"Beauty as Control in the New Saigon"
Erik Harms, Department of Anthropology, Yale University

This paper details contested visions of development and land disputes associated with the demolition and planned redevelopment of Th? Thiêm ward in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In addition to describing the process of eviction, the article illuminates the discursive role aesthetics play in promoting new visions of urban order and spatial control in this New Urban Zone. Based on ethnographic research among urban residents displaced by construction of this New Urban Zone, as well as with architects, planners, and city authorities, the paper details how notions of building a beautiful, breathable, and orderly city guide and frame the negotiations over land use rights, resettlement, and compensation. I further argue that residents, while angry about unfair treatment in the eviction and resettlement process, ultimately support and reproduce this discourse of beauty. While the quest to bring beauty and fresh air to the city ultimately underscores the processes that are forcing local residents off of their land, their anger and resistance is largely directed towards more immediate squabbles over compensation rates, land measurements and resettlement sites. The focus on small, atomized, individualized conflicts in a larger process of wholesale urban restructuring limits the development of a more sustained alternative vision of inclusive urban development.

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