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Magic Power Reconfigured: Chinese Popular Religion in Cities

May 25, 2022 @ 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

BRINFAITH RELIGION AND EMPIRE PUBLIC LECTURE SERIES

Magic Power Reconfigured: Chinese Popular Religion in Cities

ABSTRACT
This talk analyzes how divine magic power is reconfigured in the urban setting. The speaker will discuss how a spirit medium, who moved from the countryside in Taiwan to an urban area, refashioned the elements of village religion to cope with the fast life rhythms of adherents who are scattered across the city and no longer share a unified dwelling space. The speaker will examine the spirit medium, the core shrine members, and occasional petitioners, and show how affective and psychological connections have become increasingly important in binding urban adherents to deities. Distinct from Western religious individualism premised on individual preference and freedom of will, the contemporary popular religion in Taiwan is ingrained with kinship intimacy.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Wei-Ping Lin received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Cambridge University. She is a Professor at National Taiwan University. She was affiliated with the Harvard-Yenching Institute in 2005-06 and 2017-18, and with the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University in 2012-13. Her interests include religion (including topics related to material culture, spirit mediums, and urban religious transformation), kinship, and imagination. She is the author of Materializing Magic Power: Chinese Popular Religion in Villages and Cities (Harvard University Asia Center, 2015), and Island Fantasia: Imagining Subjects on the Military Frontline between China and Taiwan (Cambridge University Press). She also edited Mediating Religion: Music, Image, Object and New Media (Taiwan University Press, 2018; in Chinese) and Ambience Contaminated: Sensory Experiences and the Boundary of Religion (Taiwan University Press, forthcoming; in Chinese).
ORGANIZER
The event is organized by the CRF Project “Infrastructures of Faith: Religious Mobilities on the Belt and Road [BRINFAITH]” (RGC CRF HKU C7052-18G), which is hosted by the ASIAR – Asian Religious Connections Research Cluster in HKIHSS.

Details

Date:
May 25, 2022
Time:
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Event Categories:
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Venue

Via Zoom (Registration required)

Organizer

BRINFAITH