The Image of the Perfect Ruler in Early Taoist Messianism: Lao-tzu and Li Hung

Seidel, Anna

doi:10.1086/462605

Cited by 54 publications

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“…They also served as a court of higher appeal against the unacceptable actions of local o⁄cials or others of rank, who would be threatened with divine retribution (Katz, 2008). In popular religion, the ¢gure of the Jade Emperor (yuhuang dadi) provided an ideal of what a good wise ruler should be, a transcendent standard against which mortal o⁄cials and the emperor himself were measured, continuing a long tradition in Chinese history (Seidel, 1969^70). Furthermore, local temples and lineages provided the organizational umbrella under which local communities and local gentry accumulated monetary donations to help the poor, provide disaster relief and social welfare, thus allowing local communities to be selfgoverning and avoid dependency on the centralized state.…”

Section: What the Religious Imaginary Can Do With Sovereign Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

Postcoloniality and Religiosity in Modern China

Yang

2011

Theory, Culture & Society

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In the long 20th century, modern China experienced perhaps the world’s most radical and systematic secularization process and the decimation of traditional religious and ritual cultures. This article seeks to account for this experience by engaging with postcolonial theory, a body of discourse seldom found relevant to China Studies. The article attempts a two-pronged critique of both state secularization and some aspects of existing Postcolonial Studies/theory. It shows the many ways in which nationalist elites in modern China unwittingly absorbed Western Orientalist discourse even as their words and actions were ostensibly anti-colonial, and much of the article examines the consequences of this native Orientalism upon Chinese religiosities. Finally, the article suggests that one cannot discuss governmentality in modern China without understanding how it is intertwined with a sovereign power that is both archaic and, at the same time, has experienced renewal and expansion in modernity.

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Section: What the Religious Imaginary Can Do With Sovereign Powermentioning

confidence: 99%