ABSTRACT
When revolutionary authorities in Vietnam began their cultural reforms they embraced a similar attitude toward funerary ritual. Many Thinh Liet residents felt that the reforms violated basic moral obligations they had to fulfill, and therefore continued to try to conduct rituals as they deemed appropriate. This chapter examines Thinh Liet funeral rites in order to disentangle the web of ideas and values mobilized, invoked, and debated within them. A comprehensive survey of contemporary funerary practices reveals that Thinh Liet residents often do not agree on how to conduct these practices, and the ways in which they debate their proper organization and structure involves ideas that preceded the revolution and those derived from official ideology. The chapter examines these ideas, as well as the social actors articulating them, in order to demonstrate the diverse and competing ideas residents have regarding why they conduct funerary rites and also the appropriate ways to conduct them.
