Material Symbolism on Saigon’s Edge: The Political-Economic and Symbolic Transformation of Hồ Chí Minh City’s Periurban Zones

Cites and their fringes are both symbolic and material, imbued with subjective meanings as well as objective physical attributes. In this paper, I show how the physical and social transformation of periurban space in Hồ Chí Minh City emerges from and also contributes to a dynamic interaction between symbolic understandings of space as well as material, political economic forces that transform space in concrete ways. On the symbolic level, I show how conceptions of “inside” versus “outside” as well as rural versus urban play into Vietnamese meaning systems that lend a sense of conceptual order and coherence to the larger organization of urban space. In rapidly urbanizing contexts like Hồ Chí Minh City, the periurban fringe is dynamic and ever-changing, and the political-economic forces of real-estate speculation, city planning, and infrastructure development interact with Vietnamese notions of what an ideal city might look like. This paper shows how periurban spaces in different parts of Hồ Chí Minh City can best be understood as spaces of “material symbolism,” places where the material attributes of space, the political-economy of development, and the symbolic meaning attributed to space all restructure each other in dialectical fashion. Just as symbolic meanings frame how residents perceive these emergent spaces, these same spaces also transform the symbolic meaning of Vietnamese cities.

西貢邊緣的物質符號：胡志明市邊緣地帶的政治經濟和符號轉變

城市及其邊緣既是象徵性的也是實質性的，充斥著主觀意義以及客觀物質特徵。本文展示了胡志明市邊緣地帶空間物質的和社會的轉 型，這一轉型從對空間的象徵性理解與切實地改變了空間的政治經濟力量之間的動態互動中浮現並促進了其變化。本文顯示，在象徵層面上，”內”與”外”和農村 與城市的概念在表現城市空間總體組織的越南語意義體系中起到了提供一種概念上的秩序性和連貫性的作用。在象胡志明市這樣的急速城市化情景下，都市邊緣地帶 是動態而不斷變化的，而房地產投機、城市規劃和基礎設施建設的政治經濟力量與越南人關於理想的城市應該是什麽樣的觀念之間也相互影響。本文顯示，胡志明市 邊緣地帶空間的不同部分應該被理解為”物資象徵性”的空間，空間的物質特徵、發展的政治經濟、以及空間被賦予的象徵意義等都在其中以一種辯證的方式相互重 組。就像象徵意義限定居民如何感知這些新興的空間一樣，這些空間同樣也改變了越南城市的象徵意義。