Family, Gender, and New Constellations: Crises and Changing Configurations in Late Đổi Mới Vietnam.

This chapter explores the ways in which ‘the family’ (gia đình) in late Đổi Mới Vietnam is undergoing transformations as a political institution, social organization, and lived experience. The notion of crisis, the chapter argues, provides an analytical vantage point to capture discrepancies between the ways in which the family is construed ideologically at the systemic level and how family life is experienced at the lifeworld level. Drawing on a combination of material, including ethnographic data,I I focus on two examples, each which indicates how an officially promoted family ideal is contested in a socio-economically changing society. These two examples refer to first, families that depart from a predominant heterosexual matrix and second, families that suffer from men’s abuse of their female partner.