War of the shadow world: Angry ghosts and their victims in Vietnam

The war in Vietnam claimed the lives of 5 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. Cross-culturally, treatment for spirit-induced illnesses 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 dissertation provides an overview of Vietnamese beliefs about death and the after-life, as well as a historical look at Vietnamese politics and its effects on the individuals victimized by angry ghosts. A number of key points are made: (1) the Communist Revolution in Vietnam gave rise to what is commonly known as the Vietnam War, which resulted in an enormous increase in the number of angry ghosts; (2) simultaneously, the Revolution also prohibited the traditional spirit practices that Vietnamese utilized to assuage angry ghosts; (3) economic liberalization in Vietnam has been accompanied by an atmosphere of increased cultural freedom in which victims of ghosts are now able to seek out treatment from officially banned spirit practitioners; (4) the state in Vietnam recognizes that to achieve its political and economic goals, it must help the Vietnamese people lay to rest the ghosts of the War, and this accounts for the resurgence in spirit practices

Spirit possession

In many societies around the world, spirit possession is a multifaceted phenomenon. It causes ill-health and suffering, is a source of knowledge regardingways of tackling social and health problems, and constitutes modes of collective remembering. In the expert literature, spirit possession is diversely referred to as altered states of consciousness, or dissociation or dissociative states. According to specific social circumstances, spirit possession is experienced as constructive in that it can provide healing resources; it is destructive in that it can cause serious health and social afflictions; and it can also be uncertain by encapsulating positive and negative experiences at once and over time. In the 1960s and 1970s sociological approaches reduced spirit possession to symbolic forms of power struggles. It was argued that disadvantaged groups, particularly women, attempted to redress their precarious condition by means of spirit possession (Lewis 1971). Anthropologists have spent lengthy periods of time conducting ethnographic studies of spirit possession in numerous societies and have suggested that the diversity of the phenomenon makes it difficult to capture in a single approach and definition. Thus, anthropologists and other social scientists tend to use definitions that are consistent with the type of spirit possession that is prevalent in a particular society at a specific point in time, whereas others have applied multidisciplinary approaches in search of complex understandings.There are, however, points of departure that any student, expert, or media professional must consider when engaging with the topic. Spirit possession is an embodied phenomenon which nevertheless transcends the individual and becomes part of group dynamics (Stoller 1995). It flourishes in societies that cultivate the belief that an individual’s body and action can be influenced and controlled by deities and spirits. Spirit possession manifests in ritual practice and in everyday life. In these contexts and for the people involved, spirits are real and are regarded as persons (Lambek 1981). Spirits are inseparable fromparticular social attitudes to death and particular historical circumstances of death (Kwon 2008). Research conducted in numerous societies consistently confirms that both men and women are afflicted by spirits; however, women are the principal focal point of possession trance. Because of gaps in reporting the identity of the spirits, the literature offers a less clear picture regarding the gender of the spirits. Recent case studies conducted in specific war-torn communities show, however, that afflicting spirits tend to be male (Igreja et al. 2010). In social theory, spirit possession has continuously animated debates and analysis regarding the potential and limits of human intentionality (also referred to as 'human agency')