Going Back a Long Way: ‘Home Place’, Thrift and Temporal Orientations in Northern Vietnam

This article draws attention to the deep sense of attachment maintained by Hanoi families to their ancestral villages or rural ‘home places’ ( que ). It explores both the emotional and material dimensions of these attachments against the background of a now‐defunct system of state rationing in late socialist Vietnam. It is suggested that for urban dwellers the home place has become an image of human relatedness and belonging that has evolved along with and in response to state‐socialist efforts of social integration. This image promotes a time orientation that had been discredited in Vietnamese state socialism. The latter defined thrift as a duty of families and individuals toward the progress of xa hoi (‘society’). The experience of shortage and self‐restraint in socialist states and the question of how collectivism affected customary notions of community have thus far remained mostly distinct research areas. This article seeks to bring both together within a single framework of analysis by drawing attention to the question of temporality.