Living at the Edge: Religion, Capitalism, and the End of the Nation-State in Taiwan

This is a preprint (author's original) version of an article published in the journal Public Culture in 2000. The final version of this article may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/08992363-12-2-477 (login may be required)

Social Contradiction and Symbolic Resolution: Practical and Idealized Affines in Taiwan

This is a publisher's version of an article published in the journal Ethnology in 1984. The offprint is posted here in accordance with existing publisher policy, or by special permission via correspondence.tru

Affines, Ambiguity, and Meaning in Hokkien Kin Terms

This is a publisher's version of an article published in the journal Ethnology in 1981. The offprint is posted here in accordance with existing publisher policy, or by special permission via correspondence.tru

Afterword: On Global Nation-States and Rooted Universalisms

This is the author's original (preprint) version of an article published in 2003 in European Journal of East Asian Studies. The final version of the article can be accessed at http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.bu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=12419089&site=ehost-live&scope=site (login required).How far can wings of belief carry us? What kinds of new social and moral systems evolve out of transnational religious movements? The recent literature on globalisation has shown only little interest in religion, in spite of the cutting-edge global role of beliefs like evangelical Christianity. The literature has attended even less to the movement of non-Western traditions. We do, however, have numerous alternative models of how global ideas in general spread: they can seep through the cracks within and between systems of control based in nation-states; they can flow through mobile cosmopolitans with a global sense of belonging; they can reside in diasporas centred around the idea of a common homeland; they can exist in the institutions of transnational villages; and so on. These various images of global culture are not mutually exclusive, of course, and none of them alone captures the full complexity of the possibilities. Here I want to explore briefly just two dialectical relationships that characterise some of the features of the. transnational Chinese religions discussed in the essays collected here. The first is the relationship between global culture and the continuing institutional power of the nation-state. The second is the counterintuitive combination of universalising beliefs with a strong sense of rootedness in specific places or ethnicities

Matricidal Magistrates and Gambling Gods: Weak States and Strong Spirits in China

This is a publisher's version of an article published in Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs in 1995. The offprint is posted here in accordance with existing publisher policy, or by special permission via correspondence.tru

Historians and Consciousness: The Modern Politics of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom

This is a publisher's version of an article published in the journal Social Research in 1987. The offprint is posted here in accordance with existing publisher policy, or by special permission via correspondence.tru

Global religious changes and civil life in two Chinese societies: a comparison of Jiangsu and Taiwan

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15570274.2015.1039305Published versio

Goddess unbound: Chinese popular religion and the varieties of boundary

Mazu is an important deity who spread widely within and beyond China. The hardening of internal and external boundaries during the Cold War greatly limited the flow of the cult on the mainland, and completely cut the tie to temples in Taiwan and abroad. The end of the Cold War, however, brought many new possibilities, which are best understood by opening up the concept of "boundary." The Cold War had strengthened the idea that borders are meant to be unambiguous and well defended. This vision of the boundary as a brick wall, however, is incomplete. This essay explores two further aspects of boundaries: the oozing of people, goods and deities through pores in the boundaries (more cell wall than brick wall); and the boundaries that are crossed through the rhythms of ritual, fostering moves back and forth across both political and spiritual lines (a "tennis net" wall, crossed by the moving ball).Accepted manuscrip

From State-Owned Enterprise to Joint Venture: A Case Study of the Crisis in Urban Social Services

This is a publisher's version of an article published in The China Journal in 2000. The offprint is posted here in accordance with existing publisher policy, or by special permission via correspondence.tru

On the boundaries between good and evil: Constructing multiple moralities in China

This essay discusses three contrasting versions of the relationship between good and evil in contemporary China: a spirit medium who maneuvers between them, a charismatic Christian group that forges an identity by defending the border between them, and an official state and religious discourse of banal goodness and universal love that that seeks to annihilate evil. Each defines good and evil differently, but more importantly, each imagines the nature of the boundary itself differently – as permeable and negotiable, clear and defensible, or simply intolerable. These varied conceptions help to shape alternate views of empathy, pluralism, and the problem of how to live with otherness