ELIZABETH F. VANN
The Limits of Authenticity in Vietnamese
Consumer Markets
ABSTRACT In this article, I address the saliency of the concept of “authenticity” in contexts of international law and anthropological
inquiry. Using my research findings in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam, I show that although Vietnamese shoppers distinguish between
what they term real and fake goods, they do not share with foreign corporations and international trade organizations a preoccupation
with product and brand authenticity. To make this point, I describe four types of goods—model goods, mimic goods, real goods, and fake
goods—employed by shoppers in HCMC, and discuss why they have little in common with notions of “authenticity” and “ownership”
inherent in international standards of intellectual property. I argue that these conceptual differences in the commercial sphere challenge
claims about the universal applicability of intellectual property rights laws and also encourage anthropologists to ask whether authenticity
is always a useful tool of cross-cultural understanding. [Keywords: authenticity, intellectual property rights, Vietnam, consumerism]
IN JUNE of 1997, Madeline Albright, then–U.S. Secretary
of State, visited Hanoi. Albright’s trip followed
from several years’ work by the Clinton administration to
reestablish diplomatic and trade relations with Vietnam.
That work was completed when President Bush signed the
U.S.–Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement in September of
2002. Albright’s visit to Vietnam was significant because it
symbolized the end of an era marked by war, embargos, and
mutual distrust. Also noteworthy, and of particular interest
to me here, was the document that Albright carried with
her to Hanoi: a copyright agreement. Vietnam’s opportunity
to renew economic ties with the United States hinged
on its willingness to recognize and protect U.S. intellectual
property rights (IPR). Among the many issues this document
addresses is authenticity. I use the term authenticity
here not merely to reference corporate appropriations of
authenticity in marketing, such as Coca-Cola’s claim that
their soft drink is “the real thing.” I use it because, in a
world of mass-produced goods, IPR laws—copyright, trademark,
and patent—are employed to maintain clear distinctions
between the authentic and the fake, the genuine and
the counterfeit. International IPR laws, such as those established
by the WTO Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property (TRIPs) Agreement,1
derive from a history of legal
decisions in Europe and the United States that linked
authorship to ownership, privileged originals over copies,
and turned ideas into property (Coombe 1994; Rose 1993;
AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 108, Issue 2, pp. 286–296, ISSN 0002-7294, electronic ISSN 1548-1433. C 2006 by the American Anthropological
Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California
Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.
Woodmansee 1984). It is through these particular lenses
that IPR laws determine which copies are authorized, legitimate,
and authentic, and which copies are unauthorized, illegitimate,
and inauthentic—and therefore illegal (Coombe
1998). But although these laws are enforced internationally,
many who fall under their jurisdiction do not share the assumptions
that naturalize their associative links between
ideas and goods, authors and creators, and property rights
and ownership.
In my research in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC),2
for instance,
I found that shoppers (and, arguably, many manufacturers)
have few concerns about product and brand authenticity
as defined by international IPR laws; instead they
are guided by different ways of thinking about the relationship
between those who copy products and those whose
products are copied. Rather than imagining copies pitted
against originals and counterfeits against authentic goods,
shoppers in HCMC say that hang nhai (mimic goods), which
international IPR laws would deem “counterfeits,” follow
the standards set by kieu (model) goods, the famous brand
name goods that serve as their models. Shoppers also distinguish
between what they call hang gia (fake goods) and hang
that (real goods). In HCMC, however, the terms real and fake
call into question not the authenticity of a product, but its
existence: whether a product is actually a product at all. In
this article, I describe these four categories of goods—model
goods, mimic goods, real goods, and fake goods—and I
Vann • Limits of Authenticity in Vietnamese Consumer Markets 287
argue that they have little in common with international
IPR standards of authenticity. For this reason, they not only
challenge claims about the universal applicability of IPR
laws but also encourage us to ask whether authenticity is
always a useful tool of anthropological interpretation.
TWO CRISES OF DECEPTION
During the summer between his junior and senior years of
college, Quoc returned to Vietnam for the first time since
he and his family had fled across the Cambodian border
in the late 1980s, eventually settling in the United States.
Along with his father and two brothers, Quoc had spent four
years in refugee camps before settling in Virginia at the age
of 16. Quoc had been old enough when he left Vietnam
to remember a great deal about his home country, but his
years abroad had placed considerable distance between him
and his former life. When he returned from his trip, he was
eager to tell me about the changes he perceived in HCMC
and in the lives of people who live there.
There is so much to buy in Vietnam now. . . . In one of
the street markets in Saigon . . . I saw this woman selling
Zippos. . . . They looked old—like they were from the war.
But some of them were really cheap [in price]. I asked
[the seller] why, and she told me that they were copies.
. . . I compared them and really, I couldn’t tell them apart.
Then she showed me the differences. “See how the engraving
marks are a bit sharper on this one? See how the
imprint of the “Zippo” [logo] on the bottom of this one
is not as deep as that one?” . . . When she pointed out
the differences, suddenly I could see them. But they were
so small. . . . I don’t know if I could tell them apart now,
even if I had a real one and a fake one in front of me.
. . . I don’t know how people in Vietnam can figure out
what’s real and what’s not these days. [conversation with
author, March 7, 1999]
Quoc’s amazement at the proliferation of goods in
Vietnam that seem to blur the boundaries between “real”
and “fake” was echoed by many residents of HCMC. Lan,
a 52-year-old tailor, recognized a decline in the percentage
of legitimate goods on the market: “Ten years ago, products
were good. But these days, 10 percent are good products
and 90 percent are products that appear to be good
but really aren’t” (conversation with author, December 4,
1999). Many Vietnamese say they are witnessing a national
epidemic of false goods and consumer deception. Trinh, a
39-year-old high school teacher, said she felt insecure buying
goods made in Vietnam: “These days, we are experiencing
a crisis of deceptive goods in the country. All of these
fake goods should be wiped out” (conversation with author,
December 20, 1999).
Foreign corporations and international trade organizations
also see a crisis of deception taking place in Vietnam.
But theirs is specifically a crisis of authenticity, or, rather,
a crisis of inauthenticity. In the context of mass-produced
consumer goods, authentic products are those whose brand
names and logos are said to signify truthfully and accurately
a specific corporate origin. This relationship—between corporations,
products, and brands—is conceptualized in terms
of authorship and ownership (Barwise with Dunham and
Ritson 2000; Pavitt 2000b; Vann 2003a). Nike shoes, for example,
are authentic when the Nike name and its trademarked
swoosh stands for a proprietary relationship between
that particular pair of shoes and Nike Corporation.
Counterfeits, then, are inauthentic because they are said to
misrepresent the relationship between an object and its creator
or producer. Corporations and international IPR organizations
argue that, because counterfeits misrepresent that
proprietary relationship, their production and sale violate
companies’ intellectual property and damage their good
names. Further, they claim that counterfeiters deceive consumers
into buying goods that are not what they appear,
and, more seriously, cause consumer injuries and deaths
(Harvey and Ronkainen 1985:37–38).
Authenticity and IPR in Anthropology
Anthropology has had its own concerns with issues of authenticity.
Historically, anthropologists often conceived of
authenticity as an objective quality: Material objects were
said to be authentic or inauthentic examples of cultural
traditions, and certain cultural ideas and practices were
deemed “genuine” and others “spurious” (see Sapir 1951).
Much contemporary anthropological interest in the concept
of “authenticity” has taken a different path. Rather
than arguing that certain objects, people, or cultures are or
are not “authentic,” quite a few anthropologists have been
asking: What, exactly, do we and others mean by the term
authenticity, and what are the symbolic and practical results
of applying that term to some objects, people, practices, and
ideas but not others? (e.g., Bruner 1994, 2005; Errington
1998; Gable and Handler 1994, 1996; Handler 1986, 1988,
2000; Handler and Gable 1997; Price 1989; Steiner 1994).
Culturally defined standards of authenticity can carry
hefty sociopolitical weight. As postcolonial scholars have
shown, authenticity—defined in social, cultural, and racial
terms—served as an exclusionary category in colonial settings,
in which colonizers represented the standard of authenticity
(Bhabha 1994; Taussig 1993). Efforts by natives
to mimic white colonizers were simultaneously encouraged,
mocked, and feared, but in all cases, natives were seen “as a
subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite”
(Bhabha 1994:86). Native peoples (and, we can assume, by
extension, native ideas, things, and places) were cast as dangerously
close to the “originals” (namely, white colonizers
and white culture) but also, precisely because of their status
as copies, as notably inferior (Bhabha 1994; Taussig 1993).
Ethnographic inquiries into the construction and use
of IPR have also contributed to anthropological discussions
about authenticity. Among other things, these studies reveal
how a notion of “authenticity”—including ideas about
origins, originality, and uniqueness—is used to support
claims of authorship and ownership in arenas of human
life as diverse as genetics and reproduction (Strathern
1992, 1996), ethnobotany and biodiversity (Brush 1993;
Cunningham 1991), cultural heritage and identity politics
288 American Anthropologist • Vol. 108, No. 2 • June 2006
(Brown 1998; Clifford 1988; Coombe 1998; Harrison 1991),
art (Errington 1998; George 1999; Taylor 1999), and commercial
marketing and trade (Coombe 1998; Lury 1999;
Pavitt 2000a, 2000b; Vann 2003a). Overall, the theoretical
literature on authenticity has combined with ethnographic
work to produce what we might call a constructivist and
politically attentive approach to IPR. But that is merely the
starting point for the argument: My position here is that
the concept of “authenticity” is not always a useful tool for
ethnographic exploration, even when it is made sensitive
to nuances of sociocultural difference.
These sorts of differences are clear in Joy Hendry’s
(2000) study of Japanese theme parks, in which she points to
a relative absence of the concept of “originality” in Japanese
terms typically translated as “authentic”:
If we examine the terms closely translated as “authentic”
from Japanese, we find that they are closer to regular
English dictionary definitions, such as “reliable,” “trustworthy”
and “genuine.” . . . The Japanese version of authenticity
requires less of a notion of “reality” than an
accurate or correct simulation of a “real” place, and possibly
also a “faithful” experience for the visitor, but one
clearly distinguished from the honomono, the “original”
or “real thing.” [2000:156]
There are interesting parallels between what Hendry calls
“the Japanese version of authenticity” and the ways HCMC
shoppers describe mimic goods and their relation to famous
brand name goods. Like theme parks, mimic goods are not
characterized as “original,” but often are considered to be
truthful, genuine, and accurate, a point to which I return.
Despite her laudable effort to sort out the differences between
these English and Japanese expressions, though, it
would seem that when Hendry argues that these terms are
part of a Japanese notion of “authenticity,” she collapses
a set of distinctions she has worked hard to articulate. As
I hope to show, such distinctions are essential tools in situations
of transnational encounter in which the primary
point of interest or argument appears to be a matter of
authenticity.
The International Policing of IPR
As IPR laws become nearly global in scope, they establish
universal standards for determining intellectual property
and enforcing boundaries of ownership. International standards
of IPR recognize corporations as the creators and owners
of their brands and products, and they delimit proprietary
rights, including the right to reproduce those same
brands and products. Under these laws, only corporate owners
can produce “authentic” versions of their brands and
products; anyone else who reproduces them is necessarily
creating “counterfeits” or “fakes.” Indeed, counterfeiting
implies misleading falsification for the purpose of deceiving
consumers into buying something “inauthentic” (Grayson
2000:98).
Despite their current legitimacy in markets and courts
around the world, international standards of IPR developed
out of a series of debates in Europe and North America. Historians
have paid special attention to the history of EuroAmerican
copyright law and especially the legal battles in
18th-century Britain that effectively shifted “ownership”
of literary texts out of the hands of publishers and into
those of authors (Rose 1993; Woodmansee 1984). It was
this legal precedent and its association between “authorship”
and “original expression” that paved the way for subsequent
laws designed to protect the products—and later,
the brands and logos—of private companies (Pavitt 2000b;
Vann 2003a).
The idea of authenticity as “original expression” is a
specifically Euro-American concern (Vann 2003a; Williams
1983), but it is by no means exhaustive of the ways in which
these issues have been conceptualized in Europe and North
America. State and federal courts in the United States, for
instance, struggle over what counts as “property” in cases
involving issues such as gene mapping, biopharmaceutical
research, and music file sharing. Although many of these debates
are relatively new, economic and legal questions about
the authenticity and ownership of name-brand knock-offs,
store brands, and products marketed as “authentic reproductions”
have a long history in Euro-American commercial
spheres (Lears 1994). These products exist in a kind
of grey zone between authenticity and legality, in which
some products (particularly store brands and generics) fall
into the category of “legal,” whereas others (esp. those that
make explicit or near use of a trademarked name or logo)
are considered part of the illicit trade in counterfeits. Although
unwitting buyers are sometimes victims of these
goods, many others are willing participants in the traffic in
grey-market and counterfeit goods (Coombe 1998; Grayson
2000). Indeed, the range of conceptions of “authenticity”
entertained by Western consumers and tourists is only now
beginning to attract the anthropological attention it deserves
(e.g., Bruner 2005; Cameron and Gatewood 1994;
Errington 1998).
Still, in Europe and North America, IPR generally are
accepted as law and contested only in certain cases (such
as those regarding Napster and other music file sharing; see
also Gaines 1991). Elsewhere, there has been far less legal
and popular recognition of IPR. In his historical study of
copyright in China, for instance, William Alford (1985) argues
that China has had no sustained tradition of recognizing
intellectual property, and that the failure of European
and U.S. governments to recognize this fact has led to years
of political and economic conflict. He attributes the historical
absence of a Chinese intellectual property tradition to a
state emphasis on the Confucian ideal of the past as a source
of authority in the present (Alford 1985:19–28). He notes
that scholars typically attribute the rise of IPR to the advent
of printing; as a result, many have assumed that China’s
long tradition of printing necessarily resulted in the development
of IPR (Alford 1985:9–13). Yet, as Alford shows, the
flourishing of China’s print media was not accompanied (as
it was in Europe and the United States) by the bracketing of
written expressions as the property of individuals (1985:8–
29).3
Vann • Limits of Authenticity in Vietnamese Consumer Markets 289
Although there is now arguably a “global” set of IPR
standards to which most market-oriented countries are
held, their development has not followed a linear, “progressive”
path toward homogenization (Vann 2003a). Vietnam
serves as a case in point here, as it was closer to abiding by
“international” standards of IPR in the presocialist 1940s
and 1950s than it was in the 1970s and 1980s. As a colony
of France, Indochina (which included current-day Vietnam,
Cambodia, and Laos) signed the Paris Act in 1949, and between
1959 and 1975, South Vietnam issued trademarks,
copyrights, and patents on foreign and domestic goods. After
1975, the socialist government no longer recognized private
ownership of intellectual property. As with material
property, intellectual property was treated under socialism
both as the product of all citizens, and therefore belonging
equally to all, and as the property of the state, which could
do with it what it liked in the name of national interest
(Vann 2005; Verdery 1996, 2003). In some cases, individuals
were issued inventors’ certificates that denoted limited proprietary
rights. Inventors were sometimes paid a user’s fee,
but the state ultimately owned all inventions, and therefore
did not have to seek permission to use them. In the
early 1980s, the government established new laws protecting
patents and trademarks, but these were not strictly enforced,
and did not allow owners to sue infringers or appeal
their cases to the government.4
Since the initiation of market reform, Vietnamese leaders
have again signed agreements and treaties that hold
them responsible for enforcing the local traffic in international
intellectual property. Among these are the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) “Framework
Agreement on Intellectual Property,” which aims to bring
members into compliance with the WTO TRIPs Agreement
and with the 2002 U.S.–Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement,
which was predicated on the 1998 “Agreement between the
Government of the United States of America and the Government
of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on the Establishment
of Copyright Relations.” Additionally, in several
recent landmark cases, Vietnamese courts have found in
favor of foreign plaintiffs who have sued Vietnamese companies
for IPR violations.5
As part of its economic reform efforts, the Vietnamese
government has agreed to recognize and enforce within
its borders international IPR laws that serve to govern the
global economy. But the adoption of these “international”
standards presents serious challenges both to Vietnamese
state socialist techniques for regulating property ownership
and to popular ideas about the legitimacy of mimicry in a
market economy, which I discuss in the following sections.
Despite these policy changes regarding intellectual property,
as well as continued pressure by foreign corporations,
governments, and trade organizations, Vietnam continues
to climb international watch lists of countries in which IPR
are most at risk.6
Concerns over the security of intellectual property in
Vietnam have led a number of companies to take defensive
measures. In 1998, for example, PolyGram entered into
a joint-venture agreement with Vietnamese state-owned
Sai Gon Audio-CD to manufacture and distribute music
CDs in Vietnam. Representatives of PolyGram admitted
that one of the primary aims of this venture was to combat
the high number of “counterfeit” and “bootleg” CDs
sold openly throughout Vietnam (Lefeyre 1998). Similarly,
Japan’s Matsushita Electrical Industrial, manufacturer of
National brand electronics, bought local newspaper space
to demonstrate the difference between “phony” and “genuine”
National products to Vietnamese consumers (Saigon
Times Daily 2001). And South Korea’s Tong Yang Confectionery
Company, manufacturers of Orion ChocoPies,
sought legal action when they discovered that there were at
least ten different “copycat” products—almost all of which
were using the name “ChocoPie”—being manufactured and
sold in Vietnam (BBC Monitoring Service 2001). In 1999,
the company posted a huge billboard devoted to ChocoPie’s
brand authenticity next to one of the city’s busiest markets.
The text of the billboard, which reads “Orion is ChocoPie,
ChocoPie is Orion,” encourages customers to equate the
ChocoPie name not merely with the product but particularly
with the Orion company. The intended message seems to be
that ChocoPies are ChocoPies—that is, authentic products—
only when they are branded with the Orion company
name.
MIMIC GOODS AND MODEL GOODS
Turning from corporate concerns to the everyday practices
of consumers, one finds a very different set of cultural preoccupations.
Allow me to illustrate: During a visit to an optical
store located in one of HCMC’s upscale shopping areas,
I tried on two pairs of frames that were similar to each other
in style and shape, and noticed that one was labeled “Calvin
Klein” and the other “Ralph Lauren.” When I asked about
the differences between the two, the salesclerk said that
the frames labeled “Ralph Lauren” were 2,240,000D (about
$160), whereas the “Calvin Klein” frames were D140,000
(about $10). “Both are good frames,” he explained, “but
the Ralph Lauren frames are [hang] hieu [famous brand
name goods] and the Calvin Klein frames are . . . [hang]
nhai [mimic goods]” (conversation with author, June 23,
2000).
By international IPR standards, the “Calvin Klein” eyeglasses
I bought (and still wear five years later) are counterfeits.
But for shoppers in HCMC, such objects are hang
nhai (mimic goods). Although mimic goods copy famous
brand name goods, Vietnamese do not consider them inherently
false or deceptive. Instead, they take them to be
unavoidable—and, in many ways, useful—elements of a
market economy. People in HCMC often point out that
mimic goods mimic famous products not to deceive consumers
but to gain footholds in a highly competitive market
that is dominated by a few large, foreign corporations. As
a result, they do not categorize famous brand name goods
as authentic and mimic goods as inauthentic. Rather, these
two kinds of goods are seen as different only because mimic
290 American Anthropologist • Vol. 108, No. 2 • June 2006
goods fail to attain fully the standards set by the famous
products that serve as their models.
On the surface, mimic goods seem to share much with
counterfeits. Both are defined in opposition to another object,
the one that is counterfeited or mimicked. Also both
are assumed to be inferior to the goods they copy. However,
there are at least four ways in which the Vietnamese
category of mimic goods differs from the international IPR
category of counterfeits. Shoppers say that (1) mimic goods
are normal and commonplace, (2) they ought to be judged
according to how well they imitate the original, (3) their
relationship to the goods they mimic is hierarchical and interdependent,
and (4) they are not inherently or necessarily
deceitful.
Shoppers in HCMC do not imagine the consumer
market—which they experience in the form of thousands
of local shops, street vendors, and markets—as being made
up primarily of “authentic” goods interspersed occasionally
with “counterfeits.” Mimic goods are a part of everyday
shopping in Vietnam. They are sold along sidewalks and
in the cramped stalls of “traditional” markets as well as in
small, expensive shops and the new air-conditioned shopping
malls. Still, shoppers often comment that the number
of mimic goods has risen in recent years. They typically
attribute this growth to Vietnam’s promarket policies
and to the country’s new international trade relations. People
in HCMC often comment that Vietnam is becoming a
capitalist country. And they consider the proliferation of
goods that “mimic” world famous products an inevitable
and quintessentially capitalist process. Product mimicking,
they say, is a logical and necessary outcome of a competitive
and hierarchical market in which a few companies and
products serve as models for others.
HCMC shoppers say that the quality and legitimacy of
any product is best measured by the degree to which it conforms
to or deviates from certain preestablished ideals.7
The
basic assumptions of this understanding of product success
are as follows: With time, hard work, and proven achievement,
one or a few companies set market standards; all others
take the achievement of those standards as their goal. In
other words, shoppers expect smaller companies to “copy”
the products of their more prosperous competitors. Further,
they assume that the success of these smaller companies
depends largely on their ability to conform to proven models;
companies achieve this by accurately mimicking famous
products.
Vietnamese refer to the famous products that set market
standards as kieu (model) goods. So, for example, a seller
might describe a “mimic” CD player as, kieu Sony (“modeled
after” or “in the style of Sony”). Mimic goods depend on famous
products because their success relies on that achieved
by the goods on which they are modeled. At the same time,
however, shoppers say that the presence of mimic goods on
the market serves to increase the fame and market value of
famous products. In other words, goods that achieve the
status of models acquire additional prestige, because it is
widely recognized that the goods that are mimicked are the
best on the market. Nonetheless, mimic goods have the potential
to threaten the prestige of model goods because their
producers aim to accurately mimic model goods. Such accuracy
can make it difficult for shoppers to distinguish between
model and mimic goods. This issue of deception is
important, because it resonates with international IPR arguments
against counterfeiting. I return shortly to both of
these issues: the notion that mimic goods improve the market
value of model goods and that they may threaten that
value through consumer deception.
Mimic goods also differ from counterfeits in that shoppers
conceive of the relationship between mimic and model
goods as relational and hierarchical, rather than in terms of
originality and uniqueness, concepts that undergird international
IPR positions regarding brand authenticity (Pavitt
2000a; Vann 2003a; see also Marzano 2000). If we compare
the Vietnamese category of mimic goods to the international
IPR category of counterfeits, we notice that both carry
a connotation of inferiority. However, by international IPR
standards, counterfeit goods are not simply inferior versions
of famous products; they are inauthentic ones. For shoppers
in HCMC, however, there is no absolute disjunction between
what authentic and counterfeit goods are—between
appearance and reality, as we might say. Shoppers describe
mimic goods not as “fakes,” but as less-than-perfect versions
of the famous products on which they are modeled. Famous
goods are said to achieve their status as models because
they bring together exceptional product design with careful
attention to detail in the manufacturing process. Mimic
goods are inferior to model goods because they fail to attain
the high standards—indeed, standards of perfection—
attributed to famous products. As a result, shoppers say that
mimic goods necessarily are products of lesser quality. However,
they do not interpret this failure of mimic goods to
meet model standards as a lack of respect among mimic
good manufacturers for model goods. Rather, shoppers take
model goods to be the very standards that mimic good makers
are working hard to achieve.
Finally, shoppers describe mimic goods as mimicking
model goods in a relatively positive and sincere manner.
They say that the ultimate goal of most mimic good manufacturers
is to attain the same high quality associated
with model products. During interviews and conversations,
shoppers often attributed the differences between model
and mimic goods solely to a lack of technical knowledge
and equipment. They argued that the producers of mimic
goods make the highest quality products they can, and that
they would make better products if only they had the same
capital, technical knowledge, and equipment as the companies
whose products they mimic. Thus, although shoppers
see mimic goods as inferior to model goods, they do
not consider them worthless—quite the contrary. Because
most mimic goods are thought to mimic both the appearance
and the content of model goods, they offer shoppers
an inexpensive but decent quality product, not one
that merely imitates the surface appearance of a famous
product.
Vann • Limits of Authenticity in Vietnamese Consumer Markets 291
Mimic Goods for the Middle Class
Access to high-quality, fashionable, and affordable goods
is important to HCMC’s growing middle class. Most of the
people I interviewed for this study had limited disposable
income, which they tried to spend wisely; their consumer
decision making was a careful balance between cost and
quality, style and durability. In an effort to be mo-den (fashionable),
HCMC’s middle class aims to follow regional and
international trends in products like clothing, cosmetics,
home decor, and motorbikes. But owning and displaying
goods that are mo-den carries more significance for HCMC’s
middle class than simply enabling them to be “in fashion”;
it allows them to see themselves as consumers of the types
of goods that are popular in wealthier countries and, therefore,
as worthy participants in a global economy. For those
who consume them, mimic goods serve as evidence that
Vietnam is, indeed, becoming a capitalist country, one that
offers the material abundance that was denied to previous
generations under socialism.
At the same time, shoppers feel great pressure—from
themselves and from their parents and grandparents who
lived through the lean years of socialism—not to spend
frivolously, foolishly, or beyond their means. Although
HCMC’s middle class has far greater disposable income
than their parents’ generation and the current majority of
their country’s citizens, they have far less than their counterparts
in places like Europe, Japan, and Indonesia. This
fact is clear to HCMC’s urban middle class, many of whom
interpret their own position vis-`a-vis the middle classes of
other countries as both a product and a microcosm of Vietnam’s
relatively low position in the world economy. Just
as Vietnam is now dependent on and subject to wealthier
capitalist nations for its own economic success, shoppers
see themselves as second-class consumers, who, despite
Vietnam’s shift toward a market economy, cannot afford
the spoils of global trade (Vann 2005). Similarly, mimic
goods stand as second-tier products to the famous foreign
products that are beyond the reach of most Vietnamese.
Offering decent quality and fashionable products at an
affordable price, mimic goods allow HCMC’s middle class
to be conspicuous consumers at home while maintaining
a semblance of comparableness with their counterparts in
wealthier countries.
The Dangers of “Buying Wrong”
Mimic goods are only a smart purchase, though, as long
as customers know what they are buying. The dangers that
shoppers associate with mimic goods stem not from their
manufacture, but from their sale; that is, when sellers misrepresent
them as famous brand name goods. This was the
experience of Hoa, a 25-year-old office worker. When I asked
whether she had ever bought a mimic good, she explained:
There was the time when I bought a kind of perfume.
. . . The first time [I tried it], I couldn’t recognize that it
was a mimic good because the design was very beautiful
and it smelled very good, and because the seller didn’t tell
me that it was a mimic good. I only figured it out after
using it a few times. . . . The fragrance changed; it was not
the same as it was in the beginning. [conversation with
author, November 18, 1999]
When merchants misrepresent the goods they are selling
as famous products, they typically demand high prices.
Paying a lot for mimic goods—an action referred to as mua
sai (buying wrong)—is a common concern for shoppers, but
not all sellers try to deceive their customers. Recall that during
Quoc’s return visit to Vietnam, the market seller volunteered
that the Zippo lighters she was selling were mimic
goods. Similarly, Duyen, a 24-year-old law student, noted
the honesty of the merchant who sold him a “mimic” shirt:
The seller told me that there were two kinds: one kind was
hieu (famous brand name) and it was more expensive;
the other kind was nhai (mimic). I bought [the mimic
good] because the price was cheaper, and the quality was
not appreciatively different. [conversation with author,
January 4, 2000]
Many Vietnamese would say that Duyen’s experience
with this seller was somewhat unusual. Shoppers
anticipate that merchants will often noi xao (talk
nonsense)—that is, speak falsely by “inflating prices, exaggerating
. . . quality, and lying about [a product’s] origins”
(Leshkowich 2000:144)—to convince customers to
buy their goods. Shoppers protect themselves from such
“nonsense talk” by establishing relationships with sellers
and by educating themselves about goods on the market.
Merchants have little motivation to take advantage of their
regular customers by offering unfair prices or false information,
because doing so may well lose them a steady source
of income, and possibly, their reputation among a wider
network of shoppers. At the same time, many residents of
HCMC—especially those who do the regular shopping for
themselves and their families—claim to be adept at distinguishing
between mimic and model goods. These experienced
shoppers say that they rarely fall victim to merchant
deception, and therefore almost never “buy wrong.” Khai,
a 27-year-old truck driver, explained how he knowingly
bought mimic jeans, despite the seller’s attempt to mislead
him:
I bought a pair of “Calvin Klein” jeans. The seller didn’t
tell me, but I knew well enough that they were mimic
goods. Mimic jeans have a design that’s almost exactly
like the famous product, but the price is cheaper and the
quality isn’t exactly the same. Anyway, I decided to buy
them. [conversation with author, December 11, 1999]
Skilled shoppers like Khai say that merchants rarely, if ever,
take advantage of them; they buy mimic goods because they
want to and feel confident that they get what they pay for.
Among other things, these shoppers’ accounts reveal
that one of the greatest departures of the category of mimic
goods from that of counterfeits is that the legitimacy of
mimic goods can only be jeopardized through interpersonal
misrepresentation. Although the (in)authenticity of
counterfeits is said to reside in the objects themselves, as a
characteristic of their manufacture, the truthfulness (or lack
292 American Anthropologist • Vol. 108, No. 2 • June 2006
thereof) of mimic goods is created through interactions between
buyers and sellers.
THE SUCCESS OF TRUNG NGUYEN (AND TRUNG
NONG) COFFEE
In 1996, Dang Le Nguyen Vu, a former medical student,
started Trung Nguyen Coffee Company in Buon Ma Thuot,
a town in the coffee-rich highlands of central Vietnam. Initially
a coffee processing company, Trung Nguyen quickly
became a retail operation, and by the late 1990s, Vu had
opened six coffee shops in HCMC. Soon after, Vu began
to franchise his coffee shops (Far Eastern Economic Review
2000), and, by 2002, there were more than 400 Trung
Nguyen shops in Vietnam and others in Singapore, Thailand,
Cambodia, and Japan (Associated Free Press 2002).
At home and abroad, Trung Nguyen has been called the
“Starbucks of Vietnam.” Unlike Starbucks, however, Trung
Nguyen caf´es feature Vietnamese-style furniture, MTV, internet
service, live music performances, and bars (Bangkok
Post 2002).
Trung Nguyen Coffee and its founder hold an interesting
place in the domestic and international debates over
product authenticity and intellectual property in Vietnam.
From the start, Vu approached his company and its product
in terms familiar to and largely compliant with international
standards of corporate branding and trademark
protection. He established a simple and easily recognizable
symbol—an upward-pointing red arrow with several white
stripes at the base—to mark the company’s products and
stores, and he hired a New Zealand–based consulting firm
to help unify its brand, product, and services (Vietnam News
2002b).
When the first Trung Nguyen caf´e opened in HCMC,
it was just one more in a city filled with coffee shops. Unlike
most of their East and Southeast Asian neighbors, Vietnamese
are serious coffee drinkers. Young men and, increasingly,
women spend time in coffee shops and at sidewalk
caf´es drinking ca-phe sua (strong coffee mixed with sweetened
condensed milk). Residents began to take notice of
Trung Nguyen Coffee shops after several branches—each
displaying the company name and distinctive red arrow
logo—appeared around the city. The novelty of a chain of
coffee shops, as well as their upscale appearance and standardized
products, gained special interest among the city’s
middle class, especially office workers and college students.
As Trung Nguyen shops grew in popularity, other shops,
with notably similar names, such as Dong Nguyen and
Trung Nong, and strikingly similar logos, like downward
or sideways pointing red arrows, began appearing around
the city, many of them within eyesight of established Trung
Nguyen caf´es. The interiors of these shops—clean and modern
with pop music soundtracks—were clearly modeled
on those of Trung Nguyen. Unlike Trung Nguyen caf´es,
however, these competitors offered neither a high degree
of product standardization nor a wide selection of coffee
roasts. They did, however, offer substantially lower prices.
Under Vu’s leadership, Trung Nguyen responded aggressively
to the proliferation of coffee shops that “mimicked”
their own. As far as Vu was concerned, such operations
were in clear violation of international IPR laws,
and he therefore initiated legal and public efforts to eliminate
what he considered illegal and unfair competition.
In the May 20, 2000, edition of the popular Phu Nu newspaper,
Trung Nguyen ran a quarter-page ad in which it attempted
to draw clear lines for local consumers between
Trung Nguyen Coffee and its similarly named competitors.
The ad stressed the propriety rights of Trung Nguyen to its
name and logo, insisted that shops with markedly similar
names and logos were not part of the Trung Nguyen franchise
and protested further that such establishments were
in breach of Vietnamese trademark laws. More recently, Vu
has led efforts to implement international IPR standards
in Vietnam by attempting to familiarize consumers with
his own trademark and that of other Vietnamese companies,
and by encouraging domestic compliance with international
IPR laws. By combating the spread of mimic Trung
Nguyen Coffee shops, Vu has aligned himself with international
IPR standards and against popular conceptions of
IPR in Vietnam that do not see product mimicking as unfair
competition or as a violation of property rights. In fact,
Vu’s struggles against IPR infringers extend across the globe.
In 2002, when Vu attempted to register his trademark in
the United States, he found that his company’s U.S. partner
of two years, Rice Field Corporation, with which he had
planned to open franchises, had already applied to register
the Trung Nguyen name themselves (Vietnam News 2002a).
Trung Nguyen won its U.S. battle against Rice Field Corporation,
but the company’s efforts to protect its intellectual
property in Vietnam have thus far been less productive, and
many of the coffee shops that model themselves on Trung
Nguyen have enjoyed relative successes of their own. Hien
and her friend Bich, both students at a local teachers’ college,
explained why they were regular customers at one of
many such shops:
Hien: We like to come here because it’s clean, and airconditioned,
and very modern. . . . Here, we can meet our
friends, relax, sing karaoke, or do whatever we like—all in
a sophisticated environment.
Elizabeth F. Vann: So, why do you choose to come here
instead of the Trung Nguyen coffee shop down the street?
Bich: Of course, Trung Nguyen is more famous and the coffee
is of higher quality than in this shop, so it would be
better to be there. But Trung Nguyen is expensive. And, after
all, we’re college students. This place suits our budgets
better. The coffee and the atmosphere here are quite similar
to that at Trung Nguyen, but the prices are substantially
less. [conversation with author, May 16, 2000]
As Hien, Bich, and other customers of mimic Trung
Nguyen shops pointed out, the attraction of these
establishments is based entirely on their approximation of
Trung Nguyen caf´es. It is important to note, however, that
Vann • Limits of Authenticity in Vietnamese Consumer Markets 293
customers do not mistake these shops for Trung Nguyen
franchises. Despite claims by corporations and international
IPR organizations, “counterfeit” goods and services
do not necessarily hinge on consumer confusion. The popularity
of such shops among residents of HCMC does, however,
rely almost entirely on the fame of Trung Nguyen.
Given Trung Nguyen’s pursuit of trademark infringers, I
was not surprised to find owners of these “mimic” coffee
houses reluctant to admit the degree to which they were
attempting to imitate Trung Nguyen’s name, logo, appearance,
products, and services. Customers, however, were far
more candid about the relationship between them. “That
[mimic] coffee shop is quite similar to Trung Nguyen,” explained
Lam, a midlevel administrator, as he pointed to the
shop down the street from his office:
But the quality and status are not quite at the same level.
Trung Nguyen is famous. People know it throughout the
city and the country. If you visit a Trung Nguyen coffee
shop, it shows a certain level of wealth and sophistication.
But many people go to the other [mimic] shop
instead. There, they can get a similar product, and the
atmosphere is comparable, but somewhat inferior. The
price, of course, is cheaper, though, so it really depends
on what the customer wants. [conversation with author,
May 18, 2000]
When I asked Lam whether he thought the presence of
“mimic” coffee shops was harmful to Trung Nguyen, he ex-
plained:
No, not at all! . . . All of these shops model themselves on
Trung Nguyen because of its fame and success. Each time
another mimic Trung Nguyen shop opens, it increases the
fame and high status of Trung Nguyen . . . because they’re
saying that Trung Nguyen is the best. . . . No, I think these
shops make Trung Nguyen even more famous and successful.
[conversation with author, May 18, 2000]
Customers patronize coffee shops with names like Dong
Nguyen and Trung Nong for the same reasons they buy
mimic goods: because they offer somewhat lower-quality
products and consumer experiences to those of the model,
but at a more affordable price. As with other mimic goods,
customers acknowledge the explicit association between
the products, service, and atmosphere of Trung Nguyen
and those of the mimic shops. However, and despite claims
by Trung Nguyen’s founder that these shops confuse consumers,
Vietnamese customers do not seem to have any
trouble distinguishing Trung Nguyen shops from those that
mimic them. As Hien, Bich, and Lam pointed out, the differences
between Trung Nguyen and the mimic shops are as
clear as the similarities. None of them doubt the superiority
of Trung Nguyen and its products in the world of coffee
shops. The questions that concern them have to do with
the relationship between status, quality, and affordability,
not with brand or product authenticity.
THE PROBLEM WITH FAKE GOODS
As I have argued, for shoppers in HCMC, mimic goods
are not “inauthentic,” because they are not “fake” versions
of “authentic” products. By contrast, the goods shoppers
call gia (fake) offer only a semblance of a product. People
say that fake goods do not “mimic”—that is, they do not
attempt to imitate or otherwise reproduce model goods.
Rather, fake goods are essentially nongoods that are useless
to people who buy them. Common examples of fake
goods are shampoo bottles filled with used cooking oil, and
makeup compacts filled with flour. Shoppers say that goods
like these are “fake” because they have an outward appearance
of content value, when, in fact, they are worthless.
When people in HCMC speak about the problems of fake
goods and market deception, they worry about goods that
are not what they appear, whose surfaces belie their contents.
Unlike mimic goods, they say, fake goods are made to
deceive.
In Vietnamese, the term gia (fake, or false) describes
acts of deceptive falsification in which the “true,” internal
character of a person, object, or event has been disguised
by misleading surface markers. In HCMC, people say that
fake things hide what is that or thuc (real)8
—that is, what
is “true” or “actual.” For example, gia tri thuc refers to “real
value,” noi that means “to speak truthfully,” and thuc bung
(lit. “a real or true belly”) is used to refer to someone who is
sincere or honest. The goods that people call “real” are said
to be truthful in the sense that their external appearances
accurately represent their contents. Thus, when a market
trader claims that the goods she is selling are “real,” she
implies that the outside of the good (the packaging and
labeling) is representative of what is inside. For this reason,
real goods are said to be “trustworthy.”
This is, in fact, quite similar to the claims corporations
make about their brand names and logos: Brands signal to
consumers that they can trust products because they represent
a corporate promise of quality and consistency (Pavitt
2000b). Within this understanding of product authenticity,
consumers often are depicted as victims of counterfeiters—
duped into buying goods that appear to be “authentic”
brand name goods, but in fact are “counterfeits,” or “fakes.”
However, Vietnamese shoppers do not consider the goods
they call “fake” deceptive because they steal or otherwise
make use of famous brand names (although many do this
too); they say that fake goods are “fake” because their outward
appearance hides an absence of content.
Unlike the producers of mimic goods who, shoppers
say, try hard to replicate both the appearance and the content
of famous products, the makers of fake goods are said to
try to deceive their customers with goods whose worthlessness
is masked by attractive packaging. This distinction was
made clear to me during an interview, when a respondent
explained that “a gold necklace labeled with the name of a
famous designer but that is not actually made by that designer
is a mimic good as long as the necklace is made of real
gold. But if the gold is not real, then it’s a fake good” (personal
interview, December 18, 1999). Similarly, the coffee
shops that model themselves on Trung Nguyen are “real,”
in the sense that they are exactly what they appear to be.
Here, categories of “real” and “fake” hinge not on designer
294 American Anthropologist • Vol. 108, No. 2 • June 2006
names or corporate logos but on the presence or absence of
an object.
It is in this context in which an anthropological reliance
on the term authenticity as an interpretive tool becomes
particularly thorny. In its commonsense usage, the
term authenticity often collapses two sets of distinctions in
Euro-American thought: between “authentic” and “inauthentic”
and between “real” and “fake” (Handler 2000).
Although the terms authentic and real often are used interchangeably,
they have different meanings. Whereas authentic
and inauthentic refer to a posited relationship between an
object and a particular identity, real and unreal refer to an object’s
empirical existence. When people in HCMC say that
fake goods are not “real,” their claim appears to have more
in common with the distinction between “real” and “unreal”
than it does with that between “authentic” and “inauthentic.”
My aim here is not to make an argument about
ontology or even about empiricism. Rather, I am suggesting
that, for HCMC shoppers, fake goods are not so much
“inauthentic” as they are “unreal” in the sense that they
are not goods; they do not belong in markets, and no one
should pay money for them. The status of fake goods as
“unreal”—or, as many people described them to me, khong
that (not real)—sets them apart from mimic goods, whose
status as “real” goods is almost never in question.
Thus, fake goods mislead shoppers because their outward
appearance implies that their contents will be something
other than what they really are. By contrast, the international
IPR category of counterfeits appears to carry both
meanings of the Euro-American term authenticity described
above, although to varying degrees. Counterfeits are considered
“inauthentic” because they are said to mislead consumers
by implying that there is a relationship between
a particular product, a brand and a corporation, when in
fact, there is none. However, to the degree that they, like
gia (fake) goods, are deemed relatively worthless (Grayson
2000), they also carry with them a sense of being “unreal.”
Whereas the characteristics that Vietnamese shoppers attribute
to the goods they call “fake” seem to overlap partially
with the Euro-American idea of (in)authenticity that
is embedded in international IPR laws, mimic goods seem
to fall largely outside this category altogether. I am arguing
that what is at stake with mimic and model goods and with
fake and real goods is not simply an alternative understanding
of authenticity; rather, for people in HCMC at least, it
is not an issue of authenticity at all.
SOME IMPLICATIONS OF A “UNIVERSAL”
AUTHENTICITY
One of the primary aims of this article has been to show that
the international IPR reliance on a notion of “authenticity”
that emphasizes ideas of “originality” and “uniqueness”
does not reflect Vietnamese concerns about product quality
or legitimacy. What appears, from the perspective of foreign
corporations and international trade organizations, to
be a failure of, or even a refusal by, Vietnamese to recognize
and uphold this “international” model of intellectual property
looks quite different from the vantage point of shops
and markets in HCMC. Shoppers (and, arguably, many producers
of “counterfeits”) are neither actively refusing nor
passively failing to uphold those standards. Rather, they
are conceptualizing property, ownership, and the “rules” of
capitalism differently. There are subtle, and at points, not so
subtle, differences here, but they are differences that matter
a great deal, especially when it comes to negotiating trade
agreements, gaining entry into the WTO, conferring Most
Favored Nation status, and other political maneuverings in
the current global economy.
The concept of “authenticity” has been a key component
in the renormalization of political and economic relations
between Vietnam and the United States, as the U.S.–
Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement was predicated on Vietnam’s
commitment to abide by international standards of
IPR. Yet the assumptions about authenticity and intellectual
property that are implicit in this and other international
trade agreements such as the WTO TRIPs Agreement,
as well as in the founding principles of organizations such
as The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) do
not reflect a timeless, universal truth that certain ideas or
expressions are original and unique and therefore ought to
be treated as the property of individuals or corporations.
Rather, they were carved out of particular historical social,
economic, and political contexts (Rose 1993; Woodmansee
1984), and only later were they given their status as “global”
standards. It should come as no surprise, then, that the same
conclusion about the relationship between ideas, authenticity,
property, and owners did not arise out of the very different
social, economic, and political histories of Vietnam,
and many other parts of East and Southeast Asia.
Yet, international responses—by corporations, governments,
and international trade organizations—to the apparent
failure of IPR to gain popular support in Vietnam tend
to ignore these historical differences. Instead, IPR violations
in Vietnam and in other parts of East and Southeast Asia
typically have been interpreted in one of two ways. Some
say that producers of “counterfeits” recognize that counterfeiting
is wrong and immoral, but do it anyway. Here,
motivations behind counterfeiting are imagined to be selfish
and shortsighted. Manufacturers of counterfeits are presumed
to be looking for ways to make quick and easy profits
without investing in the resources, research, and hard work
that stand behind the products they are copying. And these
manufacturers are thought to be particularly indifferent to
the welfare of consumers, putting their health and their
lives in danger with shoddy products.
Others argue that some producers of counterfeits do
not recognize that what they are doing is wrong, because
they are ignorant of the “rights” of corporate owners. Although
less common, this second interpretation is equally
problematic. Typically, that ignorance is attributed to nonEuro-American
cultural “traditions.” However, in these
situations, accusations of “culture” tend to run in only one
direction. The “rules” of capitalism, as they are put forth by
organizations like the WTO, are presented as logical, universal,
and culture free; those who do not comply are said
Vann • Limits of Authenticity in Vietnamese Consumer Markets 295
to be failing at capitalism. From this standpoint, capitalism
is not a Euro-American cultural tradition but a natural and
universal system of exchange whose ideal form has been
achieved only in the West. The degree to which others
fail to meet those same standards is then blamed on their
unwillingness to remove their culture from their capitalism.
This kind of reasoning is especially evident in the WTO
TRIPs Agreement, which demands that corporate “rights”
of ownership and use of intellectual property be protected
across national borders, regardless of whether any social,
cultural, or political precedent for recognizing intellectual
property is locally in place. Neither does this position make
room for the complex range of attitudes—from consumers,
producers, merchants, and others—about what ought to
count as “intellectual property” (Coombe 1998; Strathern
et al. 1998). The strict lines of brand authenticity and corporate
ownership drawn by international IPR laws have little
in common with popular sentiments among shoppers
in HCMC. But not all Vietnamese reject these international
guidelines. Recall that Vu, the founder of Trung Nguyen
Coffee, is advocating for the enforcement of international
IPR laws at home and abroad. At present, Vu is unusual
among his fellow Vietnamese entrepreneurs. Whether others
will follow his lead has yet to be seen. One wonders
whether the international success of local businesspeople
like Vu will encourage Vietnamese consumers, and potentially,
producers of mimic goods, to adopt international IPR
standards as their own. Others might argue that Vu is part
of a class of cosmopolitan elites who have more in common
with their international counterparts than with their fellow
citizens (e.g., Hannerz 1990), in which case, we might expect
to see a significant rise in domestic debates over IPR in
Vietnam.
At present, what is apparent is that, in its dealings with
the United States and with international organizations such
as the WTO, Vietnam is very much caught up in debates
about authenticity. But in the context of everyday interactions
between buyers and sellers in HCMC’s markets and
shops, international IPR standards carry little weight. Categories
of mimic and model goods, and fake and real goods,
are informed by notions of hierarchy and interdependence,
and surfaces and contents, that have little in common with
the notion of authenticity on which international IPR standards
rely. As a result, Vietnamese engage “counterfeits”
with different expectations about product copying and market
competition. Those expectations reflect not an ignorance
of “global capitalism” but a different set of rules for
participating in it.
ELIZABETH F. VANN Department of Sociology and Anthropology,
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015
NOTES
Acknowledgments. Field research for this article was funded by
a Fulbright IIE Grant for Dissertation Research. I am grateful to
Richard Handler for helping me to think about authenticity and
for his editorial advice. AA editors Frances Mascia-Lees and Susan
Lees, as well as AA reviewers Jennifer Patico, Frank Prochan, and
one individual who chose to remain anonymous, all provided excellent
suggestions for improving this manuscript.
1. The TRIPs Agreement was developed by the WTO as a way
to establish a homogeneous set of IPR standards. (See U.S. Department
of State [http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/intelprp/
guide.htm] for details).
2. The findings in this article are based on 13 months of fieldwork
in HCMC in 1997 and 1999–2000 on consumption practices
among the city’s growing middle class. Much of this research involved
accompanying buyers and sellers in markets and shops and
interviewing them in commercial spaces and homes.
3. Alford (1985) explains that efforts by the Chinese state to control
the publication and distribution of certain written materials were
meant to protect state power, not the rights of authors. He contends
that these efforts do not suffice as evidence of a Chinese intellectual
property law, at least not one that parallels the development of such
laws in Europe (Alford 1985:13–29).
4. This history was offered to me by Nguyen Van Vien, an attorney
who helped draft some of Vietnam’s IPR laws in the 1980s.
5. For example, consider Wall’s [a subsidiary of Unilever] v. Thuy
Ta [state ice cream maker] (Vietnam Investment Review 1999) and
the case of Tong Yang Confectionery (BBC Monitoring Service 2001).
6. For example, Vietnam is currently on the U.S. Presidential InterAgency
Committee on Intellectual Property Rights’ “Special 301
Watchlist.” Under Section 301, the U.S. Trade Representative has
the power to protect IPR on an international scale as stipulated in
the WTO TRIPs Agreement and supported by members of the World
Intellectual Property Organization. (See U.S. Department of State
site, http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/intelprp/guide.htm, for
details on these agreements and their current members; see also
Boyle 2001:8).
7. For more about these ideas, see Vann 2003b.
8. Thuc is a southern regional variation of that.
REFERENCES CITED
Alford, William P.
1985 To Steal a Book Is an Elegant Offense: Intellectual Property
Law in Chinese Civilization. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
Associated Free Press
2002 Vietnamese Businesses Eye Profits from U.S.–Vietnam Accords.
Associated Free Press, May 24.
Bangkok Post
2002 Vietnam Cafes on Way. Bangkok Post, May 30.
Barwise, Patrick, with Andrea Dunham and Mark Ritson
2000 Ties that Bind: Brands, Consumers, and Businesses. In
Brand.New. Jane Pavitt, ed. Pp. 70–97. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
BBC Monitoring Service
2001 South Korean “Choco Pie” Makers to Crack Down on
Counterfeits. BBC, September 2.
Bhabha, Homi
1994 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
Boyle, Carla A.
2001 The U.S.–Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement: How Vietnam’s
Efforts to Strengthen Its Trademark and Copyright Laws
Signal Its Desire to Join the World Economy. Loyola Consumer
Law Review 14(2):4–35.
Brown, Michael F.
1998 Can Culture Be Copyrighted? Current Anthropology
39(2):193–222.
Bruner, Edward M.
1994 Abraham Lincoln as Authentic Reproduction: A Critique
of Postmodernism. American Anthropologist 96(2):397–415.
2005 Culture on Tour: Ethnographies of Travel. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Brush, Stephen B.
1993 Indigenous Knowledge of Biological Resources and Intellectual
Property Rights: The Role of Anthropology. American
Anthropologist 95(3):653–671.
296 American Anthropologist • Vol. 108, No. 2 • June 2006
Cameron, Catherine, and John Gatewood
1994 The Authentic Interior: Questing Gemeinschaft in PostIndustrial
Society. Human Organization 53(1):21–32.
Clifford, James
1988 The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography,
Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Coombe, Rosemary J.
1994 Challenging Paternity: Histories of Copyright. Yale Journal
of Law and the Humanities 6(2):397–422.
1998 The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties: Authorship,
Appropriation, and the Law. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Cunningham, A. B.
1991 Indigenous Knowledge and Biodiversity: Global Commons
or Regional Heritage? Cultural Survival Quarterly
15(2):4–8.
Errington, Shelly
1998 The Death of Authentic Primitive Art and Other Tales of
Progress. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Far Eastern Economic Review
2000 Anyone for Coffee? Far Eastern Economic Review, November
2:62–64.
Gable, Eric, and Richard Handler
1994 The Authority of Documents at Some American History
Museums. Journal of American History 81(1):119–136.
1996 After Authenticity at an American Heritage Site. American
Anthropologist 98(3):568–578.
Gaines, Jane
1991 Contested Culture: The Image, the Voice, and the Law.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
George, Kenneth
1999 Signature Work: Bandung, 1994. Ethnos 64(2):212–231.
Grayson, Kent
2000 Why Do We Buy Counterfeits? In Brand.New. Jane Pavitt,
ed. P. 98. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Handler, Richard
1986 Authenticity. Anthropology Today 2(1):2–4.
1988 Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
2000 Anthropology of Authenticity. In International Encyclopedia
of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. N. J. Smelser and
P. B. Baltes, eds. Pp. 963–967. Oxford: Pergamon.
Handler, Richard, and Eric Gable
1997 New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial
Williamsburg. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Hannerz, Ulf
1990 Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture. In Global Culture.
Mike Featherstone, ed. Pp. 237–521. Newbury Park, CA:
Sage.
Harrison, Simon
1991 Ritual as Intellectual Property. Man (n.s.) 27(2):225–244.
Harvey, Michael, and Ilkka A. Ronkainen
1985 International Counterfeiters: Marketing Success without
the Cost and Risk. Columbia Journal of World Business
(Fall):37–45.
Hendry, Joy
2000 The Orient Strikes Back: A Global View of Cultural Display.
Oxford: Berg.
Lears, Jackson
1994 Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in
America. New York: Basic Books.
Lefeyre, John
1998 P’Gram Inks Licensing Deal with Vietnam Label. Billboard
110(23):69.
Leshkowich, Ann Marie
2000 Tightly Woven Threads: Gender, Kinship, and “Secret
Agency” among Cloth and Clothing Traders in Ho Chi Minh
City’s Ben Thanh Market. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of
Anthropology, Harvard University.
Lury, Celia
1999 Marking Time with Nike: The Illusion of the Durable. Public
Culture 11(3):499–526.
Marzano, Stefano
2000 Branding=Distinctive Identity. In Brand.New. Jane Pavitt,
ed. Pp. 58–59. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pavitt, Jane
2000a Branding the Individual. In Brand.New. Jane Pavitt, ed.
Pp. 154–175. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
2000b In Goods We Trust. In Brand.New. Jane Pavitt, ed. Pp. 19–
51. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Price, Sally
1989 Primitive Art in Civilized Places. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Rose, Mark
1993 Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Saigon Times Daily
2001 Matsushita Warns against Counterfeit Goods. Saigon
Times Daily, September 6. Electronic document, http://www.
saigontimes.com/vn/daily/, accessed March 26, 2006.
Sapir, Edward
1951[1924] Culture: Genuine and Spurious. In Selected Writings
of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality. David
G. Mandelbaum, ed. P. 308. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Steiner, Christopher B.
1994 African Art in Transit. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Strathern, Marilyn
1992 Reproducing the Future: Anthropology, Kinship, and the
New Reproductive Technologies. New York: Routledge.
1996 Potential Persons: Intellectual Rights and Property in Persons.
Social Anthropology 4(1):17–32.
Strathern, Marilyn, Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, Philippe Descola,
C. A. Afonso, and Penelope Harvey
1998 Exploitable Knowledge Belongs to the Creators of It: A Debate.
Social Anthropology 6(1):109–126.
Taussig, Michael
1993 Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses.
London: Routledge.
Taylor, Nora
1999 “Pho” Phai and Faux Phais: The Market for Fakes and
the Appropriation of a Vietnamese National Symbol. Ethnos
64(2):232–248.
U.S. Department of State
2006 Focus on Intellectual Property Rights. Electronic document,
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/intelprp/guide.
htm, accessed March 26.
Vann, Elizabeth F.
2003a Made in Vietnam: Producing Brands and Consuming Production
in Ho Chi Minh City. Ph.D. dissertation, Department
of Anthropology, University of Virginia.
2003b Production Matters: Consumerism and Global Capitalism
in Vietnam. In Research in Economic Anthropology, Vol.
22: Anthropological Perspectives on Economic Development
and Integration. N. Dannhaeuser and C. Werner, eds. Pp. 225–
257. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
2005 Domesticating Goods in the Global Economy: Examples
from Vietnam and Russia. Ethnos 70(4):465–488.
Verdery, Katherine
1996 What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
2003 The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist
Transylvania. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Vietnam Investment Review
1999 Wall’s Cries Foul in Ice Cream War. Vietnam Investment
Review, October 11–17: 1, 4.
Vietnam News
2002a Trung Nguyen Coffee Fights to Protect Trademark in
US Market. Vietnam News, March 14: Electronic document,
http://www.vnn-news.com, accessed March 26.
2002b Vietnam’s Trung Nguyen Coffee Becomes Popular. Vietnam
News, October 14. Electronic document, http://www.vnnnews.com,
accessed March 26.
Williams, Raymond
1983[1958] Culture and Society: 1780–1950. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Woodmansee, Martha
1984 The Genius and the Copyright: Economic and Legal Conditions
of the Emergence of the “Author.” Eighteenth-Century
Studies 17(4):425–448.