Heterodoxy in Late Imperial China

Heterodoxy in Late Imperial China PDF Author: Kwang-Ching Liu
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824825386
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
Ten international academics explore heterodoxy dissent challenging the beliefs and meanings of the established norm in late Imperial China. In this process, they trace the origins of the cultural and intellectual protests to aspects of Daoism and Buddhism in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911)

Heterodoxy in Late Imperial China

Heterodoxy in Late Imperial China PDF Author: Kwang-Ching Liu
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824825386
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 492

Get Book

Book Description
Ten international academics explore heterodoxy dissent challenging the beliefs and meanings of the established norm in late Imperial China. In this process, they trace the origins of the cultural and intellectual protests to aspects of Daoism and Buddhism in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911)

Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars

Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars PDF Author: Eugenio Menegon
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684170532
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
Christianity is often praised as an agent of Chinese modernization or damned as a form of cultural and religious imperialism. In both cases, Christianity’s foreignness and the social isolation of converts have dominated this debate. Eugenio Menegon uncovers another story. In the sixteenth century, European missionaries brought a foreign and global religion to China. Converts then transformed this new religion into a local one over the course of the next three centuries. Focusing on the still-active Catholic communities of Fuan county in northeast Fujian, this project addresses three main questions. Why did people convert? How did converts and missionaries transform a global and foreign religion into a local religion? What does Christianity’s localization in Fuan tell us about the relationship between late imperial Chinese society and religion? Based on an impressive array of sources from Asia and Europe, this pathbreaking book reframes our understanding of Christian missions in Chinese-Western relations. The study’s implications extend beyond the issue of Christianity in China to the wider fields of religious and social history and the early modern history of global intercultural relations. The book suggests that Christianity became part of a preexisting pluralistic, local religious space, and argues that we have so far underestimated late imperial society’s tolerance for “heterodoxy.” The view from Fuan offers an original account of how a locality created its own religious culture in Ming-Qing China within a context both global and local, and illuminates the historical dynamics contributing to the remarkable growth of Christian communities in present-day China.

Fear, Heterodoxy, and Crime in Traditional China

Fear, Heterodoxy, and Crime in Traditional China PDF Author: Tommaso Previato
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004699007
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
This multi-contributor volume examines the evolving relationship between fear, heterodoxy and crime in traditional China. It throws light on how these three variously interwoven elements shaped local policies and people’s perceptions of the religious, ethnic, and cultural “other.” Authors depart from the assumption that “otherness” is constructed, stereotyped and formalized within the moral, political and legal institutions of Chinese society. The capacity of their findings to address questions about the emotional dimension of mass mobilization, the socio-political implications of heterodoxy, and attributions of crime is the result of integrating multiple sources of knowledge from history, religious studies and social science. Contributors are Ágnes Birtalan, Ayumu Doi, Fabian Graham, Hung Tak Wai, Jing Li, Hang Lin, Tommaso Previato, and Noriko Unno.

Orthodoxy in Late Imperial China

Orthodoxy in Late Imperial China PDF Author: Kwang-Ching Liu
Publisher: Studies on China
ISBN: 9780520301870
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
For many people, orthodoxy in late imperial China means Confucianism, or more precisely, Neo-Confucianism. Unlike most studies of Chinese values, which approach the subject as a philosophical and religious system, this book focuses on the interaction between Neo-Confucian beliefs and Chinese political and social institutions. It reveals a Confucianism that stood for far more than mere benevolent government, individual morality, and scholarly cultivation. In the essays presented here, Confucian idealism and transcendence become part of a system of sacred obligations and loyalties operating in the context of the imperial state and the family. These careful case studies examine many facets of late imperial society to create a complex picture of Chinese life. Among other things, they provide a look at the official worship system, mid-Ch'ing scholarly academies, the special status of tenants/servants, and the lineage feuds that were rampant on the southeast coast. The authors bring out the cultural significance of state and family rituals. They depict worried patriarchs composing instructions for the guidance of their children and country magistrates prescribing punishments according to the ritual status of the culprit. A debate between two viewpoints develops: Was orthodoxy a "mode of statecraft," or was it one of the ultimate concerns not only of the Confucian schools but of mainstream Taoism and Buddhism as well? The authors argue that Chinese civilization was characterized by religious and philosophical pluralism and moral orthodoxy. The implications they see for a socioethical doctrine supported by and in support of political authority will be of interest to students of comparative history and civilization. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

Popular Culture in Late Imperial China

Popular Culture in Late Imperial China PDF Author: David Johnson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520340124
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China

The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China PDF Author: Kai-wing Chow
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804765782
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
This pathbreaking work argues that the major intellectual trend in China from the seventeenth through the early nineteenth century was Confucian ritualism, as expressed in ethics, classical learning, and discourse on lineage. Reviews "Chow has produced a work of superb scholarship, fluently written and beautifully researched. . . . One of the landmarks of the current reconstruction of the social philosophy of the Qing dynasty. . . . Chow's book is indispensable. It has illuminating analyses of many mainstream writers, institutions, and social categories in eighteenth-century China which have never previously been examined." —Canadian Journal of History "Chow's monograph moves ritual to center stage in late imperial social and intellectual history, and the author makes a powerful case for doing so. . . . Because the author understands the intellectual history of late Ming and Qing as the history of a movement, or successive movements, of fundamental social reform, he has also made an important contribution to social and political history as these were related to intellectual history." —Journal of Chinese Religion "Chow's book is an excellent contribution to recent scholarship on the intellectual history of the Confucian tradition and provides a balance for other studies that have emphasized ideas to the exclusion of symbols." —The Historian

Popular Culture in Late Imperial China

Popular Culture in Late Imperial China PDF Author: David George Johnson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520051201
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description


The Everlasting Empire

The Everlasting Empire PDF Author: Yuri Pines
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400842271
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Established in 221 BCE, the Chinese empire lasted for 2,132 years before being replaced by the Republic of China in 1912. During its two millennia, the empire endured internal wars, foreign incursions, alien occupations, and devastating rebellions--yet fundamental institutional, sociopolitical, and cultural features of the empire remained intact. The Everlasting Empire traces the roots of the Chinese empire's exceptional longevity and unparalleled political durability, and shows how lessons from the imperial past are relevant for China today. Yuri Pines demonstrates that the empire survived and adjusted to a variety of domestic and external challenges through a peculiar combination of rigid ideological premises and their flexible implementation. The empire's major political actors and neighbors shared its fundamental ideological principles, such as unity under a single monarch--hence, even the empire's strongest domestic and foreign foes adopted the system of imperial rule. Yet details of this rule were constantly negotiated and adjusted. Pines shows how deep tensions between political actors including the emperor, the literati, local elites, and rebellious commoners actually enabled the empire's basic institutional framework to remain critically vital and adaptable to ever-changing sociopolitical circumstances. As contemporary China moves toward a new period of prosperity and power in the twenty-first century, Pines argues that the legacy of the empire may become an increasingly important force in shaping the nation's future trajectory.

The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories from Late Imperial China

The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories from Late Imperial China PDF Author: Matthew H. Sommer
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231560206
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
In imperial China, people moved away from the gender they were assigned at birth in different ways and for many reasons. Eunuchs, boy actresses, and clergy left behind normative gender roles defined by family and procreation. “Stone maidens”—women deemed physically incapable of vaginal intercourse—might depart from families or marriages to become Buddhist or Daoist nuns. Anatomical males who presented as women sometimes took a conventionally female occupation such as midwife, faith healer, or even medium to a fox spirit. Yet they were often punished harshly for the crime of “masquerading in women’s attire,” suspected of sexual predation, even when they had lived peacefully in their communities for many years. Exploring these histories and many more, this book is a groundbreaking study of transgender lives and practices in late imperial China. Through close readings of court cases, as well as Ming and Qing fiction and nineteenth-century newspaper accounts, Matthew H. Sommer examines the social, legal, and cultural histories of gender crossing. He considers a range of transgender experiences, illuminating how certain forms of gender transgression were sanctioned in particular social contexts and penalized in others. Sommer scrutinizes the ways Qing legal authorities and literati writers represented and understood gender-nonconforming people and practices, contrasting official ideology with popular mentalities. An unprecedented account of China’s transgender histories, this book also sheds new light on a range of themes in Ming and Qing law, religion, medicine, literature, and culture.

Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China

Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China PDF Author: Cynthia J. Brokaw
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520231260
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 559

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Book Description
"A very useful book on a topic of growing importance and interest. Brokaw's introduction is one of the most valuable and best-written prefaces to an edited volume that I have encountered in some time."—Kent Guy, author of The Emperor's Four Treasures