Beautiful and efficacious statues: magic, commodities, agency and the production of sacred objects in popular religion in vietnam

Watchingclone: brazilian soap operas and muslimness in kyrgyzstan

“…It likewise differs significantly from the majority of media, commodities, and objects about religion explored by anthropologists (e.g. Hirschkind 2001 ; Kendall et al 2010;Schulz 2006;Starretf 1995;van de Port 2006), that is religious things, with religious purposes, made by or for practitioners of the religion. In contrast.…”

Stars, Spirits and Coal: Materiality and Immateriality in Northern Vietnam

“…Instead of focusing on how the object's agentive capacity is actively produced, maintained or authenticated in the relations between people and things (Kendall 2008, 180;Kendall, Vũ, & Nguyễn 2010), the example of the beehive coal briquette is about people turning away from certain things at certain times out of fear of what may emerge. As we will see, the issue here is not so much the thing as such, but the way in which relations between people and things are mediated through a variety of beings and forces that are often referred to as spiritual, cosmological or supernatural.…”

“…In the case of Vietnam, the link between the spiritual and material worlds has been analysed primarily in connection with the upsurge of religious practices, mediumship, spirit worship and pilgrimages in the wake of Đổi Mới, the reform policies which began in 1986 and opened Vietnam to the market economy and reduced religious restrictions (Kendall 2008(Kendall , 2011Taylor 2004;Soucy 2012;Endres 2011). The work of Kendall is of particular relevance here, as she has focused on the role of religious objects in an accelerated market economy and shown how sacred objects are considered to 'embody power, efficacy, divine presence, or potential danger' because of the 'manner in which those who made and used sacred objects abducted agency to them' (Kendall 2008, 180, 186;Kendall, Vũ, & Nguyễn 2010).…”

Spirit map and medium’s message: Searching for war dead in Vietnam

“…Inspired by ideas of agency and materiality (Latour, 2005) and referring to recent scholarship on iconic presence (Belting, 2016; Meyer, 2012) in religious practices as well as on the ‘ iconic nature of letters’ (Morgan, 2017: 482; emphasis from Morgan), this contribution addresses the nexus between material objects and a medium’s message by exploring the visual, technological and traveling cultures of the Vietnamese in searching for the bodily remains of their loved ones who died in the war. This study thus connects to the investigation of the role of sacred objects in Vietnam, their power and divine presence, which has so far been analysed with regard to actors and agency (Kendall, 2008; Kendall et al, 2010; Hüwelmeier, 2016, 2018b, 2019). In tracing the interactions between a diverse set of actors, material objects and supernatural powers, this article also deals with linkages between pilgrimage and cartography (Geertz, 1988: 10), as the Hiền brothers undertook a journey with a spiritual aim, relying on what I call a spirit map , which consisted of a detailed description of the geographical surroundings that was transmitted by a medium.…”

“…Pictures in particular play a pivotal role in spreading religious imageries (Pinney and Peterson, 2003; Spyer and Steedly, 2013; Kendall et al, 2015). Relationships between popular religion and materiality in contemporary Vietnam have been analysed by a number of scholars (Kendall, 2008; Kendall et al, 2010), emphasising that the circulation of material objects between the living and the dead is crucial in the context of the religious gift economy (Endres, 2011; Soucy, 2012). Paintings and photographs (Hiền, 2012) as well as mass-produced sacred pictures (Meyer, 2010) mediate between immanence and transcendence, as did the spirit map in the case discussed here.…”