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Minina Yu. Vietnamese Informants on Their Experiences of Interaction with the Supernatural: Vocabulary, Functions, and Cultural Context

Yulia Minina
National Research University Higher School of Economics
Moscow, Russia
ORCID: 0000-0002-3737-9478
Email: yminina@hse.ru

 

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ABSTRACT. The paper analyzes a number of verbal reports from Vietnamese informants about their contacts with the world of the supernatural, collected in 2013–2021 in Vietnam and Russia. Ethnographic methods are used to interpret narratives about interaction with the spirits of the dead in the space of dreams and in reality, about visits to mediums and fortune-tellers, the consequences of disregarding the rules of ancestor worship, etc. This approach makes it possible to study contemporary Vietnamese people’s beliefs about the nature of non-human agency and their understanding of such categories as fate, soul, the afterworld, etc., and thereby come closer to assessing the current state of Vietnamese religious culture. The study focuses on the cultural, historical, and social context of spontaneous and initiated messages, their functions, and the key vocabulary used for describing various aspects of informants’ experiences. A large part of the material presented in the paper deals with deeply intimate human experiences, the very way of conveying which through linguistic and non-verbal means of communication can be of interest to religious scholars, ethnographers, cultural anthropologists, and linguists.

 

KEYWORDS: Vietnam, ancestor cult, non-human agency, spirits, mediums

 

FOR CITATION: Minina Yu. Vietnamese Informants on Their Experiences of Interaction with the Supernatural: Vocabulary, Functions, and Cultural Context. Kunstkamera. 2024. 3(25): 134–150. (In Russian). doi 10.31250/2618-8619-2024-3(25)-134-150

 

DOI 10.31250/2618-8619-2024-3(25)-134-150
UDC 21+398.1

 

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