The Great Unity

Abstract

This essay explores the interconnections between Hòa Hảo religious practices, charity, and reconciliation of ethnic and political conflicts in the contemporary Vietnam-Cambodia borderland by looking at the relationship between Hòa Hảo traditional healers and patients of Kinh and Khmer backgrounds, Cambodian nationals, and retired Vietnamese communist cadres. It argues that the healing practices in a frontier Hòa Hảo herbal clinic have been inclusive and have involved the participation of diverse groups with whom the practitioners were formerly in conflict. The essay shows how the Hòa Hảo continue to build social solidarity in a pluralist borderland region with a more ethnically diverse set of relationships than has been previously recognized.