Ritual, authority, and community transformation in Vietnam’s central highlands

In the Central Highlands of Vietnam, the profound social, economic, and religious transformations have not diminished the importance of ritual practices the organizing of community life. Using extensive ethnographic research, this article looks at the ways in which the rituals of the communities are reconfigured, contested and produced with the pluralistic and mobile religious changes. The growth of Protestant Christianity, labour migration, and changes in the younger generation have resulted in different ways in the participation of rituals, the erosion of the authority of the elders and the community the disruption of responsibility. The changes have not led to the erosion of ritual life, rather, they have created new ways of negotiating and adapting to change. The article puts forward new strategies of analysis such as ritual refusal to mean the social consequences of not participating in community rituals, and social consequences to not participating in community rituals, and ritual translation to mean the reworking of community rituals to new social and moral circumstances. The failure of these strategies gives the communities the sense of control of participation in the rituals. The refusal to adopt these new strategies proves that community life is the unchanging, the constant, the community itself. Rather, it reaffirms the significance of the rituals and social relationships in the upland minority communities.