Gods Ghosts And Gangsters

Author : Avron Boretz
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824860713
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Gods, Ghosts, and Gangsters written by Avron Boretz and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2010-10-31 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demon warrior puppets, sword-wielding Taoist priests, spirit mediums lacerating their bodies with spikes and blades—these are among the most dramatic images in Chinese religion. Usually linked to the propitiation of plague gods and the worship of popular military deities, such ritual practices have an obvious but previously unexamined kinship with the traditional Chinese martial arts. The long and durable history of martial arts iconography and ritual in Chinese religion suggests something far deeper than mere historical coincidence. Avron Boretz argues that martial arts gestures and movements are so deeply embedded in the ritual repertoire in part because they iconify masculine qualities of violence, aggressivity, and physical prowess, the implicit core of Chinese patriliny and patriarchy. At the same time, for actors and audience alike, martial arts gestures evoke the mythos of the jianghu, a shadowy, often violent realm of vagabonds, outlaws, and masters of martial and magic arts. Through the direct bodily practice of martial arts movement and creative rendering of jianghu narratives, martial ritual practitioners are able to identify and represent themselves, however briefly and incompletely, as men of prowess, a reward otherwise denied those confined to the lower limits of this deeply patriarchal society. Based on fieldwork in China and Taiwan spanning nearly two decades, Gods, Ghosts, and Gangsters offers a thorough and original account of violent ritual and ritual violence in Chinese religion and society. Close-up, sensitive portrayals and the voices of ritual actors themselves—mostly working-class men, many of them members of sworn brotherhoods and gangs—convincingly link martial ritual practice to the lives and desires of men on the margins of Chinese society. This work is a significant contribution to the study of Chinese ritual and religion, the history and sociology of Chinese underworld, the history and anthropology of the martial arts, and the anthropology of masculinity.

Author : Avron Albert Boretz
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780824870539
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Gods, Ghosts, and Gangsters written by Avron Albert Boretz and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demon warrior puppets, sword-wielding Taoist priests, spirit mediums lacerating their bodies with spikes and blades-these are among the most dramatic images in Chinese religion. Usually linked to the propitiation of plague gods and the worship of popular military deities, such ritual practices have an obvious but previously unexamined kinship with the traditional Chinese martial arts. The long and durable history of martial arts iconography and ritual in Chinese religion suggests something far deeper than mere historical coincidence. This work argues that martial arts gestures and movements are so deeply embedded in the ritual repertoire in part because they iconify masculine qualities of violence, aggressivity, and physical prowess, the implicit core of Chinese patriliny and patriarchy.

Author : SLMN
Publisher : Kingston Imperial
ISBN 13 : 1954220391
Total Pages : 239 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Gods & Gangsters 3 written by SLMN and published by Kingston Imperial. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A continuation of the Gods & Gangsters series, Part Three brings heroine Egypt on a whole new job, fulling of catching cases...and bodies. On the mean streets where dog eats dog there is always one that has sharper claws and bigger teeth, and in New York her name is Egypt. Never an ordinary girl, Egypt learned the hard way that life, even when it is being kind, is a bastard. A survivor, she did what she needed to make it from day-to-day. And it turned out she was good at it. Better than good. Egypt grew into an extraordinary woman, cold, ruthless, a killer at heart, and New York witnessed her metamorphosis from that innocent child to the most feared assassin of the age. Gods & Gangsters 3 is a continuation of the series, placing Egypt in the driver's seat for a wild ride.

Author : Meir Shahar
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824856961
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Oedipal God written by Meir Shahar and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2015-08-31 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oedipal God offers the most comprehensive account in any language of the prodigal deity Nezha. Celebrated for over a millennium, Nezha is among the most formidable and enigmatic of all Chinese gods. In this theoretically informed study Meir Shahar recounts Nezha’s riveting tale—which culminates in suicide and attempted patricide—and uncovers hidden tensions in the Chinese family system. In deploying the Freudian hypothesis, Shahar does not imply the Chinese legend’s identity with the Greek story of Oedipus. For one, in Nezha’s story the erotic attraction to the mother is not explicitly acknowledged. More generally, Chinese oedipal tales differ from Freud’s Greek prototype by the high degree of repression that is applied to them. Shahar argues that, despite a disastrous father-son relationship, Confucian ethics require that the oedipal drive masquerade as filial piety in Nezha’s story, dictating that the child-god kill himself before trying to avenge himself upon his father. Combining impeccable scholarship with an eminently readable style, the book covers a vast terrain: It surveys the image of the endearing child-god across varied genres from oral and written fiction, through theater, cinema, and television serials, to Japanese manga cartoons. It combines literary analysis with Shahar’s own anthropological field work, providing a thorough ethnography of Nezha’s flourishing cult. Crossing the boundaries between China’s diverse religious traditions, it tracks the rebellious infant in the many ways he has been venerated by Buddhist monks, Daoist priests, and possessed spirit mediums, whose dramatic performances have served to negotiate individual, familial, and collective tensions. Finally, the book offers a detailed history of the legend and the cult reaching back over two thousand years to its origins in India, where Nezha began as a mythological being named Nalakūbara, whose sexual misadventures were celebrated in the Sanskrit epics as early as the first centuries BCE. Here Shahar reveals the long-term impact that Indian mythology has exerted—through the medium of esoteric Buddhism—upon the Chinese imagination of divinity. A tour de force of literary analysis, ethnographic research, psychological insight, and cross-cultural investigation, Oedipal God is a must read for anyone interested in Chinese studies and the historical connection between India and China. Shahar’s broad reach and engaging approach will appeal to specialists and students in a variety of disciplines including Chinese religion, Chinese literature, anthropology, Buddhist studies, psychology, Indian studies, and cross-cultural history.

Author : Robert J. Antony
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1538169347
Total Pages : 379 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rats, Cats, Rogues, and Heroes written by Robert J. Antony and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rats, Cats, Rogues, and Heroes reveals China's history and culture through the eyes of ordinary men and women using an interdisciplinary perspective that incorporates history, anthropology, folk studies, and literature to examine the sociocultural and symbolic worlds of gangsters, sorcerers, and prostitutes in late imperial and modern China.

Author : Xiaofei Kang
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197654479
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Enchanted Revolution written by Xiaofei Kang and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enchanted Revolution moves religion and gender to center stage in the Chinese Communist revolution, examining the mobilizational dynamics of anti-superstition propaganda in support of the Communist Party's rise from rural backwaters to national dominance. Xiaofei Kang argues that religion was not merely adversary for the revolutionaries-it also served as a model for the ways in which the Party mobilized support and constructed legitimacy. In this parallel and often paradoxical process, the Party attacked "superstitions" that had long supported the foundations of Chinese religious life. At the same time, Party propaganda co-opted these same religious resources for its own political ends. Kang demonstrates that the persuasive power of Party propaganda relied heavily on recasting the cosmic forces of yin and yang that sustained the traditional gender hierarchy and ritual order. Moreover, revolutionary art and literature revamped old narratives of female ghosts and ritual exorcism to inject the people with a new masculinist vision of the Party-state endowed with both scientific potency and the heavenly mandate. Gendered language and symbolism in Chinese religion thus remained central to inspiring pathos, ethos, and logos for the revolution. Enchanted Revolution sheds light on the contemporary significance of the Maoist legacy in China through a deft exploration of the complex interplay of religion, gender, and revolution.

Author : Michael Jerryson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1440859914
Total Pages : 941 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religious Violence Today [2 volumes] written by Michael Jerryson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 941 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through sections containing overview essays and reference entries related to particular religions, this resource explores the rise of religious violence, hate crime, and persecution around the world. Religious violence and persecution have been growing steadily both within the United States and around the world. Drawing on the expertise of a wide range of scholars, this current and comprehensive reference helps readers understand the persecution of members of particular faiths as well as violence committed by members of those faiths. In doing so, it promotes a greater understanding of the role of religion in global politics, domestic and international terrorism, and religious bigotry. The book contains sections on particular religious traditions from around the world. Each section begins with an overview essay surveying violence related to that particular religion, whether committed by or against members of that faith. Reference entries in each section then provide objective, fundamental information about particular topics related to violence and the religion discussed. The entries provide cross-references and suggestions for further reading, and the work closes with a bibliography of resources for further study.

Author : Megan Bryson
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1503600459
Total Pages : 261 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Goddess on the Frontier written by Megan Bryson and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-02 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dali is a small region on a high plateau in Southeast Asia. Its main deity, Baijie, has assumed several gendered forms throughout the area's history: Buddhist goddess, the mother of Dali's founder, a widowed martyr, and a village divinity. What accounts for so many different incarnations of a local deity? Goddess on the Frontier argues that Dali's encounters with forces beyond region and nation have influenced the goddess's transformations. Dali sits at the cultural crossroads of Southeast Asia, India, and Tibet; it has been claimed by different countries but is currently part of Yunnan Province in Southwest China. Megan Bryson incorporates historical-textual studies, art history, and ethnography in her book to argue that Baijie provided a regional identity that enabled Dali to position itself geopolitically and historically. In doing so, Bryson provides a case study of how people craft local identities out of disparate cultural elements and how these local identities transform over time in relation to larger historical changes—including the increasing presence of the Chinese state.

Author : Robert P. Weller
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108418678
Total Pages : 247 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion and Charity written by Robert P. Weller and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges our assumptions about morality by explaining how industrialized philanthropy and universalized goodness came to dominate Chinese religious engagement.

Author : A.T. Grant
Publisher : Andrews UK Limited
ISBN 13 : 1785382535
Total Pages : 327 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Jaguar written by A.T. Grant and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David's life is spiralling out of control. To put a past relationship behind him, he goes on holiday to Mexico. Meanwhile, on the US-Mexican border, brothers Luis and Alfredo fight to maintain their family's drug-trafficking empire. Alfredo is forced to flee, and Luis takes on the most feared of all the cartels. Reunited in the Yucatan Peninsula, the brothers temporarily outwit their pursuers. As David and an eclectic mix of fellow travellers stumble through the jungles of ancient Maya, powerful spirits are stirring. Events long past are brought to the fore. Tourists, traffickers and Mayans combine and nothing is quite as it seems.