Social Media, Vernacularity, and Pedagogy: Youth and the Reinvention of Contemporary Vietnamese Buddhism

Abstract

Drawing on extensive fieldwork at Buddhist institutions in Ho Chi Minh City, this article explicates the recent proliferation of Buddhist educational programs for urban youth and examines the contours of what I conceive as an emerging youth-oriented Buddhism in contemporary Vietnam. It sheds light on how Vietnamese youth is situated at the center of ongoing projects to craft new forms of urban Buddhist identity and community. In so doing, the article investigates the co-working between urban monastics and lay Buddhist youth to reconfigure Buddhist knowledge and practices to appeal to young people’s dispositions, life experiences, and knowledge. I show how these creative endeavors rely on the revision of Buddhist texts using vernacular Vietnamese, the strategic deployment of new media technologies, and innovation of Buddhist pedagogies.