By tracing broad stages in the evolution of she worship, I argue that the history of the organization and meaning of the she is the result of a complex interaction between state policy, and local society and culture. From the Tang to the Song, the cults of indigenous groups prior to the Han presence were reworked into forms which, in certain written sources, resemble those of immigrants from north central China. In the next phase, which reached its high point in the early Ming, strict regulations on local religious practice were introduced from above, leading to further restructuring of cult forms and norms. Although the Ming official system soon broke down, conformity, or claims to conformity, with these norms became a cultural resource to be pursued, preserved and deployed in local struggles and in the relationship between local society and the state. My main goal in the paper is to develop a more nuanced understanding of the constantly evolving relationship between the imperial state and local society.
Much recent scholarship explores the persistence of local culture in the face of imperial hegemony.
But local culture was not simply a matter of mechanistic reaction or resistance to unsuccessful hegemony. It also involved the appropriation and manipulation of imperial symbols and language to serve diverse strategies in local politics and society. In Fuzhou, the complexities of ethnic interaction, Ming imperial attempts to regulate local religious practices, and the emergence of the lineage as a meaningful social organization all came together in the shaping of local religious life. The twelfth-century gazetteer of Fuzhou, the Sanshan zhi, bears out many of Kanai's observations. Stories in the gazetteer tell of previously anonymous gods of the soil which developed anthropomorphic representations in the Tang-Song period, often by making their identities known to mediums or appearing in dreams.