I am a cultural anthropologist with research interests in consumption practices and their relationship to production styles; brands and marketing; and counterfeiting, authenticity, and intellectual property. I am currently completing a book manuscript that examines how aspects of the global consumer goods market--production outsourcing, the transnational movement of goods, and corporate branding and marketing strategies--are experienced by middle class shoppers in Vietnam, and what insights those shoppers and their activities can offer into the workings and failings of the market. In particular, I am exploring how the tendency of Vietnamese shoppers to buy consumer goods based on sites and circumstances of manufacture rather than on brand names helps to identify some potential limits to the flexibility of post-Fordist capitalism.
Publications:
Inflexible Capitalism: Consumption and Popular Economics in Vietnam, book manuscript in preparation.
Vann, E. (2006) "The Limits of Authenticity in Vietnamese Consumer Markets." American Anthropologist 108(2):286-296.
Vann, E. (2005) "Domesticating Consumer Goods in the Global Economy: Examples from Russia and Vietnam." Ethnos 70(4):465-488.
Vann, E. (2003) "Production Matters: Consumerism and Global Capitalism in Vietnam." In Research in Economic Anthropology: Anthropological Perspectives on Economic Development and Integration, Vol. 22, pp. 225-257. N. Dannhaeuser and C. Werner, Eds., Greenwich, CT: Elsevier/JAI Press.
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