ABSTRACT
The Vietnamese revolutionary ideology rejected all notions of supernatural causation in human life and attempted to convince the people to similarly reject such notions and replace them with an empiricist worldview. To their chagrin, the agenda never received total acceptance. It did, however, change the boundaries of debate and threw open to dispute such questions as whether there are non-empirically-verifiable forces or entities that influence human life, what causes misfortune, and what constitutes a valid causal explanation. This chapter analyzes how these debates have played out in Thinh Liet. It shows residents continue to employ non-empirically-verifiable causal explanations to make sense of particular events in their lives. The chapter clearly defines those contexts in which residents employ non-empirical explanations, while also trying to locate sociologically the different social actors most likely to make and dispute such claims. Important differences as to what constitutes a legitimate causal explanation exist between men and women, young and old, and party-members and non-party-members.
