Putting Global Capitalism in Its Place

This exceedingly interesting paper takes as its starting point J. K. Gibson-Graham’s exhortation to find new theoretical languages to explain capitalism’s supposed triumph without reproducing the self-justificatory narratives of its inevitability and global dominance. Yang crafts such a theoretical language, using tools derived from Bataille, Baudrillard, and Bakhtin and through an insightful and nuanced analysis of apparently “irrational” ritual expenditures in Wenzhou, a region often touted in the press as a success story of capitalism and free markets in the “new China.” Specifically, Yang develops two models. One is a model of ritual expenditure that attends to the sacralization of the putatively economic. It is meant to address the shortcomings of other models of peasant economies, the author arguing that peasant economies are never, strictly speaking, merely economic. The other is a model of economic hybridity that directly answers Gibson-Graham’s call for a critique of global capitalism as all-conquering and capitalist economic development as a one-way street. This model is meant to address the shortcomings of the articulation of- modes-of-production models of an earlier moment in economic anthropology

Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation

The long twentieth century in China and Taiwan has seen both a dramatic process of state-driven secularization and modernization and a vigorous revival of contemporary religious life. Chinese Religiosities explores the often vexed relationship between the modern Chinese state and religious practice. The essays in this comprehensive, multidisciplinary collection cover a wide range of traditions, including Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Confucianism, Protestantism, Falungong, popular religion, and redemptive societies

Goddess across the Taiwan Strait: Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-State, and Satellite Television Footprints

This essay examines complex interactions among the nation-state, popular religion, media capitalism, and gendered territorialization as these are inflected across the Taiwan Strait. Relations across the strait have been fraught with political tension and military preparations over the question of whether taiwan is part of China or an independent state. Since the 1999 presidential elections in Taiwan, the new government there has been more vociferous about Taiwan independence, and mainland China's Communist Party has responded with more vigorous claims on Taiwan, including the launching of a warning missile over the island. Under these conditions, it is all the more remarkable that in recent years there has been an increasing number of religious pilgrimages and exchanges across the strait, and that, in 2000, one such pilgrimage by Taiwanese worshippers of the maritime goddess Mazu to her natal home in Fujian Province was broadcast live from China back to Taiwan via satellite television

Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation

The long twentieth century in China and Taiwan has seen both a dramatic process of state-driven secularization and modernization and a vigorous revival of contemporary religious life. Chinese Religiosities explores the often vexed relationship between the modern Chinese state and religious practice. The essays in this comprehensive, multidisciplinary collection cover a wide range of traditions, including Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Confucianism, Protestantism, Falungong, popular religion, and redemptive societies

Putting Global Capitalism in Its Place

This exceedingly interesting paper takes as its starting point J. K. Gibson-Graham’s exhortation to find new theoretical languages to explain capitalism’s supposed triumph without reproducing the self-justificatory narratives of its inevitability and global dominance. Yang crafts such a theoretical language, using tools derived from Bataille, Baudrillard, and Bakhtin and through an insightful and nuanced analysis of apparently “irrational” ritual expenditures in Wenzhou, a region often touted in the press as a success story of capitalism and free markets in the “new China.” Specifically, Yang develops two models. One is a model of ritual expenditure that attends to the sacralization of the putatively economic. It is meant to address the shortcomings of other models of peasant economies, the author arguing that peasant economies are never, strictly speaking, merely economic. The other is a model of economic hybridity that directly answers Gibson-Graham’s call for a critique of global capitalism as all-conquering and capitalist economic development as a one-way street. This model is meant to address the shortcomings of the articulation of- modes-of-production models of an earlier moment in economic anthropology

Goddess across the Taiwan Strait: Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-State, and Satellite Television Footprints

This essay examines complex interactions among the nation-state, popular religion, media capitalism, and gendered territorialization as these are inflected across the Taiwan Strait. Relations across the strait have been fraught with political tension and military preparations over the question of whether taiwan is part of China or an independent state. Since the 1999 presidential elections in Taiwan, the new government there has been more vociferous about Taiwan independence, and mainland China's Communist Party has responded with more vigorous claims on Taiwan, including the launching of a warning missile over the island. Under these conditions, it is all the more remarkable that in recent years there has been an increasing number of religious pilgrimages and exchanges across the strait, and that, in 2000, one such pilgrimage by Taiwanese worshippers of the maritime goddess Mazu to her natal home in Fujian Province was broadcast live from China back to Taiwan via satellite television

Une histoire du présent. Gouvernement rituel et gouvernement d'État dans la Chine ancienne

A History of the Present. Ritual Government and State Government in Ancient China. This is an interpretation of the transition ancient Chinese history from the ritual and segmentary state order (Xia Shang and Zhou periods) to the first centralized impe- rial despotic state in 221 BCE. The fact that in 1973 during the Cultural Revolution, a political campaign called "Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius" which upheld the school of Legalism and attacked Confucianism in ancient Chinese history, makes this period especially relevant for understanding the state socialist order in China today. The article explicates the ancient Confucian concept of li (ritual) and argues that ritual, kinship, and gift relations were central elements of polity which did not yet experience the emergence of centralized bureaucratic and militaristic state. In contemporary socialist society, the resurfacing of gift relations in everyday life hearkens back to the ancient resistance to frightening new state order.Yang Mayfair, Séné Jean-François. Une histoire du présent. Gouvernement rituel et gouvernement d'État dans la Chine ancienne. In: Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations. 46ᵉ année, N. 5, 1991. pp. 1041-1069