Fengshui in China : geomantic divination between state orthodoxy and popular religion
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Fengshui in China : geomantic divination between state orthodoxy and popular religion
(Man & nature in Asia / series editor, Arne Kalland, [no. 8])
NIAS Press, 2003
Available at 4 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
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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