This book is an ethnographic case study, based on first hand observation, of family businesses in the northern Vietnamese village of Ninh Hi¿¿p along the Red River Delta, which became a major hub for textiles in the wake of the country¿s shift towards market socialism. The author explores how the traders experience, negotiate and react to a marketization process that is markedly shaped by the state¿s morally ambivalent governance, and which can be thus characterised as an admixture of socialist and neoliberal ideologies. How are traders shaping the political economy of Vietnam? How has the labour force changed as textile-handling has become an increasingly profitable undertaking?