Chinese Sociologics An Anthropological Account of Alienation and Social Reproduction

by Sangren, P. Steven

• ISBN13: 9780485196726
• ISBN10: 0485196727
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-02-01
• Publisher: Berg Pub Ltd

Summary

This volume explores the links between individuals, families, communities and the state in China through ritual and myth.

Author Biography

P. Steven Sangren is Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Permissions	xiii
Introduction	1	(19)
Theoretical Issues: Desire, Practices, Complexity	4	(7)
China's Theoretical Significance	11	(4)
Synopses of Chapters	15	(5)
Why `Culture'? Why `Production'?	20	(25)
Introduction	20	(1)
Production, Broadly Conceived	21	(4)
A Tendentious Historical Narrative	25	(4)
Resistance to `Ideology' and `Production' in Anthropological Analysis	29	(3)
Culture, Ideology and Identity Politics	32	(7)
Conclusions	39	(6)
History And The Rhetoric Of Legitimacy: The Mazu Cult of Taiwan	45	(24)
The Disputes	49	(5)
Mutually Authenticating State and Local Rhetorics	54	(1)
Ling	55	(3)
History and Ling	58	(3)
Ritual and Politics	61	(6)
Conclusions	67	(2)
Dialectics Of Alienation: Individuals And Collectivities In Chinese Religion	69	(27)
Introduction	69	(3)
Incense and Power	72	(3)
Interactive Reification: Collective Arenas of Symbolic Production	75	(5)
Worship as an Idiom of Self-Construction	80	(8)
Participation in Collective Ritual as Individual Testimony	88	(4)
Conclusions	92	(4)
Power And Transcendence in the Mazu Pilgrimages of Taiwan	96	(23)
Beigang Mazu	98	(3)
Incense and Power	101	(2)
Representations of Power: Individual and Collective	103	(2)
Transcendence and Ideology	105	(7)
Disrupted Transcendence	112	(4)
Conclusions	116	(1)
Afterword	117	(2)
`Power' Against Ideology: A Critique of Foucaultian Usage	119	(34)
Introduction	119	(5)
`Cartesian' Social Science	124	(3)
`Power' in Foucault's Writings	127	(13)
Chinese Ideologies of Power	140	(8)
Conclusion	148	(5)
Women's Production: Gender And Exploitation in Patrilineal Mode	153	(33)
Introduction	153	(4)
Domestic Productivity: Chinese Family Systems	157	(7)
Worship and Identification	164	(3)
Ethos as Production	167	(6)
Sincerity as Alienation and as Production	173	(2)
Reinforcing Rhetorics of Alienation and Value Expropriation: Parallels in the Fenxiang and Patrilineal Ideologies	175	(1)
Sons' Debts to Their Mothers: Mothers' Dependence on their Sons	176	(3)
Xiaoqi/Dafang	179	(2)
Conclusions: Comparative and Theoretical Implications	181	(5)
Fathers and Sons in a Patrilineal Mode of Production of Desire: Preliminary Analysis of the Story of Nezha from Fengshen Yanyi	186	(38)
Introduction	186	(10)
Nezha	196	(4)
Egocentric Fantasies: Male Subjectivities	200	(4)
Filial Piety and the Symbolic Production of the Chinese Male Subject	204	(4)
Power, Desire and Filial Piety	208	(5)
Miaoshan: Fathers and Daughters	213	(5)
Myth, Ideology and the Cultural Construction of Gender and Person	218	(6)
Afterword: `Excess', Change and the Limits of Analysis	224	(15)
Implications	235	(4)
Notes	239	(58)
Character List	297	(4)
Bibliography	301	(18)
Index	319