ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes changes in Thinh Liet communal house rites to understand the transformations in male and female ritual roles that have occurred since the 1940s in Vietnam. Revolutionary policies had brought an end to communal house rites in Thinh Liet. This orthodoxy, however, began to break down in the 1980s as residents began reasserting the sacredness of the communal houses. Since then, organized ritual activity has returned to Thinh Liet communal houses, but in an unexpected change, local women have stepped forward to assume roles in the rites formerly denied them. The chapter examines the various social and political factors that have produced the current situation. Supporters of the Ho bust placement in the Giap Tu communal house, almost exclusively older men with party backgrounds, could initially claim that the statue was there for strictly commemorative purposes, but by 1991 their position had evolved into an assertion that Ho Chi Minh should become the Giap Tu guardian spirit.
