Vietnam Zippos

This paper describes Zippo cigarette lighters collected in Vietnam. Though they are objects of contemporary material culture, these artefacts derive from the Vietnam War era. They have hitherto been absent from the anthropological literature of material culture studies. Inscriptions engraved on behalf of former owners give insights into the attitudes and feelings of soldiers from that time in that place. The social lives of these Zippos have moved through stages of ignition and war comment to become expensive memorabilia for sale in Vietnamese market places. Foreign visitors to Vietnam acquire them in their thousands, selling them at significant markup in their home countries. Vietnam Zippos have become palimpsests for one way modern communist Vietnam, with a clear view of independence and history, has moved into the present and future world capitalist system while countenancing ironic representations of its past