trade agreements, among them ASEAN, WTO, and TPP, and is joining the ranks of countries newly classified as middle income, it is increasingly hailed as ‘Asia's next tiger’ (The Economist, 2016). Although incomes have considerably risen and money has become an important benchmark of modernity in present-day Vietnam, wealth continues to be an ambiguous and inherently moral issue. Not only how money is earned, but also how it is spent is a matter of great concern.

State media frequently peddles claims about money corrupting people’s character as well as social relations. Often, this claim targets women in particular, because they are seen as the moral pillars of the family and the nation more broadly (Pettus, 2003; Leshkowich, 2014). The thrust of such discourses is to warn of the potentially negative effects of money on people in the wider process of the individualization of society. The fear of alienation as a consequence of the accumulation of wealth made possible through the capitalist mode of production was crucial in the writings of Marx and other leftist philosophers and politicians, and its presence should thus not come as a surprise in a Socialist Republic.

During what is now called ‘high socialist time’ (from 1954 in the north, and 1975 in the south of Vietnam, until 1986), land was collectivized and only state-owned companies and cooperatives were allowed to produce and distribute goods according to the central government's directives.