Religion, Media and Materiality - Spiritual Economies in Southeast Asia

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Counter to the thesis of progressing secularization of today s world, new religious dynamics are developing even in economically booming areas such as Southeast Asia. It is precisely in this age of globalization and of an Asian capitalism that religious practices are becoming ever more significant. New technologies, especially electronic and digital media, play a prominent role when it comes to communication with gods, spirits, and ancestors. While human subjects and their agency are of significance in the study of the relationship between religion and media, material objects and non-human entities are also ascribed agency in the interaction between this world and the hereafter. The research project explores communicative practices between the living and the dead in Southeast Asia using a cross cultural perspective and focusing on (post-) socialist Vietnam. Trance mediums and new technical media, whose agency is embedded in political and economic developments, are part of religious practices in a society undergoing rapid changes as Vietnam transforms into a socialist market economy. The research project focuses on votive paper offerings, especially those in the form of technical media such as iPads and mobile phones, which are offered to the ancestors and spirits. The research centers on the cultural logic of the production, trade and burning of material objects made of paper as well as imaginations about their re-materialization in the otherworld. As intermediaries between this world and the hereafter, between immanence and transcendence, paper offerings are a crucial part of reciprocal relationships between actors in different worlds. Material objects therefore provide insight into the circulation and mobility as well as the mediation and transfer of religious messages and practices. Votive paper offerings represent an alternative economic logic that subverts capitalist and market socialist principles.