NEW PUBLICATIONS IN 2011

Baker, Hugh. Ancestral Images: A Hong Kong Collection. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011.

Abstract: This new revised edition collects in one place the articles from the three volumes of Hugh Baker's Ancestral Images originally published in 1979, 1980 and 1981. The 120 articles and photographs explore everyday life, customs and rituals in Hong Kong's rural New Territories. They investigate religion, food, language, history, festivals, family, strange happenings and clan warfare. The book documents much that can no longer be found. But it also provides an understanding of a world which has not yet entirely disappeared, and which still forms the background of life in modern urban Hong Kong and its neighbouring cities. Esoteric nuggets of information are scattered through the book: How do you ascend a pagoda with no staircase? How can you marry without attending the wedding? When is it wrong to buy a book? Hugh Baker answers these and many other questions in this well-rounded picture of a vibrant, quirky people painted with affection and informed by many years of scholarship and research. (Source: publisher's website)

Berezkin, Rostislav. “Scripture-telling (jiangjing) in the Zhangjiangang Area and the History of Chinese Storytelling.” Asia Major, Third Series, 24.1 (2011): 1-42.

Blake, C. Fred. Burning Money: The Material Spirit of the Chinese Lifeworld. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011.

Abstract: For a thousand years across the length and breadth of China and beyond, people have burned paper replicas of valuable things—most often money—for the spirits of deceased family members, ancestors, and myriads of demons and divinities. Although frequently denigrated as wasteful and vulgar and at times prohibited by governing elites, today this venerable custom is as popular as ever. Burning Money explores the cultural logic of this common practice while addressing larger anthropological questions concerning the nature of value. The heart of the work integrates Chinese and Western thought and analytics to develop a theoretical framework that the author calls a “materialist aesthetics.” This includes consideration of how the burning of paper money meshes with other customs in China and around the world. The work examines the custom in contemporary everyday life, its origins in folklore and history, as well as its role in common rituals, in the social formations of dynastic and modern times, and as a “sacrifice” in the act of consecrating the paper money before burning it. Here the author suggests a great divide between the modern means of cultural reproduction through ideology and reification, with its emphasis on nature and realism, and previous pre-capitalist means through ritual and mystification, with its emphasis on authenticity. The final chapters consider how the burning money custom has survived its encounter with the modern global system and internet technology. (Source: publisher's website)

 

Boretz, Avron. Gods, Ghosts, and Gangsters: Ritual Violence, Martial Arts, and Masculinity on the Margins of Chinese Society. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011.

Abstract: Demon warrior puppets, sword-wielding Taoist priests, spirit mediums lacerating their bodies with spikes and blades—these are among the most dramatic images in Chinese religion. Usually linked to the propitiation of plague gods and the worship of popular military deities, such ritual practices have an obvious but previously unexamined kinship with the traditional Chinese martial arts. The long and durable history of martial arts iconography and ritual in Chinese religion suggests something far deeper than mere historical coincidence. Avron Boretz argues that martial arts gestures and movements are so deeply embedded in the ritual repertoire in part because they iconify masculine qualities of violence, aggressivity, and physical prowess, the implicit core of Chinese patriliny and patriarchy. At the same time, for actors and audience alike, martial arts gestures evoke the mythos of the jianghu, a shadowy, often violent realm of vagabonds, outlaws, and masters of martial and magic arts. Through the direct bodily practice of martial arts movement and creative rendering of jianghu narratives, martial ritual practitioners are able to identify and represent themselves, however briefly and incompletely, as men of prowess, a reward otherwise denied those confined to the lower limits of this deeply patriarchal society. Based on fieldwork in China and Taiwan spanning nearly two decades, Gods, Ghosts, and Gangsters offers a thorough and original account of violent ritual and ritual violence in Chinese religion and society. Close-up, sensitive portrayals and the voices of ritual actors themselves—mostly working-class men, many of them members of sworn brotherhoods and gangs—convincingly link martial ritual practice to the lives and desires of men on the margins of Chinese society. (Source: publisher's website)

Chan, Selina Ching & Graeme Lang. “Temples as Enterprises.” In: Adam Yuet Chau [ed.], Religion in Contemporary China: Revitalization and Innovation. London: Routledge, 2011. Pp. 133-153.

Chau, Adam Yuet. “Modalities of Doing Religion.” In Chinese Religious Life, edited by David A. Palmer, Glenn Shive, and Philip L. Wickeri. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp.67-84.

Clart, Philip. “Anchoring Guanyin: Appropriative Strategies in a New Phoenix Hall Scripture.” Min-su ch’ü-i / Journal of Chinese Theatre, Ritual and Folklore 173 (2011): 101-128.

Abstract: The fact that scriptures play such a significant role in the supposedly mainly oral culture of Chinese popular religion raises a number of questions: Who writes them? How are they used? What religious ideas do they manifest? How do they appropriate and affect the cult of their protagonist deities? The present article seeks to address these questions using the case of Guanyin’s Lotus Sutra of the Marvellous Dao (Guanyin miaodao lianhua jing), a text revealed between 1998 and 2000 by means of spiritwriting at a Taichung city phoenix hall, the Xuyuan tang. The analysis of the scripture’s structure and rhetoric reveals that the Guanyin sutra represents a mode of popular and sectarian engagement with the Buddhist tradition that differs from and enriches the picture provided for us by Chün-fang Yü’s studies of Guanyin and by Prasenjit Duara’s notion of “superscription.” While we are definitely looking at a layering of meanings, as Duara did by regarding the Guandi myth as “a palimpsest of layered meanings,” the image of “superscription” does not accurately describe the way the Guanyin sutra does not so much overwrite but underlay Buddhist devotionalism with phoenix hall notions of Dao cultivation. In effect, the Guanyin sutra provides an inclusivist re-anchoring of Guanyin-related devotional practices in a core set of sectarian notions of personal cultivation, thus allowing us to differentiate a distinct mode of the syncretic construction of religious doctrine in a popular sectarian context. (Source: journal)

DuBois, Thomas David. “The Salvation of Religion? Public Charity and the New Religions of the Early Republic.” Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore / Minsu quyi 172 (2011): 73-126.

Fan, Lizhu & James D. Whitehead. “Spirituality in a Modern Chinese Metropolis.” In Chinese Religious Life, edited by David A. Palmer, Glenn Shive, and Philip L. Wickeri. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp.13-29.

Fisher, Gareth. “Morality Books and the Revival of Lay Buddhism in China.” In: Adam Yuet Chau [ed.], Religion in Contemporary China: Revitalization and Innovation. London: Routledge, 2011. Pp. 53-80.

Goossaert, Vincent. “Une repression endemique? La destruction des «temples immoraux» en Chine sous les Qing (1644-1898).” In: Arnaud Brotons, Yannick Bruneton & Nathalie Kouamé [eds.], État, religion et répression en Asie: Chine, Corée, Japon, Vietnam (XIIIe-XXIe siècles). Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2011. Pp. 183-221.

Goossaert, Vincent. “Yu Yue (1821–1906) explore l’au-delà: La culture religieuse des élites chinoises à la veille des revolutions.” Miscellanea Asiatica: Mélanges en l’honneur de Françoise Aubin / Festschrift in Honour of Françoise Aubin, edited by Roberte Hamayon, Denise Aigle, Isabelle Charleux, and Vincent Goossaert. Sankt Augustin, Monumenta Serica, 2011. Pp. 623-656.

Huang, C. Julia, Elena Valussi, and David A. Palmer. “Gender and Sexuality.” In Chinese Religious Life, edited by David A. Palmer, Glenn Shive, and Philip L. Wickeri. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp.107-123.

Jones, Stephen. “Revival in Crisis: Amateur Ritual Associations in Hebei.” In: Adam Yuet Chau [ed.], Religion in Contemporary China: Revitalization and Innovation. London: Routledge, 2011. Pp. 154-181.

Katz, Paul R. „Spirit-writing Halls and the Development of Local Communities: A Case Study of Puli (Nantou County).“ Min-su ch’ü-i / Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore 174 (2011): 103-184.

Lagerwey, John. “Village Religion in Huizhou: A Preliminary Assessment.” Min-su ch’ü-i / Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore 174 (2011): 305-357.

Palmer, David A. “Chinese Redemptive Societies and Salvationist Religion: Historical Phenomenon or Sociological Category?” Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore / Minsu quyi 172 (2011): 21-72.

Palmer, David A. “Chinese Religious Innovation in the Qigong Movement: The Case of Zhonggong.” In: Adam Yuet Chau [ed.], Religion in Contemporary China: Revitalization and Innovation. London: Routledge, 2011. Pp. 182-202.

Palmer, David A.; Paul R. Katz, Wang Chien-chuan. “Introduction: Redemptive Societies as Confucian NRMSs?” Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore / Minsu quyi 172 (2011): 1-12.

Palmer, David A. “The Body: Health, Nation, and Transcendence.” In Chinese Religious Life, edited by David A. Palmer, Glenn Shive, and Philip L. Wickeri. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp.87-106.

Tam, Wai Lun. “Communal Worship and Festivals in Chinese Villages.” In Chinese Religious Life, edited by David A. Palmer, Glenn Shive, and Philip L. Wickeri. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp.30-49.

Weller, Robert P. “Chinese Cosmology and the Environment.” In Chinese Religious Life, edited by David A. Palmer, Glenn Shive, and Philip L. Wickeri. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp.124-138.