Publisher Description

Much of the world's population inhabits the urban fringe, an area that is neither fully rural nor urban. Hc Mn, a district that lies along a key transport corridor on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City, epitomizes one of those places. In Saigon's Edge, Erik Harms explores life in Hc Mn, putting forth a revealing perspective on how rapid urbanization impacts the people who live at the intersection of rural and urban worlds.

Author Biography

Erik Harms is assistant professor of anthropology at Yale University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Glossary
Introduction: Saigon, Inside Out
Part I. Social Edginess
1. Bittersweet Transitions: Urbanization on the Fringe of the City
2. Power and Exclusion on the Edge: The Conflation of Rural and Urban Spaces
Part II. Space, Time, and Urban Expansion
3. Future Orientations in the Country of Memory: Social Conceptions of Time
4. Negotiating Time and Space: Household, Labor, Land, and Movement
Part III. Realizing the Ideal
5. The Road to Paradise: Building the Trans-Asia Highway
6. The Problem of Urban Civilization on Saigon's Edge
Conclusion: What Edges Do
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Review

"Sad and tragic, and at times funny and full of hope, Erik Harms shows how people live in the murky zones of the urban-rural divide, in the runoff, the debris, and wasteland of a now relentless urban industrial expansion. Saigon's Edge is a wake up call for all of us who study the global city: socialist cities in the throes of global integration and world capitalist utopian imaginings have powerful stories to tell that we cannot afford to ignore. Saigon's Edge sets a new benchmark on how to study the urban form, capitalist, socialist, and everything in between." —Ralph Litzinger, Duke University

Long Description

Much of the world's population inhabits the urban fringe, an area that is neither fully rural nor urban. H

Review Quote

"Sad and tragic, and at times funny and full of hope, Erik Harms shows how people live in the murky zones of the urban-rural divide, in the runoff, the debris, and wasteland of a now relentless urban industrial expansion. Saigon's Edge is a wake up call for all of us who study the global city: socialist cities in the throes of global integration and world capitalist utopian imaginings have powerful stories to tell that we cannot afford to ignore. Saigon's Edge sets a new benchmark on how to study the urban form, capitalist, socialist, and everything in between."

Details