Uncanny beliefs : superstition in modern Chinese history / edited by Emily Baum and Albert Wu.
| Other author | Baum, Emily, editor |
| Other author | Wu, Albert Monshan, editor |
| Format | Book |
| Publication | Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Asia Center, 2026. |
| Description | 362 pages ; 23 cm. |
| Subjects |
| Series | Harvard contemporary China series ; Harvard contemporary China series ; 22. |
| Contents | Discourses on good and bad religion in China, 1850-1911 / Vincent Goossaert -- "Superstitious beyond all expression": superstition, China, and the age of empire, 1860-1900 / Albert Wu -- Disembodied spirits or mental suggestion? : psychical research and the redefinition of superstition in Republican China / Luis Fernando Bernardi Junquiera -- Shifting boundaries : spirit writing and superstition in Republican China / Matthias Schumann -- The affective ties of religions and enlightenment : tales of medicine and superstition / Rebecca Nedostup -- Women, nation, and superstition in Sinophone Muslims' reform discourses during the republican era / Vincent Mu-Chien Chen -- Superstition in translation? : vamps, vampire capitalists, and vocabularies of class and gender in Republican China / Coraline Jortay -- Fate, fatalism, and superstition in the People's Republic of China / Emily Baum -- Household religion and the attack on "superstitious goods" in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1976 / S.A. Smith -- Cadres, superstition, and the making of authority in North China before and during the Socialist Education Movement, 1961-1966 / Long Yang -- Superstition and the "religion sphere" / Adam Yuet Chau -- Reimagining superstition in the digital age : fantasy novels, media corporations, and the Chinese state / / Zhange Ni -- Epilogue: From superstition to cultural heritage : is anything left of the campaigns against superstition? / Ian Johnson |
| Abstract | "In the early twentieth century, scholars around the world believed that "superstition" belonged to a bygone era. Yet despite their confident predictions, superstitious beliefs have endured. Perhaps nowhere has the history of superstition been more prolonged and tumultuous than in China. From the late nineteenth century to the present day, intellectuals and politicians have denigrated practices like divination, ancestor worship, and geomancy as unbefitting of a modern nation, and governing regimes have launched a succession of campaigns to replace superstitious thinking with science and rationality. Efforts to eliminate such practices from public life, however, have regularly encountered resistance from people who continue to find meaning in them. Uncanny Beliefs seeks to understand what 'superstition' has meant in modern China-and questions why superstitious thinking has remained such an urgent target of state intervention. Through a range of temporal and thematic perspectives, the chapters in this volume link the study of superstition to the histories of science, religion, gender, state building, and popular culture. In doing so, they collectively broaden our understanding of modern Chinese history by revealing the complex entanglements of superstition with religion, modernity, authority, and everyday life."-- Publisher, page four of cover |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 300-342) and index. |
| Issued in other form | Online version: Uncanny beliefs. Cambridge : Harvard University Asia Center, 2026 9780674304277 |
| LCCN | 2025030820 |
| ISBN | 9780674303409 |
| ISBN | 0674303407 (paperback) |
| ISBN | (epub) |
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