Description

Book Synopsis
In a society that has seen epochal change over a few generations, what remains to hold people together and offer them a sense of continuity and meaning? In Songs for Dead Parents, Erik Mueggler shows how in contemporary China death and the practices surrounding it have become central to maintaining a connection with the world of ancestors, ghosts, and spirits that socialism explicitly disavowed. Drawing on more than twenty years of fieldwork in a mountain community in Yunnan Province, Songs for Dead Parents shows how people view the dead as both material and immaterial, as effigies replace corpses, tombstones replace effigies, and texts eventually replace tombstones in a long process of disentangling the dead from the shared world of matter and memory. It is through these processes that people envision the cosmological underpinnings of the world and assess the social relations that make up their community. Thus, state interventions aimed at reforming death practices have been deeply co

Songs for Dead Parents Corpse Text and World in

    Product form

    £76.00

    Includes FREE delivery

    RRP £80.00 – you save £4.00 (5%)

    Order before 4pm tomorrow for delivery by Tue 11 Aug 2026.

    A Hardback by Erik Mueggler

    1 in stock

      Trusted by thousands of customers. See 2,385+ Customer Reviews

      View other formats and editions of Songs for Dead Parents Corpse Text and World in by Erik Mueggler

      Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
      Publication Date: Publication Date: 02/12/2017
      ISBN13: 9780226483382, 978-0226483382
      ISBN10: 022648338X
      Also in:
      Sociology: death and dying East Asian religions and spiritual beliefs

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      In a society that has seen epochal change over a few generations, what remains to hold people together and offer them a sense of continuity and meaning? In Songs for Dead Parents, Erik Mueggler shows how in contemporary China death and the practices surrounding it have become central to maintaining a connection with the world of ancestors, ghosts, and spirits that socialism explicitly disavowed. Drawing on more than twenty years of fieldwork in a mountain community in Yunnan Province, Songs for Dead Parents shows how people view the dead as both material and immaterial, as effigies replace corpses, tombstones replace effigies, and texts eventually replace tombstones in a long process of disentangling the dead from the shared world of matter and memory. It is through these processes that people envision the cosmological underpinnings of the world and assess the social relations that make up their community. Thus, state interventions aimed at reforming death practices have been deeply co

      Recently viewed products

      © 2026 Book Curl

        • American Express
        • Apple Pay
        • Diners Club
        • Discover
        • Google Pay
        • Maestro
        • Mastercard
        • PayPal
        • Shop Pay
        • Union Pay
        • Visa

        Login

        Forgot your password?

        Don't have an account yet?
        Create account