'The spirits' regulations': formality, innovation, and performative aesthetics in North Vietnamese Lên Dong rituals

Theoretical discussions about the concept of ritual often stress formality and rigidity as characterizing features of ritual action. In contrast, more recent ritual studies emphasize that the rules of ritual performance are in fact quite flexible and malleable to individual interpretation and form. At the same time, the discourses that surround proper ritual performance and ritual variations constitute important arenas where ritual authority, authenticity and claims to interpretative control are both contested and negotiated. Drawing from ethnographic research on Vietnamese len dong-rituals, the author will explore various areas of formality and flexibility - the boundaries between which are not always clearly demarcated - in the ritual practice of different master mediums and their followers in contemporary Hanoi. Reprinted by permission of the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie and Dietrich Reimer Verlag GmbH