Between the Sacred and Secular: The Role of Chinese Popular Deities in Creating Thirdspaces in Chinese Restaurants of Santiago de Chile

Abstract

Material manifestations of the Chinese popular deities, Guanyin and Guan Gong, are ubiquitous in Cantonese-Chinese restaurants globally. Yet studies of Chinese popular religion among overseas Chinese have seldom focused on the diverse significance of these deities to Chinese migrants, nor the use of restaurant-spaces to house these deities. This article examines the presence and powers of such deities in Chinese restaurants of Santiago de Chile. We seek to understand how the presence or absence of Guanyin and Guan Gong figures specifically shapes migrant Chinese restauranteurs and workers’ experience of the restaurants as particular kinds of protected, sacred/secular spaces, and how these deities might also affectively shape the restauranteurs’ ways of being and inhabiting the restaurants. Based on semi-structured interviews with Chinese shopkeepers and workers, observation and photography of the spatial organization of 26 restaurants and the aesthetics of their deities, we argue that these restaurants are more than just their primary sources of livelihood. We argue that they approximate Soja’s “thirdspaces” (1996), which on the one hand mediate their interactions with the city and its other residents, and on the other hand mediate relationships between humans in the earthly world and deities in the “other” parallel world.     

Representing sainthood in india: sikh and hindu visions of namdev

ABSTRACT

This article examines representations of the poet-saint Namdev in Indian popular art. Posters and calendars are the key mode of religious visual expression in India today, and are the locus of ongoing debates about sainthood and religious identity. The particular focus of this article is Namdev's representations in the state of Punjab, northwest India. Punjab is home to both Sikh and Hindu communities, which make competing claims about Namdev's relevance and hagiography. This article examines portrayals of Namdev in the poster art found at two Punjabi shrines: one at Ghoman, which draws mainly Sikh devotees, and one in Bassi Pathana, which has a predominantly Hindu base. These shrines produce and distribute portraits of Namdev that are strikingly different from each other. Additionally, it looks at Namdev art not explicitly associated with either shrine, which sometimes appears to represent a compromise between the Ghoman and Bassi Pathana portrayals. The representations of Namdev available in Punjab today illustrate both tensions between regional and pan-Indian interpretations of sainthood and a newer debate within Sikhism itself as to how “Sikh” Sikh religious art must be.     

What she looks like: on the recognition and iconization of the virgin mary at apparition sites in the twentieth century

ABSTRACT

Knowledge about Mary's appearance, which shapes apparition experiences, is transmitted primarily via well-known images, which themselves are increasingly representations of visions. Though there has been increased homogenization of images of Mary in the twentieth century resulting from template distribution and the way the psychology of recognition works, Mary is still consistently made specific to a place, to carry uniquely identifiable features which may also articulate local political and theological stances. As long as the apparitions are still taking place, these features may be in flux; the process by which they jell is termed “iconization,” the social process of agreeing on one image as the recognizable face of Mary at a certain apparition site. Medjugorje, the most important active Marian apparition site since the late twentieth century, is unique in that several images compete there for iconic status. Though power structures play an important role in determining which images become icons, this essay emphasizes the balancing act between universal and particular traits which constrains the options of the key players producing the images.     

Beautiful and efficacious statues: magic,commodities, agency and the production of sacred objects in popular religion in vietnam

ABSTRACT

In his provocative rethink of the anthropology of art, Alfred Gell offers the radical suggestion that people commonly abduct agency—acts of thought, will or intention—to things and suggests that the relationship between people and things be studied in the manner that anthropologists analyze other kinds of human relationships. In Gell's terms, the relationship between people and temple images, as sacred objects, follows the “the rules laid down for idols as co-present others.” We will explore how one such a relationship fares in the accelerated market economy of Vietnam where workshops have rationalized the production of “idols,” wooden temple statues, making them more like commodities and where a global market in Asian antiquities encourages theft. Tim Ingold critiques studies of “agency” and “materiality” for too often ignoring the tangible materials and methods of production, but we suggest that in the marketplace for sacred objects, attention to both object agency and artisanal process can be mutually enriching. To do this, we first describe how popular religion in Vietnam renders statues as animated, sacred and agentive and how devotees experience and describe statue agency in and through their own relationships with divine images. We then show how production methods are implicated in the creation of agentive images and consider how these understandings and processes have and have not been compromised since the opening and acceleration of the market from the late 1980s. We argue that a sophisticated market permits a hierarchy of value and a range of consumer choice in the production and consumption of sacred objects.     

Scents,Community, and Incense in Traditional Chinese Religion

In a religious context incense is used for a variety of reasons in various cultures, usually for the purposes of healing or purification. In traditional Chinese religion, incense and incense objects are essential for making a connection with spiritual beings as well as establishing and maintaining religious communities. For Chinese religious practitioners, burning incense opens up communication with deities, and incense ash is required to found new temples. Through pilgrimage, incense is used to demarcate the territory of a deity and maintain relationships between temple communities. Chinese communities have also had a long history of forming voluntary associations, religious and otherwise, that have been organized around the use of incense objects. This article examines the use of incense in traditional Chinese religion, how incense objects are used to build and maintain communities, and how incense acts as a tangible bridge between the spiritual and material.     

处女花园的中国另类现实：威尼斯双年展中国馆评介

该文对2003年以来中国国家馆在威尼斯建立的过程,以及对2003至2007年的建筑双年展和艺术双年展的展示主题和内容进行了介绍,其中,对2005年艺术双年展和2006年建筑双年展中国馆中的建筑师的作品给予了更多的关注。     

Cell phones for the spirits: ancestor worship and ritual economies in vietnam and its diasporas

Religion has been thriving in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam since ??i m?i, the onset of market reforms in the late 1980s. Votive paper offerings, part of spiritual and economic well-being, play a crucial role in performing religious practices in the socialist country as well as among diasporic Vietnamese. In urban Hanoi, material objects made from paper are traded in marketplaces and later burned in the streets, in temples and pagodas, in private yards and other places on special occasions in order to be transmitted to the ancestors. In the past few years, the range of votive paper offerings produced, traded, and sent to the deceased has expanded to include new forms and references to new media. Drawing on recent debates in the role of media in religion and in particular on technologies of mediation, I focus on the use of votive paper offerings in the sociocultural context of the Vietnamese spirit world. I explore how new media and media technologies are embedded in multilayered processes of mediation in Vietnam and its diasporas. Taking religious practices of burning votive paper offerings as an ethnographic example, this essay aims to contribute to ongoing debates on popular religion and the sacred life of material goods in late socialist Vietnam, on its transnational ties, and on the entanglements between religion, media and materiality.     

Mediality and materiality in religious performance: religion as heritage in mauritius

ABSTRACT

In Mauritius, religious performance often doubles as officially recognized diasporic heritage, institutionalized as a component of Mauritians' “ancestral cultures.” Such forms of religious expression not only point to a source of authority outside Mauritius but also play a key role in legitimizing claims on Mauritian citizenship. In this article, I examine two kinds of practices that help to instantiate religious links as heritage: ritual performance combined with the cultivation of “ancestral language” in the context of a Hindu pilgrimage and the role of sound reproduction techniques in popularizing a particular genre of Islamic devotional poetry. I argue that these embodied and material practices illustrate two contrasting modes of engaging with spatially and temporally removed sources of authenticity. While the pilgrimage aims at naturalizing diasporic links through their objectification and iconization, uses of sound reproduction technology in Islamic devotional contexts establish links to sources of religious authority under the assumption that the medium used is relatively transparent. Ultimately, the modalities of materiality presupposed in the ethnographic examples account for the authenticating effect of religion as heritage.     

The materiality of hell: the christian hell in a world religion context

ABSTRACT

Hell is traditionally understood as a theological and eschatological matter concerned with the destiny of the dead in an otherworld even until eternity. Although the beliefs and characteristics of the various hells in the world religions share many similarities, there are nevertheless some striking differences. In a comparative perspective the Christian hell is the worst, but the belief that hell is solely an eternal abyss of fire torturing the damned is a late construct. Apart from theological explanations, in order to understand how these beliefs have developed a perspective emphasizing historical processes and the role of materiality in religion may add new knowledge to why the different hells have various characteristics. With regards to the Christian hell, it became physically manifest on earth in several ways. The burning of witches alive on pyres illuminated the gruesome pains the sinners faced and thus visualized the suffering in hell. Various places were also ascribed the characteristics of hell and purgatory creating a “topography of hell” in this world. Hence, as will be argued, these visualizations and materializations of hell on earth had an important role in the process of developing ideas of hell as an eternal and torturing abyss of fire.     

Pilgrimage and Visual Genre: The Architecture of Twentieth-Century Roman Catholic Pilgrimage in Scotland

Abstract

As Roman Catholics gained confidence in twentieth-century Scotland, they revived pre-Reformation shrines and pilgrimages and created new shrines with transnational connections to the modern Catholic world. Three sites in this campaign were Carfin, a new pilgrimage center based on Lourdes; Whithorn, site of medieval pilgrimages to Saint Ninian; and Dunfermline, associated with the canonized Queen Margaret of Scotland. Each had different meanings for Scottish Catholicism. The landscapes of these shrines included proposed new buildings, completed buildings, including shrines and churches, and existing features, notably caves or grottoes and medieval ruins. Whether found, professionally designed, or made by the clergy and their congregations, these sites framed and ordered pilgrimage rituals and lent them meaning. Seeing common architectural, visual features across these pilgrimages, and drawing on new archival research, we suggest that the employment of recognizable visual genres was a key way of creating a consensus among the faithful. International symbols of saintly presence were remade for the local context, with intertwined religious and political intentions, giving tangible expression to a revived Catholicism in Scotland, and promoting a new vision of Scotland as a Catholic nation.     

Transgressing religious boundaries: the power of aesthetics in tamil catholic and hindu worship

ABSTRACT

This article discusses shared material culture and sensorial practices in prayer among Hindu and Catholic Sri Lankan Tamils living in Paris, such as the clockwise circling of incense, the use of flower garlands, and the worship of Mother Mary. Rather than classifying these practices into religious categories, I argue for a need to examine how such practices come to be shared. By employing a material approach to religious aesthetics which recognizes that objects or “things” are active and have agency and affect how we sense and thus experience our world, I suggest that common aesthetic elements are able to produce feelings of religiosity and, particularly for people who share a common aesthetic in everyday life, to bridge the levels between humans and the divine.     

武汉的宗教建筑初探

武汉是一个有着多种宗教类型和悠久宗教历史的城市。佛教、道教、伊斯兰教、天主教、基督教等宗教都在武汉留下了其丰富的宗教建筑。本文简述了武汉现存宗教的历史与现状,同时也对一些现存的宗教建筑典型进行了论述。     

Dwelling as representation: Values of architecture in an Ecuadorian squatter settlement

This article presents the results of a case study about values of house-building and dwelling in a squatter settlement in Riobamba, Ecuador. The objective is to understand the influence of cultural dynamics on the change in dwelling preferences in a specific context. The case study focuses on how the inhabitants express their socio-cultural identity as individuals and as a group in modern, vernacular, self-built houses. The process of identification, communication, and stratification through architecture and interior decorating is analyzed by looking at diverse aspects of dwelling. Specifically, the following aspects are examined: the characteristics of the housing construction as observed by the researcher; the values and significance that the residents themselves attach to various parts of their dwellings; and the manner in which the residents evaluate each other's dwellings, including the indicators they use and the stratification they apply. In a country where the government is concerned only with reducing the quantitative housing shortage, anthropological research on changing dwelling preferences could contribute to a more adequate policy on the quality and values of dwelling.     

藏东苯教寺庙孜珠寺洞窟研究

西藏洞窟类建筑从藏族人类的产生之日起就伴随着他们的生产及生活而存在,时至今日洞窟建筑仍在藏区存在着。藏区洞窟类建筑分布较为广泛,其中以阿里地区居多,从这些洞窟的功能来分有满足人们日常生活的洞窟,也有能够满足僧人修行活动的洞窟,第二种洞窟普遍被人们称之为修行洞,这些洞窟有的以原始的形态存在着,有的在后期被人为修建的建筑包裹在内。该文以藏东昌都地区丁青县著名苯教寺庙孜珠寺的洞窟为研究实例,从其洞窟的平面形制与功能特点等方面进行分析,意在探寻寺庙洞窟类建筑对寺庙僧人所产生的影响。     

The modern fear of matter: reflections on the protestantism of victorian science

ABSTRACT

Materiality is a quality of relationship rather than a thing in itself (Ding an sich). These relations vary. An inquiry into late Victorian attitudes towards materialism shows that modern science inherited a certain fear of matter from Protestantism, which identifies a number of these relationships as being at least latently religious. It allows us to specify how culturally and historically particular our understanding of matter, materiality and materialism are.     

Altars of Ammo: Catholic Materiality and the Visual Culture of World War II

Abstract

During World War II, US photographers, government censors, and publishers—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—were attracted to images depicting the intersection of Roman Catholic ritual forms and military equipment such as Jeeps, ammunition boxes, cannons, and artillery shells. The motif was seductive in the environment of wartime propaganda for reasons beyond its ideological affirmation of American religious pluralism. Catholic objects—including especially Eucharistic hosts, altars, priestly vestments and bodies, and crucifixes—offered an aesthetically compelling visual match for the objects of war. The spectacle of Catholic materiality also tapped into longstanding fascination with Catholic forms as a quasi-forbidden expression of and invitation to an alternate modernity. The wartime depiction of Catholic forms in martial settings offered a way to signal distance from the logics of modern war without at the same time abandoning the war and the wider US projects to which it contributed. The images thus helped advance a form of Catholic secularism.     

Truck decoration and religious identity: material culture and social function in pakistan

Truck decoration in Pakistan is a pervasive practice in which virtually all trucks are ornamented with some combination of epigraphic formulae, poetry, repetitive patterns and figural images. Both the images and epigraphic formulae may or may not be religious in nature. The decoration of a truck can signify a great deal about the religious identities of the individuals associated with the culture of truck decoration and, more specifically, how changes in the content and nature of the decoration mirror changes in the role of religion in Pakistani society. This is accomplished through the comparison of the decorative programs of four trucks, three countenancing forms of religious expression that have long histories among the people of Pakistan and in South Asia in general, and a fourth, the movement commonly called Tablighi Jama'at, which has only recently seen expression in the decoration of Pakistani trucks.     

中国佛教寺庙宗教空间的意境塑造

通过对宗教空间意境的分析,希望人们重视现代城市建设中缺乏意境内涵的现状,从而借鉴中国佛教寺庙宗教空间意境塑造手法,创造出优美的现代城市环境。     

多元文化影响下的三峡地区传统民居

通过文化人类学的研究视角,对三峡地区多元文化中巴楚文化和商贸文化进行重点分析,并总结出在多元文化共同作用下,对三峡地区传统民居聚落及建筑所产生的影响。