Description
Book SynopsisMaking ingenious use of a wide variety of sources, and old as well as modern technical resources, Kenneth Dean and Zheng Zhenman here set a new standard for an histoire totale for a coherently well-defined cultural region in China.At the same time it deals in-depth with the ongoing negotiation of modernity in Chinese village rituals. Over the past thirty years, local popular religion has been revived and re-invented in the villages of the irrigated alluvial plain of Putian, Fujian, China. Volume 1 provides a historical introduction to the formation of 153 regional ritual alliances made up of 724 villages. Early popular cults, Ming lineages, Qing multi-village alliances, late Qing spirit-medium associations, 20th century state attacks on local religion, and the role of Overseas Chinese and local communities in rebuilding the temple networks are discussed. Volume 2 surveys the current population, lineages, temples, gods, and annual rituals of these villages. Maps of each ritual alliance, the distribution of major cults and lineages, are included. Find information about a film related to the book here.
Trade Review"...the overall impression is that this is the product of awe-inspiring labours, and that it provides the raw material for a host of dissertations and books...Together [HO4 22, HO4 23 V.1, and HO4 23 V.2] make the persuasive case that without due consideration to religious life as a vehicle for communal organization and sociality and as a resource for individual and communal self-expression and identity, our analysis both of historical and of contemporary China remains needlessly impoverished." Michael Szonyi, Harvard University, Pacific Affairs: Vol. 85, No. 1 - March 2012 "Dean, Zheng, and their team are still at work, and these volumes represent only the most thoroughly mapped of a series of Putian monographs that are increasingly essential for students of Chinese religion, local history, state and local relations, and emigration during late imperial China and up to the present." Donald Sutton, Carnegie Mellon University, The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 70/1, February 2011
