The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China

ISBN-13: 9780190258146 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 352 str.

Sibastien Billioud; Jokl Thoraval; Sebastien Billioud

Opis

Winner of the 2015 Pierre-Antoine Bernheim Prize for the History of Religion by the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres

After a century during which Confucianism was viewed by academics as a relic of the imperial past or, at best, a philosophical resource, its striking comeback in Chinese society today raises a number of questions about the role that this ancient tradition might play in a contemporary context.

The Sage and the People is the first comprehensive enquiry into the "Confucian revival" that began in China during the 2000s. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork carried out over eight years in various parts of the country, it explores the re-appropriation and reinvention of popular practices in fields as diverse as education, self-cultivation, religion, ritual, and politics.

The book analyzes the complexity of the "Confucian revival" within the broader context of emerging challenges to such categories as religion, philosophy, and science that prevailed in modernization narratives throughout the last century. Exploring state cults both in Mainland China and Taiwan, authors Sebastien Billioud and Joel Thoraval compare the interplay between politics and religion on the two shores of the Taiwan strait and attempt to shed light on possible future developments of Confucianism in Chinese society.

Recenzje

The student of contemporary China and Confucianism will find in this book an enormously rich scholarly resource, theoretically sophisticated and conveyed through a vivid narrative.

O autorze

Sébastien Billioud holds a Ph.D. in East Asian Studies (2004) from University Paris-Diderot and is a Professor of Chinese studies at University Paris-Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité. Based on a cross-disciplinary approach in anthropology and intellectual history, his research explores the multi-faceted development of Confucianism during contemporary periods.; Joël Thoraval is a Senior Researcher at the Research Center on Modern and Contemporary China, School for Higher Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), Paris. Specializing in anthropology and intellectual history, he has written extensively on contemporary Chinese philosophy and has completed several anthropological research projects in Southern China and Hainan. He has spent nearly 20 years in Eastern Asia (China, Hong Kong, Japan) and is the former Head of EHESS's China Center.