Making “Science” from “Superstition”: Conceptions of Knowledge Legitimacy among Contemporary<i>Yijing</i>Diviners

Matthews, William

doi:10.1080/0737769x.2017.1345193

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…she suggested to me, reminding me that she had lived in London for three years. The embrace of such traditional attire chimes with recent research that has highlighted the revival of Chinese traditions, classical Chinese thought, and philosophies that were suppressed under Mao, and which are now are considered compatible with both individual and national projects of post-Mao modernity (Matthews 2017). Especially when combined with referents of Western knowledge, symbols of Chinese traditions are seen as indicative of a modern, cosmopolitan self who is at ease with managing different sources of cultural capital.…”

Section: National Cosmopolitansmentioning

confidence: 97%

Cosmopolitanism and the global economy: notes from China's knowledge factories

Chong

2020

Royal Anthropological Inst

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In Dalian Software Park, China's centre for IT-enabled outsourcing and offshore services, knowledge workers find themselves on the 'assembly line' of information processing, carrying out highly routinized, de-skilled, and poorly paid work for which they are vastly overqualified. Following the recent attention to culture and personhood in studies of global capitalism, I argue that these knowledge workers are motivated by two forms of cosmopolitanism: corporate cosmopolitanism, the capacity to reconcile the supra-territorial values of 'global' corporate culture with local values; and nationalist cosmopolitanism, whereby individual workers see the performance of cultural openness as a way of contributing to China's national project of modernization. As well as providing a rare account of cosmopolitanism in the workplace, this article demonstrates the significance of cosmopolitanism for the global economy. The pursuit of cosmopolitanism creates a productive friction between individual projects of self-making, corporate projects of disciplining labour, as well as national projects of pursuing modernity and development. Dalian Software Park (DLSP) is one of the many information technology (IT) hubs that have been set up in China in the last twenty years as part of a concerted effort to shift China's economy 'up the value chain' , away from a reliance on manufacturing, towards industries driven by science and innovation. An abundance of IT graduates and a raft of economic incentives have seen DLSP attract well-known technology companies such as IBM, Oracle, Cisco, and SAP. Yet, not all the activities in the software park could be classed as 'high-tech' or 'high-value'. As well as coding and software programming, there are service centres dedicated to back-office work. In pursuit of cost savings, multinational companies have looked to offshore business processes, especially those of support functions, thereby creating new spaces of the global economy. Inside low-rise buildings of glass and steel, Chinese knowledge workers find themselves labouring on the 'assembly line' of information processing. Highly specialized and repetitive, their daily work may involve uploading timesheets, scanning résumés, or calculating insurance contributions. Flows of capital, information, and labour converge, demonstrating the power of information and communication technologies.

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Section: National Cosmopolitansmentioning

confidence: 97%

Cosmopolitanism and the global economy: notes from China's knowledge factories

Chong

2020

Royal Anthropological Inst

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“…Diviners like Master Tao, along with their students and clients, draw on these features to argue that six lines prediction, or Yijing divination more generally, is 'scientific'. In particular, they emphasize the role of observations of natural patterns in deriving the trigrams, and draw direct parallels between the cosmogony of the Yijing and the Big Bang (Matthews 2017a(Matthews , 2017b. At the same time, the Yijing is widely considered 'profound' (shen'ao) by diviners and clients (Matthews 2017a: 179), embodying ancient wisdom that fits with scientific accounts in its own right.…”

Section: Ontology and Persuasionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflective Ontology and Intuitive Credibility in Chinese Six Lines Prediction

Matthews

2021

Social Analysis

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Any form of divination can be intuitively compelling without the need for ontological elaboration, but practices like Chinese six lines prediction involve complex ontological accounts, raising the question of what effect this has on divination’s authority and persuasiveness. The explicit ontology of six lines prediction appears to make it especially persuasive, because it provides a coherent model of epistemology and causation that is readily comparable to scientific observation and description based on constant principles. Meanwhile, six lines prediction’s mathematical character adds to its intuitive authority. By relying on a predetermined system of correlates, it creates the impression that the diviner is not the source of the divinatory result or its interpretation. This likely allows six lines prediction to flourish in an environment in which it is officially classified as ‘superstition’.

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“…This continues today, with new editions of the text, guides adapting it for modern audiences, manuals for using its wisdom to promote good management practices, and, of course, guides to divination. It also remains a focus of scholarly enquiry, both as an object of historical and philosophical significance and as a source of knowledge or wisdom in its own right, the latter institutionalised as 'Changes studies' (易学), a dedicated academic field with its own research institutes as well as amateur associations (Matthews 2017).…”

Section: Between Superstition and Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

2020

MIC

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Making “Science” from “Superstition”: Conceptions of Knowledge Legitimacy among ContemporaryYijingDiviners

Cited by 6 publications

References 23 publications

Cosmopolitanism and the global economy: notes from China's knowledge factories

Cosmopolitanism and the global economy: notes from China's knowledge factories

Reflective Ontology and Intuitive Credibility in Chinese Six Lines Prediction

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