After the implementation of đổi mới (renovation policy) in 1986, Vietnam's economic, social, and religious landscape began a process of significant transformation, somewhat analogous to the tremendous creative energy unleashed in China during the 1980s after the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Kirsten Endres's Performing the Divine: Mediums, Markets and Modernity in Urban Vietnam focuses on Hanoi and the transformations taking place in the ritual performance, audience, and spirit mediumship of the Four Palace Pantheon, a popular folk religion, within the changing landscape of a “modernizing Vietnam.”

Performing the Divine informationally enhances and critiques an already robust academic discourse on the Four Palace mediumship. This discourse is dominated by the discipline of anthropology. In Endres's case, it is based on long-term research in Hanoi, some of it as participant observer, with an interdisciplinary emphasis. As such, it advances studies on the resurgence of popular religion in Vietnam by building on the scholarship of Karen Fjelstad and Nguyên Thi Hiê, Barley Norton, Phạm Quỳnh Phương, and Philip Taylor, among others.Footnote ¹⁵

A valuable feature of Endres's analysis is the layers of contextualization she provides. Continuing the discourse also found in her co-edited publication Engaging the Spirit World, she situates a Western academic interpretation of the current practice of Four Palace mediumship in Hanoi within the trajectory of Western influence on the changing public perception of folk religion from the colonial period to the present.Footnote ¹⁶ What was once maligned as “superstition” by state authorities, both French colonialists and then Vietnamese leadership after liberation, has become sanctioned in the period of post đổi mới “pro market” socialism. In the mishmash of contesting academic opinions on the definition of modernity, Endres describes this (re)enchantment with mediumship in terms of an alternative modernity: “modernity as a discursive space in which different actors continuously ‘vernacularise’ their own subjective notions of what it means to be modern” (p. 7). Interesting to historians of religion is the longer diachronic contextualization of mediumship in Vietnam that she provides in a somewhat patchwork way throughout the text (chapters 1, 3, 6). Also of interest is her cautionary critique of the agency of Western scholars in the construction of the “reality” they subsequently investigate.

Endres contends that spirit mediumship after đổi mới offers an insight into how “the dynamics of reformed, market-oriented socialism are played out in actual ritual practice” (p. 6). Chapters 2 through 6 interrogate various aspects of this contention. Quintessentially, chapter 2 introduces a cost-benefit analysis of mediumship. The call to this profession is similar to the shamanic illness described in Mircea Eliade's seminal text Shamanism.Footnote ¹⁷ In the context of Four Palace mediumship, the call is explained in terms of karmic debt owed to a specific spirit from a past life. The call and conversion to Four Palace mediumship leads to a transformation of self and self-empowerment (chapter 2), including an improved social status and the possibility of gender transgression (chapter 5). The performative aspect of the ritual associated with Four Palace mediumship—including dressing as a specific spirit not necessarily associated with one's gender; embodying it in trance, dance, song, ritual hand gestures, and chanting—are described as a process of physical imbrication (chapter 3). A medium transforms into a vessel through which a spirit manifests; however, a certain artfulness and aesthetic sense acquired through practice and experience are important in establishing a medium's “prosperity and prestige.” This may lead to competition among mediums (chapter 4). Endres returns to the issue of “markets and modernity” in chapter 6. She relays how in 2006 the Ministry of Culture and Information organized the first spirit medium festival (p. 158). It was spun as “spiritual theater” or “folk performing art” and received positive press coverage. Given competition among mediums and the commodification of ritual objects, Endres ends by discussing the possibility of Four Palace mediumship becoming a religion of the rich.

Endres's compelling research leads one to anticipate further explication on a number of important issues. Research on the significance of these post đổi mới changes in religiosity might include at least a brief comparison of the practices and popularity of the Four Palace mediumship between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), such uniquely different urban locales. Also, Endres's brief description of the globalization of this religion, which is spreading beyond diasporic Vietnamese communities (p. 196), implies a fertile area for further research. This is clear from Fjelstad and Nguyên's Spirits without Borders. One further question for Endres to address concerns the significance of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City as sites of “validation” for Four Palace mediumship in an expanding transnational religion.

Performing the Divine interrogates a corpus of theories across disciplines in sections across chapters. This produces a somewhat inconsistent style of prose, extremely academic in parts juxtaposed with simpler descriptive narrative of the actual life and practice of Four Palace mediums. It is a challenging but informative read most suitable for scholars and graduate students interested in Vietnam. Specific chapters might be suitable for upper-division courses in Southeast Asian religions or Vietnam.