bandits, beggars, and ghosts: the failure of state control over religious interpretation in Taiwan

Abstract

Three states have controlled Taiwan over the last century: the Qing Dynasty, a Japanese colonial government, and the current Nationalist government. Each has attempted to manipulate popular ritual, and each has largely failed in the attempt. This paper will analyze the Universal Salvation (Pudu), a major annual ritual t o appease the ghosts of the improperly dead.' The state's successive failures t o manipulate this ritual result from the nature of popular interpretation of ghosts. People produce their interpretations out of their material circumstances, including both past ideas and current experiences. Ghosts are thus open to flexible reinterpretation within a very general symbolic framework as material conditions change. The state found neither an established ideology nor an effective institution through which to impose an interpretation. The only effective counters to popular reinterpretation were too difficult to carry out: the state could ban popular religious performance, or it could change the political economy.Most anthropologists interpret Taiwanese ghosts as metaphors for the socially marginal: for bandits and beggars, for gamblers and prostitutes. They support their interpretations partly with informant statements, and partly by comparing the ritual offerings for ghosts with offerings presented to the other major figures in the Taiwanese cosmology, gods and ancestors (Feuchtwang 1974, Jordan 1972, Wolf 1974b. The structure of these ritual offerings has not changed over the last century, and this helps to explain why the state failed to impose its own ritual interpretation. The state did not want people worshiping socially and politically marginal beings whose very existence was a challenge t o its authority and legitimacy. Yet the state could not offer an alternative interpretation of ghosts without Throughout the last century, local temples in Taiwan propitiated socially marginal ghosts in the Pudu (Universal Salvation Festival). The traditional state manipulated the ghost cult in an attempt to enhance its control; the current state is making similar, but less systematic efforts. These efforts largely failed, however, because of the nature of popular interpretation. Popular interpretations of the ceremony experienced several transformations within a basic symbolic framework that defined ghosts as socially marginal beings: ghosts were dangerous outsiders in the commercializing frontier of the 7880s, but they have become the powerless o l d with the changing family structure of modern Taiwan. Official and elite attempts at ideological control were unsuccessful because the state had n o institution that could challenge the symbolic definition of ghostly marginality, or that could channel people's flexible reinterpretations of ghosts. 46 american ethnologist changing the entire symbolic structure of offerings that defines ghosts in contrast to gods bandits, beggars, and ghosts 47 bandits, beggars, and ghosts

The Politics of Ritual Disguise

“…The new camphor workers were particularly violent and unruly, as they supported armed forces to challenge aborigines for control of the camphor forests, to wrest control from other Chinese who wanted access to the camphor, and to support smuggling of the camphor to foreign merchants trying to avoid the government monopoly. These individuals probably formed the core of Mackay's &dquo;blacklegs and desper-adoes&dquo; (see Weller, 1985, for a further development of this point).…”

“…The traditional state also tried to manipulate popular religion through the rituals of the official state cult. This, too, had little effect, because very few people were involved in these rituals or had any kind of contact with the cult (see Feuchtwang, 1976;Weller, 1985).…”

The neglected side of philanthropy

“…Scholars of Asian religions, particularly those focusing on East and Southeast Asia, have long been identified ghosts as 'hungry', 'pitiful' creatures, often likened to 'beggars' (Wolf 1974;Weller 1985;Formoso 1996;Kendall 2008;Feuchtwang 2010;Ladwig 2012).…”

Tua Ji Peh: The Intricacies of Liminality in the Deification of Chinese non-Buddhist Supernatural Beings in Chinese-Malaysian Communities

“…2 Ancestors are typically only relevant to practitioners with whom they share the bond of kinship. They are generally more private and exclusivist beings.…”