Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plain. Volume Two - A Survey of Village Temples and Ritual Activities

Making 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.

Product details

• Authors: Kenneth Dean, Zhenman Zheng
• Publisher: Brill
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 07.12.2009
• EAN: 9789004176010
• ISBN: 978-90-04-17601-0
• No. of pages: 1092
• Dimensions: 167 mm x 249 mm x 63 mm
• Weight: 1862 g
• Series: Handbook of Oriental Studies.
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > Other religions; Social sciences, law, business > Business > Economics