Popular religious practices such as communicating with the deceased take place in many parts of the world. In cases of death through violence, as in warfare, the living worry about the dead bodies of their loved ones as the lack of bodily remains makes it impossible to perform a proper burial. Vietnam is a valuable case study because it has experienced terrible violence in the 20th century. This article explores the pilgrimage of a group of brothers who searched for the bodily remains of their father in the late 1990s. He operated as a secret agent and was killed in 1957 when he crossed the border into South Vietnam. In their quest, the brothers consulted a ritual expert, who guided them from a distance. Drawing on this case study, the paper argues that filial piety, spirit mediumship, technology, and political history are deeply intertwined in post-revolutionary and late socialist Vietnam.
BehrendHZillingerM (2015) Introduction: Trance mediums and new media. In: BehrendHDreschkeAZillingerM (eds) Trance Mediums and New Media. New York: Fordham University Press, pp.1–24.
2.
BeltingH (2016) Iconic presence. Images in religious traditions. Material Religion12(2): 235–237.
3.
ColemanS (2010) Constructing the globe: A charismatic sublime? In: HüwelmeierGKrauseK (eds) Traveling Spirits: Migrants, Markets and Mobilities. Oxford and New York: Routledge, pp. 186–202.
4.
ColemanSEadeJ (2004) Reframing Pilgrimage. Cultures in Motion. London: Routledge.
5.
De TréglodéB (2001) Héros et Revolution au Viet Nam. 1948–1964. Paris: L’Harmattan.
6.
EndresKW (2011) Performing the Divine. Mediums, Market and Modernity in Urban Vietnam. Copenhagen: NIAS Press.
7.
EndresKWLauserA (2012) Contests of commemoration: Virgin war martyrs, state memorials, and the invocation of the spirit world in contemporary Vietnam. In: EndresKWLauserA (eds) Engaging the Spirit World: Popular Beliefs and Practices in Modern Southeast Asia. London and New York: Berghahn, pp. 121–142.
8.
EisenlohrP (2011) Introduction: What is a medium? Theologies, technologies and aspirations. Social Anthropology19(1): 1–5.
9.
FjelstadKNguyenTH (eds) (2006) Possessed by the Spirits: Mediumship in Contemporary Vietnamese Communities. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
10.
GammeltoftT (2003). The ritualisation of abortion in contemporary Vietnam. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 14(2): 129–143.
11.
GeertzC (1988) Works and Lives. The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
12.
GustafssonML (2009) War and Shadows: The Haunting of Vietnam. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
13.
HarmsE (2016) Luxury and Rubble. Civility and Dispossession in the New Saigon. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
14.
HeathcoteA (2014) A grief that cannot be shared: Continuing relationships with aborted fetuses in contemporary Vietnam. Thanatos3(1): 29–45
15.
HiềnN (2012) Ho Chi Minh City’s Beauty Regime: Haptic Technologies of the Self in the New Millennium. positions: asia critique20(2): 473–493.
16.
HüwelmeierG (2015) New media and traveling spirits: Pentecostals in the Vietnamese diaspora and the disaster of the Titanic. In: BehrendHDreschkeAZillingerM (eds) Trance Mediums and New Media. New York: Fordham University Press, pp.100–115
17.
HüwelmeierG (2016) Cell phones for the spirits: Ancestor worship and ritual economy in Vietnam and its diasporas. Material Religion, 12(3): 294–321.
18.
HüwelmeierG (2018a) Trance mediumship takes the stage. Reenactment and heritagization of the sacred in urban Hà Nội. Asian Ethnology77(1/2): 57–78.
19.
HüwelmeierG (2018b) Market shrines and urban renewal in Hanoi. SOJOURN. Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia33(2): 291–318.
20.
HüwelmeierG (2019). Spirit writing in Vietnam: Political lessons from the beyond. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology: 1–16. DOI: 10.1080/14442213.2019.1603250.
21.
HüwelmeierGKrauseK (2010) Introduction. In: HüwelmeierGKrauseK (eds) Traveling Spirits: Migrants, Markets and Mobilities. Oxford and New York: Routledge, pp.1–16.
22.
Ho TaiH-T (2001) The Country of Memory. Remaking the Past in Late Socialist Vietnam. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
23.
JellemaK (2007) Everywhere incense burning: Remembering ancestors in Doi Moi Vietnam. In: Journal of Southeast Asian Studies38(3): 467–493.
24.
KendallL (2008) Popular religion and the sacred life of material goods in contemporary Vietnam. Asian Ethnology67(2): 177–199.
25.
KendallLVũTNguyễnT (2010). Beautiful and efficacious statues: Magic, commodities, agency and the production of sacred objects. Material Religion6(1): 60–85.
26.
KendallLYangJYoonYS (2015) God Pictures in Korean Contexts: The Ownerships and Meaning of Shaman Paintings. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press
27.
KwonH (2006) After the Massacre. Commemoration and Consolation in Ha My and My Lai. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
28.
KwonH (2008) Ghosts of War in Vietnam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
29.
LambekM (2010) Traveling spirits: Unconcealment and undisplacement. In: HüwelmeierGKrauseK (eds) Traveling Spirits: Migrants, Markets, and Mobilities. Oxford and New York: Routledge, pp.17–35.
30.
LambekM (2016) On being present to history. Historicity and brigand spirits in Madagascar. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory6(1): 317–341.
31.
LatourB (2005) Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
32.
MalarneySK (2001) The fatherland remembers your sacrifice: Commemorating war dead in North Vietnam. In: Ho TaiH-T (ed) The Country of Memory: Remaking the Past in Late Socialist Vietnam. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp.46–76.
33.
MalarneySK (2013) Leben mit den Kriegstoten. Gebeine, Geister und die soziokulturelle Dynamik des Totengedenkens. In: HettlingMEchterkampJ (eds) Gefallenengedenken im globalen Vergleich. Nationale Tradition, politische Legitimation und Individualisierung der Erinnerung. Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, pp.511–538.
34.
MesaritouEColemanSEadeJ (2016) Introduction: Guiding the pilgrim. Tourist Studies16(1): 3–22.
35.
MeyerB (2006) Impossible representations: Pentecostalism, vision, and video technology in Ghana. In: MeyerBMoorsA (eds) Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 290–312.
36.
MeyerB (2010) There is a spirit in that image: Mass-produced Jesus pictures and Protestant-Pentecostal animation in Ghana. Comparative Studies in Society and History52(1): 100–130.
37.
MeyerB (2012) Mediation and the genesis of presence: Towards a material approach to religion. Utrecht: Universiteit Utrecht, pp. 1–56.
38.
MorganD (2008) The materiality of cultural construction. Material Religion4(2): 228–229.
39.
MorganD (2017) The subject in question. Journal of Material Culture22(4): 476–484.
40.
NinhB (1994) The Sorrow of War. London: Vintage.
41.
PinneyCPetersonN (2003) Photography’s Other Histories. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
42.
PrattLM (1992) Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and New York: Routledge.
43.
RobertC (2014). Dead zone: Pollution, contamination and the neglected dead in post-war Saigon. In: StepputatF (ed.) (2014). Governing the Dead: Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp.54–74.
44.
SchleckerMEndresKW (2011) Psychic experience, truth, and visuality in post-war Vietnam. Social Analysis55(1): 1–22.
45.
SchwenkelC (2009) The American War in Contemporary Vietnam. Transnational Remembrance and Representation. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
46.
SorrentinoP (2018) A l’épreuve de la possession: chronique d’une innovation rituelle dans le Vietnam contemporain. Nanterre, France: Société d’ethnologie.
47.
SoucyA (2012) The Buddha Side: Gender, Power, and Buddhist Practice in Vietnam. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
48.
SpyerPSteedlyMM (2013) Images That Move. Santa Fe, NM: School of Advanced Research Press.
49.
StepputatF (ed.) (2014). Governing the Dead: Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
50.
StolowJ (2005) Religion and/as Media. Theory, Culture and Society22(4): 119–145.
51.
TaylorP (2007) Modernity and Re-Enchantment in Post-Revolutionary Vietnam. Singapore: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute.
52.
TurnerVTurnerE (1978) Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.
53.
Van der VeerP (2015) Handbook of Religion and the Asian City. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
