THE SEEDS OF TURMOIL:
HUE’S ‘PEOPLE OF THE PAGODA’ AND THE
BUDDHIST MOBILIZATION OF 1963

Dr. Diu-Huong Nguyen
UC Riverside

Monday, December 9th
2-3:30pm
HG 1010

This presentation reconstructs the historical atmosphere of the Summer 1963 Buddhist mobilization in central Viet Nam’s royal city of Hue through close-up descriptions of those events based on what was considered significant by its participants and supporters. Glancing through the lens of “social movement theory” I assert that this short-lived mass movement created collective identities for ordinary lay Buddhists — “People of the Pagoda,” they styled themselves — and had strong and persistent impacts on their individual lives. By emphasizing the personal, human experience of local residents using their eyewitness accounts, I attempt to illuminate how such momentous happenings affected Hue’s social and cultural life as the mobilization spread turmoil through the city. This bottom-up, grassroots approach seeks to remedy the twin imbalances of Western-centered and Vietnamese government-issued narratives in the Viet Nam War’s historiography.