Miraculous response
Subtitle: doing popular religion in contemporary China
By: Adam Yuet Chau
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 317
Subjects: Religion and culture -- China -- Shaanxi Sheng; Shaanxi Sheng (China) -- Religion; Shaanxi Sheng (China) -- Social conditions
Description: "Based on a total of 18 months of fieldwork in Shaanbei (northern Shaanxi Province), this book is the first book-length ethnographic case study of the revival of a popular religious temple in contemporary rural China. The book reveals that "doing popular religion" is much more complex than praying to gods and burning incense. It examines the organizational and cultural logics that inform the staging of popular religious activities such as temple festivals. It also shows the politics behind the religious revival: the village-level local activists who seize upon temples and temple associations as a valuable political, economic, and symbolic resource, and the different local state agents who interact with temple associations and temple bosses." "The study sheds unique light on shifting state-society relationships in the reform era and is of interest to scholars and students in Asian Studies, the social sciences, and religious and ritual studies."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [273]-292) and index
Table of contents: title: Shaanbei history, society, and culture; title: Shaanbei popular religious landscape; title: Beliefs and practices : Shaanbei people's religiosity and religious habitus; title: Legends and histories : Heilongdawang and the Heilongdawang temple; title: Provisioning magical efficacy and divine benevolence; title: Modes of social organization and folk event productions; title: Red-hot sociality; title: Temple boss and local elite : the story of Lao Wang; title: Longwanggou and agrarian political culture; title: The local state and the politics of legitimation