Transactions with the Gods: A Case Study of Individual Agency and Spiritual Faith through the Phenomenon of the Goddess of the Treasury in North Vietnam

Abstract

This paper analyses the phenomenon of the Goddess of the Treasury in North Vietnam based on worshippers’ agency and their spiritual faith to demonstrate how worshippers’ decisions and behavior is shaped within the context of religious belief and traditional moralities. The author argues that this practice should be approached based on agency rather than a structuralist view. He demonstrates how worshippers’ agency is informed by religious faith, and how these two factors interact with each other to guide worshippers’ decisions and shape the Goddess’s potency. This paper illustrates the complexity of religious revival in post-1986 Vietnam, which is a process strongly informed by cultural values, traditional morality and in particular individual agency, rather than a universal transformation which can be described in structuralist terminologies of capitalism, economic rationality and modernization.