Near Light We Shine: Buddhist Charity in Urban Vietnam

Buddhists in Vietnam are meeting humanitarian needs by popularizing charity. Vietnam's rapid urbanization has intensified social service demands while straining public infrastructure. In response, charity volunteers are building roads, subsidizing medicine, and giving away food. Near Light We Shine draws on two years of ethnographic research conducted in Ho Chi Minh City to analyse why and how people join these grassroots movements.

Volunteers adapt practices from Vietnam's dominant religio...