Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China

Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China PDF Author: James L. Watson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520071292
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
During the late imperial era (1500-1911), China, though divided by ethnic, linguistic, and regional differences at least as great as those prevailing in Europe, enjoyed a remarkable solidarity. What held Chinese society together for so many centuries? Some scholars have pointed to the institutional control over the written word as instrumental in promoting cultural homogenization; others, the manipulation of the performing arts. This volume, comprised of essays by both anthropologists and historians, furthers this important discussion by examining the role of death rituals in the unification of Chinese culture.

Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China

Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China PDF Author: James L. Watson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520071292
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Get Book

Book Description
During the late imperial era (1500-1911), China, though divided by ethnic, linguistic, and regional differences at least as great as those prevailing in Europe, enjoyed a remarkable solidarity. What held Chinese society together for so many centuries? Some scholars have pointed to the institutional control over the written word as instrumental in promoting cultural homogenization; others, the manipulation of the performing arts. This volume, comprised of essays by both anthropologists and historians, furthers this important discussion by examining the role of death rituals in the unification of Chinese culture.

Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China

Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China PDF Author: James L. Watson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520071298
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
During the late imperial era (1500-1911), China, though divided by ethnic, linguistic, and regional differences at least as great as those prevailing in Europe, enjoyed a remarkable solidarity. What held Chinese society together for so many centuries? Some scholars have pointed to the institutional control over the written word as instrumental in promoting cultural homogenization; others, the manipulation of the performing arts. This volume, comprised of essays by both anthropologists and historians, furthers this important discussion by examining the role of death rituals in the unification of Chinese culture.

Chinese American Death Rituals

Chinese American Death Rituals PDF Author: Sue Fawn Chung
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759107342
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
They have looked to individual beliefs, customs, religion, and environment for this resolution. This volume expertly describes and analyzes cultural retention and transformation in the after-death rituals of Chinese American communities."--Jacket.

Mourning in Late Imperial China

Mourning in Late Imperial China PDF Author: Norman Kutcher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521624398
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Kutcher's study of mourning demonstrates how Qing China's Manchu leaders quietly but forcefully undermined, not reinvigorated, the Confucian mourning system.

Perspectives on Modern China

Perspectives on Modern China PDF Author: Kenneth Lieberthal
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315288753
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
The conveners (the editors of this book) of the September 1989 Four Anniversaries China Conference in Annapolis, asked the contributors to look back from that point in time to consider four major events in modern Chinese history in the perspective of the rapid changes that were shaping the Chinese society, economy, polity, and sense of place in the world in the 1980s, a time when China was making rapid strides toward becoming more integrated with the outside world. With contributions by distinguished scholars in the field, the four anniversaries considered are the High Qing, the May Fourth Movement, forty years of communism in China, and ten years of the Deng era.

Christian Heretics in Late Imperial China

Christian Heretics in Late Imperial China PDF Author: Lars Peter Laamann
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134429983
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Following the prohibition of missionary activity after 1724, China's Christians were effectively cut off from all foreign theological guidance. The ensuing isolation forced China's Christian communities to become self-reliant in perpetuating the basic principles of their faith. Left to their own devices, the missionary seed developed into a panoply of indigenous traditions, with Christian ancestry as the common denominator. Christianity thus underwent the same process of inculturation as previous religious traditions in China, such as Buddhism and Judaism. As the guardian of orthodox morality, the prosecuting state sought to exercise all-pervading control over popular thoughts and social functions. Filling the gap within the discourse of Christianity in China and also as part of the wider analysis of religion in late Imperial China, this study presents the campaigns against Christians during this period as part and parcel of the campaign against 'heresy' and 'heretical' movements in general.

Chinese American Death Rituals

Chinese American Death Rituals PDF Author: Sue Fawn Chung
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 0759114625
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Death is a topic that has fascinated people for centuries. In the English-speaking world, eulogies in poetic form could be traced back to the 1640s, but gained prominence with the 'graveyard school' of poets in the eighteenth century often stressing the finality of death. Chinese American Death Rituals examines Chinese American funerary rituals and cemeteries from the late nineteenth century until the present in order to understand the importance of Chinese funerary rites and their transformation through time. The authors in this volume discuss the meaning of funerary rituals and their normative dimension and the social practices that have been influenced by tradition. Shaped by individual beliefs, customs, religion, and environment, Chinese Americans have resolved the tensions between assimilation into the mainstream culture and their strong Chinese heritage in a variety of ways. This volume expertly describes and analyzes Chinese American cultural retention and transformation in rituals after death.

Rulin waishi and Cultural Transformation in Late Imperial China

Rulin waishi and Cultural Transformation in Late Imperial China PDF Author: Shang Wei
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684170435
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Rulin waishi (The Unofficial History of the Scholars) is more than a landmark in the history of the Chinese novel. This eighteenth-century work, which was deeply embedded in the intellectual and literary discourses of its time, challenges the reader to come to grips with the mid-Qing debates over ritual and ritualism, and the construction of history, narrative, and lyricism. Wu Jingzi’s (1701–54) ironic portrait of literati life was unprecedented in its comprehensive treatment of the degeneration of mores, the predicaments of official institutions, and the Confucian elite’s futile struggle to reassert moral and cultural authority. Like many of his fellow literati, Wu found the vernacular novel an expressive and malleable medium for discussing elite concerns. Through a close reading of Rulin waishi, Shang Wei seeks to answer such questions as What accounts for the literati’s enthusiasm for writing and reading novels? Does this enthusiasm bespeak a conscious effort to develop a community of critical discourse outside the official world? Why did literati authors eschew publication? What are the bases for their social and cultural criticisms? How far do their criticisms go, given the authors’ alleged Confucianism? And if literati authors were interested solely in recovering moral and cultural hegemony for their class, how can we explain the irony found in their works?

Separation and Reunion in Modern China

Separation and Reunion in Modern China PDF Author: Charles Stafford
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521784344
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Rituals concerning separation and reunion and their impact on Chinese and Taiwanese society and culture.

Conflict, Community, and the State in Late Imperial Sichuan

Conflict, Community, and the State in Late Imperial Sichuan PDF Author: Quinn Javers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429638760
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
Exploring local practices of dispute resolution and laying bare the routine role of violence in the late-Qing dynasty, Conflict, Community, and the State in Late Imperial Sichuan demonstrates the significance of everyday violence in ordering, disciplining, and building communities. The book examines over 350 legal cases that comprise the "cases of unnatural death" archival file from 1890 to 1900 in Ba County, Sichuan province. The archive presents an untidy array of death, including homicides, suicides, and found bodies. An analysis of the muddled and often petty disputes found in these records reveals the existence of a local system of authority that disciplined and maintained daily life. Often relying on violence, this local justice system occasionally intersected with the state’s justice system, but was not dependent on it. This study demonstrates the importance of informal, local authority to our understanding of justice in the late Qing era. Providing a non-elite perspective on Qing power, law, justice, and the role of the state, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese and Asian history, as well as legal history and comparative studies of violence.