Gods, Ghosts, and Gangsters: Ritual Violence, Martial Arts, and Masculinity on the Margins of Chinese Society

At its core is the participant observation by the author--who started out as "a student of the martial artsâ[euro]--of the military retainer (Jiajiang) troupe that made him one of its performers. With his title, Boretz playfully modifies the standard categories of Chinese religion proposed by t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 70; no. 4; pp. 1109 - 1111
Main Author Sutton, Donald S.
Format Book Review Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Pittsburgh Cambridge University Press 01.11.2011
Duke University Press, NC & IL
Subjects
Anthropology
Asian studies
Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975)
CHINA
Chinese languages
Ethnography
Marginality
Martial arts
Masculinity
Organized crime
Religion
Ritual
Society
Violence
United States > US
China
Japan
Taiwan
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Summary:At its core is the participant observation by the author--who started out as "a student of the martial artsâ[euro]--of the military retainer (Jiajiang) troupe that made him one of its performers. With his title, Boretz playfully modifies the standard categories of Chinese religion proposed by the Taiwan anthropologists David Jordan and Arthur Wolf in the late 1960s, replacing "ancestorsâ[euro] with "gangsters.â[euro] Unlike earlier students of folk religion, including festival troupes, his point of departure was an effort to understand what role martial performance, sometimes violent, played in the performers' personal lives (p. 8). Readers will be rewarded with an intensively researched and often illuminating case study dealing responsibly with anthropology, sinology, local history, and religious studies, and contributing insights in all these disciplines.
Bibliography:content type line 1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Review-1
ISSN:0021-9118
1752-0401
DOI:10.1017/S0021911811001732