Abstract
This article examines how Vietnamese citizens responded to state exhortations to devalue and simplify maritial exchanges. Such exhortations reflected Engels' belief ([1884] 1972) that the success of revolutionary socialism was contingent upon a transformation of marital institutions. Vietnam, a “weak” state with an otherwise home-grown socialist revolution, announced decrees to this end in the North after national partition in 1954 and in the South following political reunification in 1975. This article employs data from the author's 1993 field survey in a Northern and Southern province to track temporal changes in a variety of Vietnamese wedding practices. The results suggest that the socialist marriage pattern took hold in the Northern province only. Findings are linked to historical events, modernization, state-society bargaining processes, as well as the more general successes and failures of revolutionary socialism in Vietnam.
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