Fengshui in China : geomantic divination between state orthodoxy and popular religion

Bibliographic Information

Fengshui in China : geomantic divination between state orthodoxy and popular religion

Ole Bruun ; foreword by Stephan Feuchtwang

(Man & nature in Asia / series editor, Arne Kalland, [no. 8])

NIAS Press, 2003

Available at  / 4 libraries

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 289-300) and index

Contents of Works

  • Fengshui : a challenge to anthropology
  • Fengshui practices and policies, 1850 to 1949
  • Fengshui practices and policies after 1949
  • The fengshui revival : fieldwork in Sichuan
  • Another school of fengshui : fieldwork in Jiangsu
  • Fengshui stories and possible interpretations
  • The construction of a discourse : fengshui as environmental ethics
  • Conclusion
  • Appendix: On the origin of fengshui and the history of its literature

Description and Table of Contents

Description

For well over a century Chinese fengshui, or geomancy, has fascinated Western laymen and scholars. Today hundreds of popular manuals claim to use its principles in their advice on how people can increase their wealth, happiness and longevity. The focus of this academic study is on fengshui's significance in China over the last 150 years, augmented by anthropological fieldwork in rural China. Eschewing Western intellectual preconceptions and penetrating the confused mass of old texts and divergent local practices, the author argues that fengshui serves as an alternative tradition of cosmological knowledge which is used to explain a range of everyday occurrences in rural areas such as disease, mental disorders, accidents and common mischief. Opposing the Chinese collectivist ethos and moralizing from above, fengshui represents an alternative vision of reality, while interpreting essential Chinese values in a way that sanctions selfish motivations and behaviour.

Table of Contents

  • Fengshui - a challenge to anthropology
  • fengshui practices and policies, 1850-1949
  • fengshui practices and policies after 1949
  • the fengshui revival -fieldwork in Sichuan
  • another school of fengshui - fieldwork in Jiangsu
  • fengshui stories and possible interpretations
  • the construction of a discourse -fengshui as environmental ethics
  • conclusion
  • appendix - on the origin of fengshui and the history of its literature.

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