History and Magical Power in a Chinese CommunityThis book is a case study of history and culture in the Taiwanese town of Ta-ch'i and the group of rural villages that constitute its standard marketing community. However, its scope exceeds that of most community studies. The author attempts to construct a holistic view of Chinese culture from an analysis of the relationship between history and ritual in a particular locality. The author argues that social institutions and collective representations are dialectically connected in the process of social and cultural reproduction. He describes this dialectical process through an analysis of the key cultural concept of ling, the magical power attributed to ghosts, gods, and ancestors. In analyzing the symbolic logic of ling, he asserts that it can be fully understood only as a product of the reproduction of social institutions and as a manifestation of a native historical consciousness. Structuralist and Marxist insights are combined to explain how ling is best understood as both a cultural logic of symbolic relations and a material logic of social relations. The book is in three parts. Part I is a social and economic history that outlines what one might call an objectivist or positivist view of Ta-ch'i's history, describing events as they were, regardless of the perceptions of local participants. This material is a background to the synchronic sociological analysis of local territorial cults that constitutes Part II. In Part III, the author unsettles the objectivist assumptions of Part I by showing how the idiom of ling underlies Taiwanese constructions of history and identity and how the cultural construction of history dialectically reproduces society and creates history. The book is illustrated with 8 pages of photographs, 17 line drawings, and 9 maps. |
Contents
| 1 | |
An Objectivist Perspective | 13 |
Physical Features of the Tachi Area 2220 | 20 |
The Town of Tachi | 21 |
Northern Taiwan | 22 |
Southeast Coast Macroregion and Taiwan ca 1800 | 27 |
The Ritual Construction of Social Space 49 955 | 49 |
Locations of the Pinganhsi Ceremonies 1976 | 66 |
Route of Chichou Ma Tsu Pilgrimage 1977 | 90 |
Administrative Districts and Retail Shops in Tachis Marketing Area 1977 | 107 |
Figures | 124 |
Efficacy Legitimacy and the Structure of Value | 127 |
TimeLine Summary of Economic Development in Tachi 46 | 135 |
Yin and Yang in Domestic Icons | 136 |
Pilgrimages and Social Identity | 187 |
The Social Construction of Power | 207 |
Sites of Temples and Shrines in the Town of Tachi | 67 |
Village Temples in Tachis Ritual Sphere | 76 |
Conclusion | 229 |
| 261 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
aborigines administrative altar analysis ancestors argue associated Atayal authenticating bodhisattva Buddhist celestial bureaucrats ceremonies Ch'ing Chang Sheng Wang Chang-chou chiao China Chinese collective representations communal rituals Confucian context contrast defined disorder domain economic efficacy encompassing ethnic example female deities festivals Feuchtwang Fu-hsing Fu-jen kung Fukien ghosts gods groups Hakka heaven household identity ideology images important interaction Japanese K'ai Chang Sheng Kuan Kung Kuan Yin Kung shrines kung's ling logic Louis Dumont lu-chu lunar month Ma Tsu marketing community mass-grave spirits mediation Moreover neighborhood nested hierarchy nomic notion officials organization p'ing-an-hsi pai-pai patrilineal peasant Pei-kang pilgrimage pilgrims relationship relative religion reproduction ritual role Sangren she-t'uan Skinner's social institutions social relations society spatial supernatural t'ang T'ao-yüan T'u Ti Kung Ta-ch'i Taipei Taiwanese Taoist temple's territorial cults territorial-cult deities tion town township traditional village temple village-level worship YANG YIN yin and yang yin/yang