Is ancestor worship a Vietnamese tradition? Graz ˙yna Szyman ´ska-Matusiewicz* Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw, Poland In this report I analyze the way urban, educated Vietnamese understand and interpret the concept of “tradition,” relating it to their view of an important element of Vietnamese culture: ancestor worship. While analyzing material collected during my fieldwork in 2007–2008, I noticed that only some of the practices associated with ancestor worship were defined in terms of “tradition” by my informants. Some dimensions of this practice – especially connected with officially legitimated holidays, such as the Te ˆ ´ t festival – tended to be described as “Vietnamese tradition,” but others were treated as natural elements of daily life, which did not have to be justified through the legitimating category of “tradition.” The use of “tradition” by informants reflects the complex semantic content of the term, which can be described as suspended between two poles, constituted by “the past” and by “culture.” Keywords: tradition; Vietnam; ancestor worship Introduction This report is based on research I conducted in Hanoi between 2007 and 2008 on a group of university-educated Vietnamese. 1 The aim of the text is to analyze the way of understanding and interpreting the concept of tradition by this specific segment of contemporary Vietnamese, who – as educated people, experiencing various effects of the introduction of a market economy in the post-đổimới (renovation) era 2 – are aware of the existence of the “traditional – modern” distinction and are often involved in discussion concerning “Vietnamese tradition” and the changes taking place in Vietnamese society. This research consisted of 30 in-depth interviews as well as extensive field research and notes. I was interested in the following issues: How do representatives of Vietnamese culture demarcate the range of meanings of “tradition”? Which phenomena do they tend to call “traditional”? What criteria do they use to include a given phenomenon in – or exclude it from – the category of “tradition”? The article examines interviewees’ responses related to one element of Vietnamese culture: ancestor worship. At the outset of the project, I expected informants to tend to include ancestor worship – a practice fulfilling the criteria of “traditionality” present in the Western social-science literature – in the sphere of “tradition.” The results of my research indicate that this turned out to be only partially the case. Ancestor worship (thờ cu ´ng tổ tie ˆn) has been assumed to be a core feature of Vietnamese culture present in the lives of practically all Vietnamese regardless of their religious beliefs and political views (Jamieson 1995; V. H. Nguyen 1995; Jellema 2007a, 2007b; T. H. Nguyen 1995). Yet while ample material on practices associated with ancestor worship accumulated in my field notes, only some of the practices were defined in terms of “tradition.” q 2013 The Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong *Email: szymanskag@is.uw.edu.pl Asian Anthropology, 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2013.833041