Editor
Augustin F. C. Holl
School of Sociology, Anthropology and Belt an Road Research Institute, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian, P. R. China.

 

ISBN 978-93-5547-925-9 (Print)
ISBN 978-93-5547-926-6 (eBook)
DOI: 10.9734/bpi/mono/978-93-5547-925-9


The contributions assembled in this volume are the result of the “writing Anthropology” graduate and doctoral seminar of the department of anthropology and ethnology of Xiamen university. An original methodology and organization that has empowered young researchers to explore anthropological themes they are interested in through collective decision-making process. Each participant was asked to suggest a research theme for the semester seminar. The selected themes were listed by decreasing frequency and returned to the participants for a second tour. Anthropology of religion ended up being selected as the research theme for the 2020-2021 academic year. The crafting and production of the essays assembled here was articulated on a systematic combination of oral presentations and written assignments. The collected essays focus on the cultural dimensions of religion through contextualized and renewed anthropological analyses of the socio-cultural embodiments of its ideas and principles. The assembled contributions are organized into three parts: 1) Religion as Praxis; 2) Folks Beliefs and Rituals; and finally, 3) Sanctified Places, Objects, and syncretic.

 

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Contents


Praxis, Folks’ Beliefs, and Rituals: Explorations in the Anthropology of Religion

Augustin F. C. Holl

Praxis, Folks’ Beliefs, and Rituals: Explorations in the Anthropology of Religion, , 15 October 2022, Page 1
https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/mono/978-93-5547-925-9/CH0

The contributions assembled in this volume are the result of the “writing Anthropology” graduate and doctoral seminar of the department of anthropology and ethnology of Xiamen university. An original methodology and organization that has empowered young researchers to explore anthropological themes they are interested in through collective decision-making process. Each participant was asked to suggest a research theme for the semester seminar. The selected themes were listed by decreasing frequency and returned to the participants for a second tour. Anthropology of religion ended up being selected as the research theme for the 2020-2021 academic year. The crafting and production of the essays assembled here was articulated on a systematic combination of oral presentations and written assignments. The collected essays focus on the cultural dimensions of religion through contextualized and renewed anthropological analyses of the socio-cultural embodiments of its ideas and principles. The assembled contributions are organized into three parts: 1) Religion as Praxis; 2) Folks Beliefs and Rituals; and finally, 3) Sanctified Places, Objects, and syncretic.

Clifford Geertz and Anthropology of Religion

Mao Siqi

Praxis, Folks’ Beliefs, and Rituals: Explorations in the Anthropology of Religion, , 15 October 2022, Page 12-20
https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/mono/978-93-5547-925-9/CH1

Geertz says, Durkheim’s discussion of the nature of the sacred is one of the established traditions and inevitable starting-points for any useful anthropological theory of religion. No doubt, Geertz establishes another tradition. Therefore, I will compare the two traditions and reflect on Geertz’s religious theory and method.

Religion has always been the core of anthropological research, based on the above discussion on religious research, then we can also better understand the historical tradition and development of anthropology. In the conclusion of the paper, I reaffirm Geertz’s significance in the religious study and anthropology. To a certain degree, Geertz brings anthropology to a new dimension and stage. Today, there are still plenty of researchers (especially anthropologists) who continue to draw inspiration from Geertz’s ideology to advance the research of religion and anthropology.

Soul Food, Good to Eat or Good to Discriminate

Zhuang Lei

Praxis, Folks’ Beliefs, and Rituals: Explorations in the Anthropology of Religion, , 15 October 2022, Page 21-28
https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/mono/978-93-5547-925-9/CH2

Well, every ethnicity has its own bite. We believe food could show who we are and shape what we become. And our protagonist, soul food, it is another name of African American cuisine, as “soul” began to refer as African American culture in the 1960s.

When it comes to soul food, we may point out the dishes with pig's feet, collard greens, black-eyed peas, and hominy grits without hesitation, and these ingredients just like a symbol which represents all of the African American cuisine, conveyed with the slavery history that commonly held belief in the 1960s and 1970s, as it became entangled in a complex political struggle over the legitimacy of a menu dictated by poverty and exclusion.

Equality or Diversity: The Education of the Amish Child

Han Yang

Praxis, Folks’ Beliefs, and Rituals: Explorations in the Anthropology of Religion, , 15 October 2022, Page 29-37
https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/mono/978-93-5547-925-9/CH3

The Amish are a group of Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss German origins, close to Mennonite groups. They came to America in the late 17th century to escape the persecution they suffered as Anabaptists in Europe. In the late 19th century, tensions rose between traditional and more progressive Amish communities. The latter one gradually became known by the name Amish Mennonite, and eventually united with the Mennonite Church; the former one became known as the Old Order Amish, or just the Amish. Their conservative religious belief forbids the use of any kind of contraceptive devices, and thus it has caused a fast growth of their population. Nowadays there are about 350,000 Amish (Amish Population, 2020), while the number in 1971 was only 50,000 (Wittmer, 1971). The mean Amish family size is 6.8 in 1979 (Ericksen et al., 1979), and the annual growth of population is about 12% per year, calculating from the given statistics. Historically, most of the Amish live in the United States, mainly in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, but some of them have emigrated to Canada or Latin America too, with the aim to avoid the threat of being forcefully assimilated into American mainstream society. In fact, their resistance to the mainstream society surrounding them and simple attempt keep their own lifestyle has caused long-time hostility and harassment.

The Decline of Sun Worship from the Epic Aizuo and Aisha

Cheng Rongrong

Praxis, Folks’ Beliefs, and Rituals: Explorations in the Anthropology of Religion, , 15 October 2022, Page 39-47
https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/mono/978-93-5547-925-9/CH4

The epic of word of mouth among all nationalities is the accumulation product of people's history and culture, showing people's collective unconscious. And the sun, as a prototype, shows the change of people's unconscious attitude towards the sun in the epic. Azhe is a branch of the Yi nationality, living in the area of the inspection town of Maitreya County, Honghe continent, Yunnan Province. In Azhe's epic Aizuo and Aisa, the decline of sun worship with the changes of the times is clearly reflected in the verse, with the transformation of the sun calendar to the moon calendar and the evolution of the festival to the torch festival.

The Practice and Function of Ancestor Worship in Chinese Society

Zhang Luyao

Praxis, Folks’ Beliefs, and Rituals: Explorations in the Anthropology of Religion, , 15 October 2022, Page 48-56
https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/mono/978-93-5547-925-9/CH5

Ancestor worship, as a common phenomenon in human society, has been investigated and analyzed by many disciplines, such as religion, sociology and anthropology. From the perspective of anthropology, the researcher Seyin (2012) from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences deeply analyzed the definition, origin, related concepts, influencing factors, the relationship between ancestor worship and ancestor worship ceremony, and the development process of ancestor worship in the Chinese folk society.

Ritual and Gender Role in a Sanyang Village patriarchal clan, Fujian

Xiaomin Yang

Praxis, Folks’ Beliefs, and Rituals: Explorations in the Anthropology of Religion, , 15 October 2022, Page 57-65
https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/mono/978-93-5547-925-9/CH6

As a seaport city in southeast China, Quanzhou is unique in terms of its physical geography, social culture, politics and economy: on the one hand, it is inextricably linked with traditional culture of Central Plain area of China; on the other hand, it is a pioneer in foreign exchange. Therefore, Quanzhou's social culture is a combination of both central plain Han culture and maritime culture, and the traditional concepts of the Han population of Central Plain area have always run through, making Quanzhou culture maintain its own cultural characteristics. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, in order to strengthen the management of the grass-roots society, Quanzhou government implemented a complete system of administrative space zoning system, namely the “Pu-jing ” system, which divided the grassroots society according to regions, where the people share the same geography, history, customs, life style and so on, and even the common ancestor. The uniqueness of Quanzhou lies in the close connection between folk beliefs and the “Pujing” system. Each Pujing unit has its own Pujing temple, and each Pujing temple has its own god as the main symbol of the local geo-regional community.

Funeral Ceremony and Social Functions in Xinjiang

Wang Meijun

Praxis, Folks’ Beliefs, and Rituals: Explorations in the Anthropology of Religion, , 15 October 2022, Page 66-76
https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/mono/978-93-5547-925-9/CH7

For human beings, death is not only a physiological phenomenon, but also a cultural phenomenon. How to face the inevitable death and comfort the dead and the living has always been a great thing. In human society, since the emergence of related beliefs and concepts such as “dead soul” and “afterlife”, rituals for offering sacrifices to the dead have gradually taken shape, which are either complicated or simple funeral rituals. In different stages of human social development and social organizations in different regions, funeral rites are ubiquitous and play an indispensable role in a specific social and cultural system, with irreplaceable functions. Malinowski has pointed out: Of all the sources of religion, death is the most important, the last joint of life and the supreme turning point.

Contemporary Mazu Belief: Cultural Interactions and Nation Identification

Yang Peilin

Praxis, Folks’ Beliefs, and Rituals: Explorations in the Anthropology of Religion, , 15 October 2022, Page 77-87
https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/mono/978-93-5547-925-9/CH8

This article divides the historical survey of Mazu beliefs into two phases. The formal one is here delineated as “past”, and the latter one is phrased as “present”. The dividing crest lies in the late 1980s. Mazu beliefs is a cluster of folk belief mostly located in the offshore districts of China that stems from more than a thousand years ago in Song Dynasty (960—1279A.D), China. Originally, the image of Mazu was allegedly derived from an ordinary fisherwoman called LinMo who lived in the nowadays offshore area of Putian City, Fujian Province. Her lifetime in local community was narrated as a life of benevolent and gracious that she had helped villagers avoid evil spirits and invoked blessings from different magical existence with her witchcraft.

The Function of Mazu Belief of the Chinese People in Vietnam

Doan Ngoc Chung

Praxis, Folks’ Beliefs, and Rituals: Explorations in the Anthropology of Religion, , 15 October 2022, Page 88-97
https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/mono/978-93-5547-925-9/CH9

What is the concept of Transnationalism? It is a research theory in Western academia since the 1990s, mainly used to study the political, economic, and cultural activities of immigration beyond the borders of nation-states under the background of globalization. Steven Vertovec - Professor of Transnational Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, who has long been engaged in transnationalism studies, believes that: Transnationalism refers to “the ties and interactions that connect people or institutions across national boundaries.” Transnationalism is a cross-border network established and maintained by people or institutions, and various interactions and exchanges relations generated through this network. Its main of action can be immigrants, communities, non-governmental organizations, governments and multinational corporations. Its contents are various connections and activities established across national boundaries, and its scope covers various fields such as politics, culture, economy and ideology.

The Architecture and Religion of Jinci

Duan Zeli

Praxis, Folks’ Beliefs, and Rituals: Explorations in the Anthropology of Religion, , 15 October 2022, Page 99-110
https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/mono/978-93-5547-925-9/CH10

As far as Chinese official architecture is concerned, it was basic to follow a fixed structural pattern, which was shaped under the unified dynastic empire. Ethics, morality, and hierarchical order were all reflected in ancient Chinese architecture. However, the uniformity and inflexibility of the individual styles also resulted in a unique style of Chinese architecture—— the integral layout with courtyard of buildings. The design is generally balanced and symmetrical, along the longitudinal axis and the horizontal axis,also known as the front and back axis. The more important buildings are placed on the longitudinal axis, and the secondary houses are placed on the horizontal axis on the left and the right. Whether it was palaces, government offices, or temples, Chinese architecture showed a combination layout with the crucial buildings as the center. The buildings are usually connected to several courtyards along a central axis. In order to see the vital buildings in this layout, “one must pass through a series of courtyards and feel the gradually rising prelude of anticipation as one proceeds. Until one finally enters the central courtyard and sees the most magnificent main building, emotions reach a climax. At this moment, one is deeply moved by the architecture.

Southern Fujian’s Tradition and Innovation in Historical Perspective: Past and Present

Gao Yuanxing

Praxis, Folks’ Beliefs, and Rituals: Explorations in the Anthropology of Religion, , 15 October 2022, Page 111-123
https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/mono/978-93-5547-925-9/CH11

American anthropologist Robert Redfield formulated a couple of terms: “Macro-tradition” and “Micro-tradition”(Redfield 1956). The term “Macro-tradition” refers to a kind of culture centered on central city, popular with intellectuals of rank and fashion, while the term “Micro-tradition” refers to the culture of frontier places represented by villagers. In Taiwan, Li Yiyuan (Li Yiyuan 2000) applied the concept of macro-tradition and micro-tradition to the study of Chinese culture. Macro-tradition mentioned by Li Yiyuan refers to a set of cosmology and world view represented by Confucian culture in Chinese society. While micro-tradition refers to the folk existence of a set of their own cosmology and world view.