The Sung Dynasty (960-1278) was a time of vast changes and new challenges in China. The growth of the urban and rural economics, population increase, the emergence of an educated elite, political and intellectual ferment, and threats from hostile neighbors are some of the forces that shaped the age. How did Sung statesmen and thinkers view the relation of state and society and the role of political action in solving society's ills? The essays in Ordering the World explore contemporary ideas underlying policies, programs, and institutions of the period and examine attitudes toward history and sources of authority. Their findings have important implications for our understanding of the neo-Confucian movement in Sung history and of the Sung in the history of Chinese ideas about politics and social action. Contents: Introduction by Conrad Schirokauer and Robert P. Hymes "Su Hsun's Pragmatic Statecraft," by George Hatch "State Power and Economic Activism during the New Policies, 1068-1085," by Paul J. Smith "Government, Society, and State," by Peter K. Bol "Chu Hsi's Sense of History," by Conrad Schirokauer "Community and Welfare," by Richard von Glahn "Charitable Estates as an Aspect of Statecraft in Southern Sung China," by Linda Walton "Moral Duty and Self-Regulating Process in Southern Sung Views of Famine Relief," by Robert P. Hymes "The Historian as Critic," by John W. Chaffee "Wei Liao-weng's Thwarted Statecraft," by James T. C. Liu "Chen Te-hsiu and Statecraft," by Wm. Theodore de Bary This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993.

Using a combination of newly mined Sung sources and modern ethnography, Robert Hymes addresses questions that have perplexed China scholars in recent years. Were Chinese gods celestial officials, governing the fate and fortunes of their worshippers as China's own bureaucracy governed their worldly lives? Or were they personal beings, patrons or parents or guardians, offering protection in exchange for reverence and sacrifice?
To answer these questions Hymes examines the professional exorcist sects and rising Immortals' cults of the Sung dynasty alongside ritual practices in contemporary Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as miracle tales, liturgies, spirit law codes, devotional poetry, and sacred geographies of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries. Drawing upon historical and anthropological evidence, he argues that two contrasting and contending models informed how the Chinese saw and see their gods. These models were used separately or in creative combination to articulate widely varying religious standpoints and competing ideas of both secular and divine power. Whether gods were bureaucrats or personal protectors depended, and still depends, says Hymes, on who worships them, in what setting, and for what purposes.