Elephants are significant animals in Vietnamese war history. One can see this with elephant statues, which are installed in certain temples for commemoration. In this regard, this research aims to study the role of elephant commemoration practice within spatio-temporal contexts to understand the relationship between people, objects, and animal patriotic imaginaries in Vietnam. It does so through the application of Benjamin’s concept of aura and Gell’s concept of social agency. Voi Phục Temple and Voi Ré Temple are the main research sites in this field study, which also included interviews and participant observation as methods of data collection. The research found that elephant commemoration does not blur the boundary between human-object and human-animal worship, but introduces a new hierarchy of respect and a new form of practices toward sacred objects. Certain animal statues, like elephants, maintain their secondary agency, which is transmitted from the power of human deities. The agency has a spiritual, historical, and political effect on worshippers. Moreover, I suggest that the aura of a ritual object is not inherently created through the authentic production process or the object itself, as Benjamin suggests, but is socially constructed and interpreted by worshippers, influenced by the historical imaginaries and the sacred environments of the temples. The mythical and historical narratives involved in creating the aura and agency of the elephant statues are tied to Vietnamese nation-building process, while other external factors, like gender and generation of the worshippers, also affect the meanings and attitudes toward ritual objects. Studying the diverse roles and meanings of elephants not only offers deeper insights into Vietnamese animal symbolism, but also provides an alternative understanding of Vietnamese society on the whole.

Amulets are typically perceived as objects imbued with magical powers that bestow on their users protection from life’s uncertainties. However, the potency of amulets is contingent upon the contexts in which they are embedded in, and it is subject to change across time and space. This dissertation investigates the material biography of amulets by tracing the movements of various devotional objects through different stages in their life cycle, from the sites of their production to those of distribution, consecration, usage, and repurposing. Based on 15 months of ethnographic research project conducted in Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam, this study examines two main aspects of amulet pathways in the post-pandemic urban environment. First, building on the scholarship connecting post-socialist economic uncertainty and spiritual re-enchantment, I propose that amulets transcend social and economic precarity and play a significant role in highlighting the users’ concerns with material insecurity and overall well-being. Moreover, by examining the political economy of amulets, I demonstrate how producers and sellers negotiate, or make use of, precarity in various aspects. Second, the study touches upon the boundary-crossing nature of amulets as active agents that produce certain affects and effects, rather than passive objects with fixed meanings and interpretations. I suggest that this study reaffirms the observation in scholarship by arguing that amulets transcend the conventional binary oppositions of sacredness versus profanity, spirituality versus science, and good versus evil. As amulets are transacted and circulated among human and non-human forces, the sacred items demonstrate how an object’s perceived agency is shaped by diverse, and sometimes contradictory, socioeconomic and political factors, reflecting state policies on superstition, scientific rationalities, and ethnic minorities. Nevertheless, rather than being mere targets of state regulation, amulets advance policies of global capitalist integration by shifting the responsibility for managing precarity from the state to individuals left to rely on their perceived magical qualities to navigate uncertainty without questioning existing structures of inequality.