{"product_id":"a-time-of-lost-gods-9780520303034","title":"A Time of Lost Gods","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTraversing visible and invisible realms, A Time of Lost Gods attends to profound rereadings of politics, religion, and madness in the cosmic accounts of spirit mediumship. Drawing on research across a temple, a psychiatric unit, and the home altars of spirit mediums in a rural county of China's Central Plain, it asks: What ghostly forms emerge after the death of Mao and the so-called end of history? The story of religion in China since the market reforms of the late 1970s is often told through its destruction under Mao and relative flourishing thereafter. Here, those who engage in mediumship offer a different history of the present. They approach Mao's reign not simply as an earthly secular rule, but an exceptional interval of divine sovereignty, after which the cosmos collapsed into chaos. Caught between a fading era and an ever-receding horizon,those left behind by labor outmigration refigure the evacuated hometown as an ethical-spiritual center to come, amidst a proliferation of madness-inducing spirits.Following pronouncements of China's rise, and in the wake of what Chinese intellectuals termed semicolonialism, the stories here tell of spirit mediums, patients, and psychiatrists caught in a shared dilemma, in a time when gods have lost their way.    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eA Time of Lost Gods\u003c\/i\u003e is a most welcome addition to our understandings of religion and psychiatry in contemporary China.\" * China Quarterly *\u003cbr\u003e\"Ng has expertly offered an invaluable insight into the Chinese religious landscape. This volume should be read by all those with an interest in Chinese religion, especially those who favor the ethnographic approach.\" * Religious Studies Review *\u003cbr\u003e“Ng opens worlds. . . .This elegantly written monograph is a must-read for scholars of the medical humanities and the anthropology of medicine in China.”  * Asian Medicine *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePrologue: We Never Should Have Met\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Introduction: The China of China\u003cbr\u003e 1. After the Storm \u003cbr\u003e 2. Ten Thousand Years\u003cbr\u003e 3. Spectral Collision\u003cbr\u003e 4. A Soul Adrift\u003cbr\u003e 5. Vertiginous Abbreviation\u003cbr\u003e Coda: Those Who Remain\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgments\u003cbr\u003e Notes\u003cbr\u003e References\u003cbr\u003e Index","brand":"University of California Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49402916798807,"sku":"9780520303034","price":27.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780520303034.jpg?v=1730481838","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/a-time-of-lost-gods-9780520303034","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}