A Triad of Confrontation: State Discipline, Buddhist Purification, and Indiscipline as a Local Strategy in Central Vietnam

Abstract

In the village of Sa Huỳnh, state, fishers, and Buddhist clergy draw from semiotic ideologies but often employ a common political language, rarely agreeing on its meaning. Highlighting different structural positions and goals of social actors, I argue that binary oppositions exist but are not mutually exclusive, everlasting or antagonistic, as they shift in unexpected ways across the triadic relationship between state officials, fishers, and Buddhist clergy. By exposing the extent of improvisation and legitimation tactics, I show that religious practices are co-produced locally by the state through its diverse agents and agencies, by religious reformers through their purifying discipline, and by various categories of villagers who use indiscipline as a local tactic when acting on behalf of their gods.