The Living and the Lost: War and Possession in Vietnam

Abstract

The war in Vietnam claimed the lives of five million of its citizens, many of whom died in ways thought to have turned them into malevolent spirits who prey on the living. These angry ghosts are held responsible for a host of physical ailments and other misfortunes suffered by survivors of the war and their descendants. Known in the anthropological literature as possession illness, the cross‐cultural treatment for such maladies is typically provided by practitioners like mediums and exorcists, who cure victims by interacting with noncorporeal entities. In Vietnam, such spirit healers were banned after the communist takeover of the North in 1945. This has posed a problem for the large numbers of Vietnamese who suffer from ghost‐induced sickness. This paper focuses on three victims of angry ghosts, presenting the common origin, context, and resolution of their suffering. In doing so, it provides an overview of Vietnamese beliefs about death and the after‐life, the ideal relationship between the living and the dead, and the connection between state politics and spirit practice.

The Dead in the Land: Encounters with Bodies, Bones, and Ghosts in Northwestern Cambodia

“…Two notable exceptions are pieces by Anne YvonneGouillou (2012) andRachel Hughes (2006).17 BothKwon (2006Kwon ( , 2008 andGustafsson (2007) temporally locate the growth of these practices in Doi Moi, a program of economic liberalization adopted by the Vietnamese state in 1986. Increased economic freedoms were accompanied by a loosening of state control over religious and social life, which corresponded with a massive upsurge in commemorative ritual practices centered upon the grievous dead.…”