Goddess on the Rise: Pilgrimage and Popular Religion in Vietnam

Philip Taylor is an anthropologist specializing in Vietnamese studies, and this academic book, published by University of Hawaii Press, examines the revival of goddess worship and pilgrimage in post-reform Vietnam, based on Taylor's own fieldwork at Vietnamese pilgrimage sites. Its strength is direct ethnographic access during a period of real religious change, as Vietnam's economic liberalization coincided with a visible resurgence of popular religious practice the book documents firsthand. Its limit is that it focuses on the specific goddess cults and pilgrimage sites Taylor studied in a particular period of Vietnam's recent history, so it should be read as a documented case rather than a complete account of Vietnamese popular religion as a whole.