STUDYING LOCAL RELIGIOUS CULTURE

2

GETTING TO KNOW EACH OTHER

• the speaker• what can he teach you (if anything)

• the audience• name & place• academic interests• text vs fieldwork• personal exposure to “religious life”

• do we have a shared vocabulary (probably not!)• our Englishes & our Chineses (invent a Chinese version for

this!)• full or abbreviated characters?• technical vocabulary• different view of normativity in research on religious culture

3

THESE LECTURES

• “local” religious culture= all religious culture!• tensions between perception, expectations and what

we (can) see• not a complete theoretical survey, was asked to put

my own research central• studying religious culture: begin by accepting the other• ground rules• there are “stupid” questions: still ask them• there are “intelligent” questions: also ask them• use English or Chinese, whichever comes easier• questions will help me to understand the audience and its

needs better

4

WHAT DO I KNOW?

• very little • what I do know:• incidental fieldwork (Hong Kong, Quanzhou region,

Taiwan, mostly communal rituals, funerary rituals & Feeding the Hungry Ghosts rituals, exorcist ritual theatre, variety of sacrificial rituals)

• historical research (communal religious culture, “ethnic minorities” [mostly Yao], lay Buddhism Song-Republican period, Triads, oral culture, temple cults)

• secondary literature

• studying religious culture: begin by accepting the other

5

PROBLEMS OF DOCUMENTATION

• either too normal and everyday (=> no record)• impact persecution and repression• normative sources• little research and even less fieldwork

6

“DEFINING” RELIGION (AWAY)

7

RELIGION

• religion 宗教 : Christian assumptions• central text (~canon)• doctrine• ritual & doctrinal specialists• centre of control• institutions

• does this cover actual life? And when?• religions of the books descending from early Judaism• even then only to a limit extent• places religious life outside of people

• this definition includes and excludes: it “constructs” entities, rather than “finding” them• excludes even B, D, C, since neither have a single central text or

centre of control• excludes all local religious life• top down (what do we study, who decides what is in or out of the

phenomenon)

8

DANGERS OF -ISMS

• your definitions: Buddhism, Daoism, & Confucianism• Buddhism 佛教• arrival China as –ism?• central text? who is in charge?• our assumptions• does it have a shared set of beliefs

• Daoism 道教• Confucianism 儒教• Western term (horrible) vs Chinese term (better)• ideas of “Confucius” or “texts” linked to Confucius?• Neoconfucianism (reinvented tradition)• still no central text, only points (plural) of departure

• Christianity 基督教 , 天主教 (! Christianities)• recent arrival, but rapidly spreading• to be seen as a local religious culture as well

9

RELIGIOUS CULTURE

• quick definition: • the way (ways) groups of people organize themselves and

create a world inside and around them, define life/living and death/being dead, whilst putting their own creative role outside the system and allow no falsification

• God, creator, central texts etc. are not part definition, but part of what is created

• “religious” as dimension, rather than entity in itself• adjective not noun• includes the Daoist, Buddhist, etc.• Includes practices, festivals, rituals, multiple perspectives, but

also psychoanalysis (!), near-death experiences etc. • stress is on our role in distinguishing this dimension (etic),

rather than ”uncovering” inside distinctions (emic)• need to look at emic distinctions

• culture: not study of isolated objects (texts etc.), but texts etc. in context

10

VS. PHILOSOPHICAL OR SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES

• not so different in epistemological scope & emotional intent, but: • religious culture “is”• philosophy “discusses” (can ideally be falsified, or becomes

ideology) • science “asks” (where it cannot be falsified it touches on

religious culture) (≠ 科學 ) • philosophy and science recognize role of people in creating this

system

• ways of seeing these three spheres of action and/or reflection• as continuous spectrum• set of discourses that interact, but can be maintained

separately (without becoming split personality)

11

SOCIAL HISTORY

• studying religious culture = social history• studying social history = religious history• using “religious” sources on social history• using “general” sources on religious history

12

CONCEPTUAL ISSUES

13

SOME CONCEPTS I USE (OR NOT)• orthopraxis & standardisation pantheon (James Watson)• seeming sameness of religious practice across China• not quite orthodoxy : not normative • overlooks hidden differences under labels (Michael Szonyi)

• doing religion (Adam Chau)• stories• beyond reading• telling stories as activity

• ritual• not just performing transmitted texts: but transforming, maybe

with texts and/or according to texts • our tasks: asking questions about performance and reception(s)

and audience(s)

• sacrifice • performance rather than just a set of symbols• setting up an exchange

14

CONCEPTS I DISLIKE

• popular (modern concept, compare 俗 , 愚 )• vs. elite (modern concept, compare 士 )• vs. widespread• “among the people” 民間• too vague: how to count (80% Chinese people until 1970s

are peasants!)

• heretic/heterodox (modern concept, compare 邪 ,妖 , 左道 )• any pejorative terms (superstition, cult, sect etc.)• Great Tradition & Little Traditions (R. Redfield)• diffused religion (CK Yang)

15

POWER

• then: who does the writing and why?• rarely just recording• selection => leaving out and editing• literate=> elites with specific sets of norms & values• influenced by self-representation• our task: to uncover the editing and reframing

• now: professionals • literate & university trained• part of academic discourse• need to find a job• connected to central & local institutions• independent?

16

TEXT

• text fixes unavoidably• act of writing down• use of concepts (consistency)

• all (almost) historical sources are textual in some way• texts• texts by literate people on oral culture

• text privileged by our witnesses and by us• this summer course good example!• research shamanism always begins with Chuci 楚辭• our texts become new norms

• text versus practice• text ≠practice• text in practice• texts reflecting (part of) practice

17

TEXT AND ORALITY

• need to save the texts from themselves• compare “classicist” traditions and importance

commentary (written and oral, the latter only fragmentarily transmitted in writing)

• ritual practice• changing attitudes towards texts• history of use of the written

• oral culture• not necessarily “popular”• changing attitudes towards orality• oral more prestigious than text for many centuries

18

SOME COMMENTS ON EXISTING RESEARCH

19

20

WHERE IS CHINA

21

WHAT IS CHINA

• Or rather: does China exist before 1911 (or even later?)• what “we” in the West mean by the term China ≠ Chinese terms

中國 , 中華民囯 , 中華人民共和國• China ≠ dynastic titles

• for our topic: • lack of cultural and religious integration• political history bias=> capital region ≠ rest of the empire• social history bias=> Lower Yangzi region ≠ rest of the empire• anthropology & religious studies bias=> Fujian (Taiwan) ≠ rest of

China

• and yet:• Yao Daoist ritual can tell us much on earlier role(s) Daoist ritual

22

WHICH CHINA

• (many) historians: when and as long as “classical Chinese” is (was) used in the sources

• (many) Western anthropologists: China begins long after 1949, nowadays even after 1976, as long as you can talk to people (since usually cannot read [classical] Chinese [very well, anyhow]!)

• (especially) Chinese anthropologists: only “minorities” (anthropology is of the quaint)

• (most) Chinese folklorists: local Han-culture throughout fieldwork

• sociologists, literary studies : modern China is urban, modern is what we recognize as “ours”/Western

• and so on and so forth

23

GEOGRAPHICAL ASSUMPTIONS

• China as entity?• regions: provinces (nowadays) ≠ regions• W. G. Skinner remains relevant• local language regions• dogma of a single China (esp. relevant when discussing

“ethnic minorities”, which are often majorities locally)• communication nodes (<=markets, roads, etc.)• results migration

• history of local religious culture regionally different• north : “south” (wherever the south may be)• within the south: e.g. Jiangnan, Fujian,

Guangdong/Guangxi all very different

24

LOCAL RELIGIOUS CULTURE

• all religious culture is local, some examples:

• temples• territorial cults• charismatic cults

• monasteries of all sizes• surprisingly Buddhism & Daoism were regionally distributed

phenomena (1. generally speaking; 2. in their local variations)• tied to local economy&society and only rarely to imperial courts

• types of religious specialists• shamans and mediums• performers funerary rituals• classicist teachers (Zhu Xi himself)

25

AGENDA FOR THIS COURSE

26

AN ADVANCE PEEK

• Labelling of religious culture (on the importance of vocabulary and the dangers of normative writing)

• Religious culture at the centre of social organisation (“diffused” suggests there is something separate)

• Charitable activities and religious life (tendency towards secularisation)

• Spirit writing, shamans and mediums: contact with the extra-human world (significance of divine communciation)

• New religious groups (uniting “elite” and “popular” culture)• Triads (strongly indebted to elite culture: unite the political

and religious dimensions to build social group)• Rumours and collective fear (the power of oral communication)• The cult of Lord Guan (an example of a multivocal temple cult)