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Informative and eye-opening, the Handbook on Religion in China
provides a uniquely broad insight into the contemporary Chinese
variations of Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. In turn, China's
own religions of Daoism, of filial piety and transmissions of rites
have spread beyond China, a progression that is explored in detail
across 19 chapters, written by leading experts in the field.
Utilising a historical focus to emphasize developments and
highlight the transformations of ritual practices, festivals,
divination and traditions, this Handbook deals with the emergence
of new attitudes to selfhood and the great diversity of civic and
other rituals. Traditional ways of forming relationships and
conducting life-cycle rituals are also considered. This
comprehensive Handbook investigates the ways in which all of these
changes are affected by governmental controls that have intriguing
unintended consequences. Providing a solid introduction for both
newcomers and informed readers, this Handbook will be a key
resource for sociologists and anthropologists of ritual and
religion as well as students of religious studies, contemporary
Chinese studies and the sociology of religion. With extensive
references to assist readers wishing to further deepen their
understanding this Handbook will also be of interest to historians
and individuals interested in contemporary China. Contributors
include: I. Beller-Hann, S. Billioud, D. Campo, A.Y. Chau, B. Chen,
S. Feuchtwang, G. Ha, A. Iskra, S. Jones, J. Kang, R. Madsen, W.
Matthews, E. Oxfeld, D.A. Palmer, P.G. Ran, M. Schumann, R.G.
Tiedemann, R.P. Weller, F. Winiger, K. Wu, Y. Zhu
The recent heritage boom in China is transforming local social,
economic, and cultural life and reshaping domestic and global
notions of China's national identity. Based on long-term
ethnographic fieldwork conducted largely by young anthropologists
in China, Grassroots Values and Local Cultural Heritage in China
departs from the dominant top-down UNESCO-influenced narrative of
cultural heritage preservation and approaches the local not as a
fixed definition of place but as a shifting site of negotiation
between state, entrepreneurial, transcultural, and local community
interests. The volume takes readers along an unusual trajectory
between a disadvantaged neighborhood in central Beijing,
metropolitan centers in Anhui and Sichuan, Quanzhou in the
southeast, and Yunnan in the southwest before finally ending at the
great Samye Monastery in Tibet. Across these sites, the
contributors converge in apprehending the grassroots as an arena of
everyday life and belonging underpinning ordinary social
interactions and cultural practices as diverse as funeral rituals,
Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimages, and encounters between young
contemporary artists and the Bloomsbury Group. In examining the
diversity of local cultural practices and knowledge that underpin
ideas about cultural value, this volume argues that grassroots
cultural beliefs are essential to the liveability and
sustainability of life and living heritage.
This book, first published in 1983, examines the significant
economic reforms undergone by China following the death of Mao and
the downfall of the Gang of Four. It looks at Chinese economists'
conceptions of the necessity for change and compares China's
reforms with similar ones carried out by the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe. There is a detailed analysis of the different
sectors of the economy which shows how the reforms were carried out
in practice.
Two of the most destructive moments of state violence in the
twentieth century occurred in Europe between 1933 and 1945 and in
China between 1959 and 1961 (the Great Leap famine). This is the
first book to bring the two histories together in order to examine
their differences and to understand if there are any similar
processes of transmission at work. The author expertly ties in the
Taiwanese civil war between Nationalists and Communists, which
included the White Terror from 1947 to 1987, a less well-known but
equally revealing part of twentieth-century history. Personal and
family stories are told, often in the individual's own words, and
then compared with the public accounts of the same events as found
in official histories, commemorations, school textbooks and other
forms of public memory. The author presents innovative and
constructive criticisms of social memory theories in order to make
sense both of what happened and how what happened is transmitted.
Stephan Feuchtwang is part-time Professor in the Department of
Anthropology, London School of Economics. He has published books on
Chinese popular religion, feng-shui and on grassroots charisma in
southern Fujian and northern Taiwan. His research interests are on
the relations between politics and religion and on the anthropology
of history and comparative civilisations. For this book he extended
his research from China and Taiwan to Germany, where he was born
and from which his parents fled as refugees to England.
China in Comparative Perspective provides an overview of China
based on empirical observation by field workers, as well as on
historical documents, Chinese literary and philosophical texts and
core theoretical frameworks in the social sciences. It enables
readers to develop ways of putting the modern history, politics,
economy and society of China into a framework in which China can be
compared and contrasted with other countries.Topics covered include
the rise of capitalism, post-socialist transformations, family and
gender, nationalism, democracy, and civil society. Each chapter
offers a comparison with other countries in East and South-Asia,
Europe and the rest of the world, showing how analytic concepts
have to be modified to avoid either Eurocentric or Sinocentric
bias, and how ideas derived from Chinese sources and observations
must be accommodated for complete understanding of the issues
discussed.Written by two well-known anthropologists of China from
the London School of Economics, Stephan Feuchtwang and Hans
Steinmuller, this book is a comprehensive course for postgraduate
students in Chinese and Asian studies, anthropology, sociology,
political economy, politics and international relations.
China in Comparative Perspective provides an overview of China
based on empirical observation by field workers, as well as on
historical documents, Chinese literary and philosophical texts and
core theoretical frameworks in the social sciences. It enables
readers to develop ways of putting the modern history, politics,
economy and society of China into a framework in which China can be
compared and contrasted with other countries.Topics covered include
the rise of capitalism, post-socialist transformations, family and
gender, nationalism, democracy, and civil society. Each chapter
offers a comparison with other countries in East and South-Asia,
Europe and the rest of the world, showing how analytic concepts
have to be modified to avoid either Eurocentric or Sinocentric
bias, and how ideas derived from Chinese sources and observations
must be accommodated for complete understanding of the issues
discussed.Written by two well-known anthropologists of China from
the London School of Economics, Stephan Feuchtwang and Hans
Steinmuller, this book is a comprehensive course for postgraduate
students in Chinese and Asian studies, anthropology, sociology,
political economy, politics and international relations.
Putting China into the context of general anthropology offers novel
insights into its history, culture and society. Studies in the
anthropology of China need to look outwards, to other
anthropological areas, while at the same time, anthropologists
specialised elsewhere cannot afford to ignore contributions from
China. This book introduces a number of key themes and in each case
describes how the anthropology and ethnography of China relates to
the surrounding theories and issues. The themes chosen include the
anthropology of intimacy, of morality, of food and of feasting, as
well as the anthropology of civilisation, modernity and the
state.The Anthropology of China covers both long historical
perspectives and ethnographies of the twenty-first century. For the
first time, ethnographic perspectives on China are contextualised
in comparison with general anthropological debates. Readers are
invited to engage in and rethink China's place within the wider
world, making it perfect for professional researchers and teachers
of anthropology and Chinese history and society, and for advanced
undergraduate and graduate study.
Putting China into the context of general anthropology offers novel
insights into its history, culture and society. Studies in the
anthropology of China need to look outwards, to other
anthropological areas, while at the same time, anthropologists
specialised elsewhere cannot afford to ignore contributions from
China. This book introduces a number of key themes and in each case
describes how the anthropology and ethnography of China relates to
the surrounding theories and issues. The themes chosen include the
anthropology of intimacy, of morality, of food and of feasting, as
well as the anthropology of civilisation, modernity and the
state.The Anthropology of China covers both long historical
perspectives and ethnographies of the twenty-first century. For the
first time, ethnographic perspectives on China are contextualised
in comparison with general anthropological debates. Readers are
invited to engage in and rethink China's place within the wider
world, making it perfect for professional researchers and teachers
of anthropology and Chinese history and society, and for advanced
undergraduate and graduate study.
First published in 2001, Popular Religion in China: The Imperial
Metaphor was written to bring together both the previously
unpublished and published results of fieldwork in the People's
Republic of China and Taiwan and to put them into an historical,
political, and theoretical context. The book presents Chinese
popular religion as a distinctive institution and describes its
content as an 'imperial metaphor'. In doing so, it explores a wide
range of topics, including both official and local cults, local
festivals, Daoism, Ang Gong, the politics of religion, and
political ritual.
This book relates the stories of four leaders under very different
political regimes: Colonial, Nationalist and Communist. The authors
compare Chinese notions of respect and inspiration with their
equivalents in other religious and political histories of colonial
and post-colonial modernity, thereby producing a thorough
re-working of the idea of charisma. The result is an intriguing
study of the relationship between religious and political authority
in a changing world.
This book relates the stories of four leaders under very different political regimes: Colonial, Nationalist and Communist. The authors compare Chinese notions of respect and inspiration with their equivalents in other religious and political histories of colonial and post-colonial modernity, thereby producing a thorough re-working of the idea of charisma. The result is an intriguing study of the relationship between religious and political authority in a changing world.
This book, first published in 1983, examines the significant
economic reforms undergone by China following the death of Mao and
the downfall of the Gang of Four. It looks at Chinese economists'
conceptions of the necessity for change and compares China's
reforms with similar ones carried out by the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe. There is a detailed analysis of the different
sectors of the economy which shows how the reforms were carried out
in practice.
Civilisation is a debated concept and is often associated with the
prerogatives of the 'West', colonial histories, and even emerging
global politics. In this book, Stephen Feuchtwang and Michael
Rowlands use the examples of Africa and China to provide a new
conceptualisation that challenges traditional notions of
'civilisation'. They explain how to understand duration and
continuity as long-term processes of transformation. Civilisations
are best seen as practices of feeding and hospitality, of rituals
and manners of living and dying, of entering the portals into the
invisible world that surrounds and encompasses us, of healing and
the knowledge of the encompassing universe and its powers,
including its ghosts and demons. Civilisations furnish the moral
ideals for people to live by and aspire to and they are changed
more by the actions of disappointed grassroots and their little
traditions than by their ruling authorities. Just as they
revitalise and change their civilisations, this book revitalises
and changes the way to think about civilisations in the humanities,
the historical and the social sciences.
To make a place is to create a location where its creators can feel
they belong. Processes of place-making are still very much ongoing
today. Geographers, sociologists, political scientists and
philosophers of advanced capitalism have said that place is a
localisation of the global. However, the creation of a place is not
legible from such grand perspectives. It is also much more creative
than can be predicted by translating large-scale processes into
local cultures. Anthropologists have been sensitive to the
intimate, tragic and lyrical senses of local place. But their
theorising has been too much bound up with cosmology and
insufficiently with the intermediate scales of state and local
state. In this book, Stephan Feuchtwang and his contributors offer
a set of historical, anthropological and scale-mediated studies
from China - a country that includes a subcontinental variety of
cultures and landscapes. In the twentieth century it experienced
collapse in civil war and was then reasserted as a particularly
strong state. Now it is managing the fastest growing capitalist
economy in the world. These intriguing Chinese studies contribute
to the anthropology of place and space, providing an historical
perspective on processes of change and of accommodation to
disruption. The stories they tell are fascinating in their own
right, but in addition, the result is a critical reformulation of
previous theories of place that geographers, philosophers,
historians, and anthropologists will find of great interest.
Civilisation is a debated concept and is often associated with the
prerogatives of the 'West', colonial histories, and even emerging
global politics. In this book, Stephen Feuchtwang and Michael
Rowlands use the examples of Africa and China to provide a new
conceptualisation that challenges traditional notions of
'civilisation'. They explain how to understand duration and
continuity as long-term processes of transformation. Civilisations
are best seen as practices of feeding and hospitality, of rituals
and manners of living and dying, of entering the portals into the
invisible world that surrounds and encompasses us, of healing and
the knowledge of the encompassing universe and its powers,
including its ghosts and demons. Civilisations furnish the moral
ideals for people to live by and aspire to and they are changed
more by the actions of disappointed grassroots and their little
traditions than by their ruling authorities. Just as they
revitalise and change their civilisations, this book revitalises
and changes the way to think about civilisations in the humanities,
the historical and the social sciences.
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