Ancestors on high: musings on an east Chinese case
The focus of this article is on the conventions of ancestor worship in the province of Jiangsu, directing light on certain ethnographic data that do not accord with the general, synthesized sociological picture established for southern China. Exploring Myron L. Cohen's 1990 field data, together...
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| Format: | Journal article |
| Language: | English |
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Anthropological Society of Oxford
2018
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| Summary: | The focus of this article is on the conventions of ancestor worship in the province of Jiangsu,
directing light on certain ethnographic data that do not accord with the general, synthesized
sociological picture established for southern China. Exploring Myron L. Cohen's 1990 field
data, together with what is known from elsewhere in the province, the tentative discussion in
this article concerns the nature of ancestry and the construction of social continuity in a local
society with its roots in rice-farming. Here ancestor worship as a cultural grammar takes the
form of a pragmatic variation, the search for blessings (continuity) being strongly contrasted
with the avoidance of implied malevolence (discontinuity). It is further suggested that
ancestry and divinity are interacting iconic forces in the stream of social life. |
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