Currencies of Imagination: Channeling Money and Chasing Mobility in Vietnam

Mytoan Nguyen-Akbar of the University of Washington reviews Currencies of Imagination: Channeling Money and Chasing Mobility in Vietnam by Ivan Small. In this book, Small considers the impact of international remittances from the Vietnamese diaspora. In Vietnam, these remittances are quantitatively significant and contribute important economic inputs. Yet beyond capital transfer, these diasporic remittance economies offer insight into an unfolding transformation of Vietnamese society through the extension of imaginations and ontological possibilities that accompany them. Currencies of Imagination examines the complex role of remittances as money and as gifts that flow across, and mediate between, transnational kinship networks dispersed by exile and migration.

Read the book review at https://doi.org/10.1177/0197918319872493.