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Author: Barend ter Haar Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108658350 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
The basis of Chinese religious culture, and with that many aspects of daily life, was the threat and fear of demonic attacks. These were inherently violent and could only be counteracted by violence as well - even if this reactive violence was masked by euphemisms such as execution, expulsion, exorcisms and so on. At the same time, violence was a crucial dimension of the maintenance of norms and values, for instance in sworn agreements or in beliefs about underworld punishment. Violence was also an essential aspect of expressing respect through sacrificial gifts of meat (and in an earlier stage of Chinese culture also human flesh) and through a culture of auto-mutilation and ritual suicide. At the same time, conventional indigenous terms for violence such as bao 暴 were not used for most of these practices since they were not experienced as such, but rather justified as positive uses of physical force.
Author: Barend ter Haar Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108658350 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
The basis of Chinese religious culture, and with that many aspects of daily life, was the threat and fear of demonic attacks. These were inherently violent and could only be counteracted by violence as well - even if this reactive violence was masked by euphemisms such as execution, expulsion, exorcisms and so on. At the same time, violence was a crucial dimension of the maintenance of norms and values, for instance in sworn agreements or in beliefs about underworld punishment. Violence was also an essential aspect of expressing respect through sacrificial gifts of meat (and in an earlier stage of Chinese culture also human flesh) and through a culture of auto-mutilation and ritual suicide. At the same time, conventional indigenous terms for violence such as bao 暴 were not used for most of these practices since they were not experienced as such, but rather justified as positive uses of physical force.
Author: Jonathan N. Lipman Publisher: State University of New York Press ISBN: 1438411030 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 264
Book Description
In this volume, Lipman and Harrell explore the prevalence and ubiquity of violence in China, a society whose official norms value harmony and condemn conflict. The book investigates violence in a wide variety of situations through the sweep of history and in contexts ranging from the family to the national polity. The book explores motivations for violence from both a historical and a contemporary perspective. Historically, the authors cover bloody religious rebellions in premodern times, the depiction of violence in traditional popular novels, ethnic strife between Muslims and Han Chinese in the Northwest, and feuding local communities in the Southeast. Modern China is depicted by analyses of rural and urban violence in Mao's Cultural Revolution and an examination of continuing domestic violence. This depiction of the cultural themes and motivations for violence allow lessons drawn from specific contexts to be applied to the nature of Chinese culture in general.
Author: Sarah Cook Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1538106116 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 140
Book Description
The Battle for China’s Spirit is the first comprehensive analysis of its kind, focusing on seven major religious groups in China that together account for over 350 million believers: Chinese Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Tibetan Buddhism, and Falun Gong. The study examines the evolution of the Communist Party’s policies of religious control, how they are applied differently to diverse faith communities, and how citizens are responding to these policies. The study—which draws on hundreds of official documents and interviews with religious leaders, lay believers, and scholars—finds that Chinese government controls over religion have intensified since November 2012, seeping into new areas of daily life. Yet millions of religious believers defy official restrictions or engage in some form of direct protest, at times scoring significant victories. The report explores how these dynamics affect China’s overall social, political, and economic environment, while offering recommendations to both the Chinese government and international actors for how to increase the space for peaceful religious practice in a country where spirituality has been deeply embedded in its culture for millennia.
Author: Association for Asian Studies. Meeting Publisher: SUNY Press ISBN: 9780791401132 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 264
Book Description
In this volume, Lipman and Harrell explore the prevalence and ubiquity of violence in China, a society whose official norms value harmony and condemn conflict. The book investigates violence in a wide variety of situations through the sweep of history and in contexts ranging from the family to the national polity. The book explores motivations for violence from both a historical and a contemporary perspective. Historically, the authors cover bloody religious rebellions in premodern times, the depiction of violence in traditional popular novels, ethnic strife between Muslims and Han Chinese in the Northwest, and feuding local communities in the Southeast. Modern China is depicted by analyses of rural and urban violence in Mao's Cultural Revolution and an examination of continuing domestic violence. This depiction of the cultural themes and motivations for violence allow lessons drawn from specific contexts to be applied to the nature of Chinese culture in general.
Author: Jimmy Yu Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199844895 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
In this illuminating study of a vital but long overlooked aspect of Chinese religious life, Jimmy Yu reveals that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, self-inflicted violence was an essential and sanctioned part of Chinese culture. He examines a wide range of practices, including blood writing, filial body-slicing, chastity mutilations and suicides, ritual exposure, and self-immolation, arguing that each practice was public, scripted, and a signal of cultural expectations. Individuals engaged in acts of self-inflicted violence to exercise power and to affect society, by articulating moral values, reinstituting order, forging new social relations, and protecting against the threat of moral ambiguity. Self-inflicted violence was intelligible both to the person doing the act and to those who viewed and interpreted it, regardless of the various religions of the period: Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and other religions. This book is a groundbreaking contribution to scholarship on bodily practices in late imperial China, challenging preconceived ideas about analytic categories of religion, culture, and ritual in the study of Chinese religions.
Author: Avron Boretz Publisher: University of Hawaii Press ISBN: 0824860713 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
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. This work is a significant contribution to the study of Chinese ritual and religion, the history and sociology of Chinese underworld, the history and anthropology of the martial arts, and the anthropology of masculinity.
Author: Richard Madsen Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004465189 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 188
Book Description
“Sinicization” has become the slogan that guides Chinese official policy towards religion. What does it mean? Where will it lead? This book is one of the first in English that answers these questions.
Author: Mark Juergensmeyer Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190649666 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
"An introductory survey of the whole field of study of religion and violence. It includes overviews of major religious traditions, and it analyzes patterns and themes relating to religious violence. It also explores major analytic approaches, and forges new directions in the study of this important emerging field"--
Author: Jimmy Yung Fung Yu Publisher: ISBN: 9780199949564 Category : China Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
In this study of a vital but long overlooked aspect of Chinese religious life, Jimmy Yu reveals that in the 16th and 17th centuries, self-inflicted violence was an essential and sanctioned part of Chinese culture.
Author: Barend ter Haar
Author: Barend ter Haar
Author: Jonathan N. Lipman
Author: Sarah Cook
Author: Association for Asian Studies. Meeting
Author: Jimmy Yu
Author: Avron Boretz
Author: Richard Madsen
Author: Asia Watch Committee (U.S.)
Author: Mark Juergensmeyer
Author: Jimmy Yung Fung Yu