Dynamics of Memory and Religious Nationalism in a Sino-Vietnamese Border Town

Ngo, Tam

doi:10.1017/s0026749x18000185

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…During the Sino-Vietnamese border war , every aspect of social and cultural life in the borderlands was politicised (Ngo 2020). For example, the traditional festivals of ethnic groups such as the Hmong, who live on both sides of the border, became occasions for the Vietnamese state to showcase its political power and perform sovereignty.…”

Section: F O L K L O R I S I N G R E L I G I O N a N D T H E A M B I G U I T I E S O F C U L T U R A L P O L I T I C Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Conspicuous performances: ritual competition between Christian and non‐Christian Hmong in contemporary Vietnam

Ngo

2021

Soc Anthropol

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After recognising Hmong Protestantism, the Vietnamese state continued an 'anti-conversion' politics. It did so by encouraging the revival of what they saw as traditional Hmong religion as a bulwark against Protestantism and by enriching the range of cultural commodities for the growing ethno-tourism market. For the nonconverts, not only their resistance of Christianity began to be redefined as 'the battle' against Christianity, their belief and practices, up to then highly despised of by authorities, began to be restructured in order to gain new strength to rebound on the national and global religious stage. The new consciousness of the non-Christian Hmong, however, worried the Vietnamese state. This contribution charts the annual competitions held since 2005 between Christian and non-Christian groups in Lao Cai province in organising yearly Hmong communal rituals. It shows that what was meant to become a folklorised bulwark against Christianity became a new mêlée of ritual competition, as pioneering Hmong quickly seized the central stage. Ritual festivals thus become arenas of identity struggle in which none of the usual identity markers (secular, religious, communist, Christian, modern, traditional) can be taken at face value.

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Section: F O L K L O R I S I N G R E L I G I O N a N D T H E A M B I G U I T I E S O F C U L T U R A L P O L I T I C Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Conspicuous performances: ritual competition between Christian and non‐Christian Hmong in contemporary Vietnam

Ngo

2021

Soc Anthropol

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“…In autumn 2012, late spring 2013, and winter 2014, I was invited to join many spiritual events, such as spirit possessions, Buddhist requiems ( cầu siêu ), and spiritual warfare. These events, some of which I have described elsewhere (Ngo 2020), were conducted by spirit mediums, Buddhist monks, and telepaths to appease the spirits of Vietnamese dead and to aid them in their continuing fight with Chinese ghost soldiers ( âm binh ) in the underworld.…”

Section: Unclaimed War and Unclaimed Remainsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bones of contention

Ngo

2021

American Ethnologist

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Postcolonial Vietnam is characterized by the interplay between necropolitics and necrosociality, as practiced respectively by the militarized state and a society that traditionally maintains relations with the dead. This interplay is key to understanding conflicts in Vietnam over the bones of unidentified war dead. On the one hand, such bones can challenge the state's sovereignty when it assumes the responsibility of taking care of them. On the other hand, they exert strong power over the living, prompting quests to place them in the right kinship and sociopolitical orders—or to erase their memory. This was made dramatically evident in 2011 by one set of human remains, allegedly belonging to a fallen soldier of the 1979 Sino‐Vietnamese border war—a conflict that both sides’ governments prefer to forget. These remains illuminated the contention in the governing of war dead in postwar Vietnam. Moreover, they made evident the tension in anthropological inquiry about the ontology of human remains. [human bones, unidentified war dead, Sino‐Vietnamese border war, necropolitics, necrosociality, Vietnam]

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Guest editorial

Salemink

Cheung

2020

AEDS

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Dynamics of Memory and Religious Nationalism in a Sino-Vietnamese Border Town

Cited by 3 publications

References 35 publications

Conspicuous performances: ritual competition between Christian and non‐Christian Hmong in contemporary Vietnam

Conspicuous performances: ritual competition between Christian and non‐Christian Hmong in contemporary Vietnam

Bones of contention

Guest editorial

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