Cleanliness and culture: Indonesian historiesrnConsoling ghosts: Stories of medicine and mourning from Southeast Asians in exilernGlobal movements, local concerns: Medicine and health in Southeast Asia

摘要

Given the attempts in the United States to reconcile the country's haunting past during the Vietnam War, a consolation in the form of some ghosts from Southeast Asia is timely. From this perspective, Jean Langford's account of dying, death rituals, mourning, and ghosts of postwar US emigrants from Laos and Cambodia - where spirits are taken very seriously - could be very enlightening. Even the Lao leader in Luang Prabang in 1977 had 'declared that all spirits attached to the temples in the old royal capital were "feudal", conducted a ceremony at a spirit shrine to inform all the spirits that the king had been deposed and sent to "seminar" (reeducation camp)' and that 'the spirits must choose whether to follow him, become monks, or flee the country' (p. 73).