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The Merit of Meat: Karma as Social Fact among Food Charities in Vietnam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Sara Ann Swenson
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Abstract

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In this article, I use Emile Durkheim’s theory of “social facts” to examine Buddhist charity movements in Vietnam. Durkheim defines social facts as the beliefs and customs required to belong in a community. I use Durkheim's theory to analyze how volunteer groups develop Buddhist cosmologies with distinct social facts about human subjectivity, ethics, and karma. My study traces how social facts cause different programming outcomes like decisions to serve meat-based or vegetarian meals among food charities. My findings are significant among studies of religious humanitarianism for suggesting that grassroots movements spread through heterogeneous values and cosmologies, even within a shared tradition.

Keywords

VietnamBuddhismKarmaFoodCharityHumanitarianismVolunteerismDurkheimSocial facts
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , February 2024 , e7
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2024

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