IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ijurrs/v44y2020i6p1057-1071.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Corruption as Infrastructure: Rendering the New Saigon Global

Author

Listed:
  • Hun Kim

Abstract

Corruption is regularly treated as a barrier to infrastructure, development and growth. However, in Saigon, corruption itself has become an infrastructure in Vietnam's late‐socialist urban transformation. This infrastructure facilitates not only growth in the form of transnational investment, property speculation and construction, but allows for different kinds of planning and development practice as well. Perceptions about corruption in Vietnam, and in Saigon specifically, shape market and planning practices that structure the terms on which interested parties from abroad and internally speculate upon and ultimately develop urban projects. This is not a static formulation of corruption. Rather, corruption and the various political and policy responses to it constantly shape how brokers, developers and financiers renegotiate how the city becomes a knowable object for investment, legible to the calculations of both risk and reward used by global investors as well as to those who enact the embedded bureaucratic, legal and political practices that create Saigon's built environment. In this article I argue that different definitions and policy responses to corruption in effect create variable ways of seeing the city (as well as modes of being seen) that have an impact on the material realities of the metropolis—the types of connections produced with transnational finance, the legal and regulatory structure under which urbanization unfolds, and the types of players, firms and officials involved.

Suggested Citation

  • Hun Kim, 2020. "Corruption as Infrastructure: Rendering the New Saigon Global," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(6), pages 1057-1071, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:44:y:2020:i:6:p:1057-1071
    DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12951
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12951
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1468-2427.12951?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Laura Cesafsky, 2017. "How to Mend a Fragmented City: a Critique of ‘Infrastructural Solidarity'," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(1), pages 145-161, January.
    2. Michael Goldman, 2011. "Speculative Urbanism and the Making of the Next World City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(3), pages 555-581, May.
    3. Eli Elinoff, 2017. "Concrete and corruption," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(5), pages 587-596, September.
    4. Gavin Shatkin, 2019. "Futures of Crisis, Futures of Urban Political Theory: Flooding in Asian Coastal Megacities," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(2), pages 207-226, March.
    5. Llerena Guiu Searle, 2014. "Conflict and Commensuration: Contested Market Making in India's Private Real Estate Development Sector," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(1), pages 60-78, January.
    6. Zaloom, Caitlin, 2006. "Out of the Pits," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226978130, Febrero.
    7. D. Stark, 1996. "Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, vol. 6.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gray Brakke, 2023. "Ambivalent insurgencies: Citizenship, land politics and development in Hanoi and its periurban fringe," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(6), pages 1123-1138, May.
    2. Jennifer L Tucker & Thainara Granero de Melo, 2024. "Marielle’s seeds: Contesting the emotional life of corruption talk in Bolsonaro’s Brazil," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 42(4), pages 544-562, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Enora Robin & Frances Brill, 2018. "The global politics of an urban age: creating 'cities for all' in the age of financialisation," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 4(1), pages 1-5, December.
    2. Emma Colven, 2023. "A political ecology of speculative urbanism: The role of financial and environmental speculation in Jakarta’s water crisis," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(2), pages 490-510, March.
    3. Llerena Guiu Searle, 2014. "Conflict and Commensuration: Contested Market Making in India's Private Real Estate Development Sector," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(1), pages 60-78, January.
    4. Hortense Rouanet & Ludovic Halbert, 2016. "Leveraging finance capital: Urban change and self-empowerment of real estate developers in India," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(7), pages 1401-1423, May.
    5. Michael Goldman & Devika Narayan, 2021. "Through the Optics of Finance: Speculative Urbanism and the Transformation of Markets," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 209-231, March.
    6. Sreeja, K.G. & Madhusoodhanan, C.G. & Eldho, T.I., 2017. "Processes of peri-urban resource – livelihood transitions: Glimpses from the periphery of greater Mumbai city, India," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 49-55.
    7. Colin Jerolmack & Alexandra K. Murphy, 2019. "The Ethical Dilemmas and Social Scientific Trade-offs of Masking in Ethnography," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 48(4), pages 801-827, November.
    8. Desiree Fields, 2022. "Automated landlord: Digital technologies and post-crisis financial accumulation," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 54(1), pages 160-181, February.
    9. Luis Alfonso Dau & Aya S. Chacar & Marjorie A. Lyles & Jiatao Li, 2022. "Informal institutions and international business: Toward an integrative research agenda," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 53(6), pages 985-1010, August.
    10. Matthew Zook & Michael H Grote, 2017. "The microgeographies of global finance: High-frequency trading and the construction of information inequality," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(1), pages 121-140, January.
    11. Gore, Radhika, 2021. "Ensuring the ordinary: Politics and public service in municipal primary care in India," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 283(C).
    12. Bat Batjargal, 2000. "Entrepreneurial Versatility, Resources and Firm Performance in Russia: A Panel Study," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 351, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    13. Pursey Heugens & Stelios Zyglidopoulos, 2008. "From social ties to embedded competencies: the case of business groups," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 12(4), pages 325-341, November.
    14. Lawrence King & Patrick Hamm, 2005. "Privatization and State Capacity in Postcommunist Society," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series wp806, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    15. Elizabeth G. Pontikes & William P. Barnett, 2015. "The Persistence of Lenient Market Categories," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(5), pages 1415-1431, October.
    16. Sai Balakrishnan, 2019. "Recombinant Urbanization: Agrarian–urban Landed Property and Uneven Development in India," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(4), pages 617-632, July.
    17. Assen Slim, 2015. "L’aide européenne (1989-2020) aux PECO sous le prisme de l’économie politique internationale (EPI)," Post-Print hal-01271881, HAL.
    18. Annette M. Kim, 2011. "Introduction: Real Rights to the City—Cases of Property Rights Changes towards Equity in Eastern Asia," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(3), pages 459-469, February.
    19. Laki, Mihály, 2002. "A nagyvállalkozók tulajdonszerzési esélyeiről a szocializmus után [The chances for large-scale entrepreneurs to amass property after socialism]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(1), pages 45-58.
    20. Lisa Keister, 2009. "Organizational research on market transition: A sociological approach," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 26(4), pages 719-742, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:44:y:2020:i:6:p:1057-1071. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0309-1317 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.