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"This book is based on anthropological fieldwork among the Bai, an ethnic minority with a population of two million in Dali, southwest China. It explores the religious and ethnic revival in the last two decades against a historical background. It explains why and how religions and ethnic identity are revived in contemporary China, with the revived analytical concept of 'alterity', which suggests a world beyond here and now. The book focuses on the particular institutions and ritual technologies that seek for access to the invisible, transcendental other--both spatial and temporal. It covers a variety of topics, including pre-modern kingship, communist utopia, religious alterity, ethnic identity, religious associations, the intangible cultural heritage, and temple restorations"--

AbstractThis article interprets the kula system through the lens of the Laozi, a Chinese classic of the 6th century BCE. Laozi's ideas regarding "esteeming goods," "non‐accumulation," and "small realms with few people" allow us to understand why kula shells and names are precious but impossible to accumulate and how kula serves to keep societies small and peaceful with its subtle practice of organizations, technologies, and calendars. Through exemplary "elders" who esteem goods hard to accumulate, the kula operates as a void system close to the spontaneous order idealized by Laozi, who promoted the ideal of the non‐accumulative Sage. Epistemologically, the article continues the anthropological tradition of perspectivist comparison by proposing a Sinic interpretation, a version of multi‐universalism that does not intend to invalidate the existing universalism but seeks to transcend the view of a singular western universalism and multiple non‐Western exceptionalisms.

After the 2009 Ürümqi Riot, heavy measures to maintain stability have dominated China's ethnic policy; the authority has also provided wide-range social welfare for acquiring loyalty. In September 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping laid out his ethnic policy, including insistence on the Ethnic Regional Autonomy, a multi-culturalist outlook, equal access to public services, stronger local governance, rule of law and nurturing of new ethnic elites. Many follow-up policies have been publicised, but challenges remain.

AbstractBased on archival studies, this paper analyses an "ethnic symposium" organized by the party committee of the Dali Prefecture in 1956. The author argues that determining the Bai as the ethnonym is a process of "name standardization". It was neither the decision of the state power, nor was it led by the scholar's opinion, but by the local elites' deliberate complicity with the state project. It could be thus called a process of "creating a common fate" under the combined principles of the discourse of "liberation-cum-backwardness", historical evidence, anti-discrimination, legibility to the ordinary member, conformity to the communist value, etc. It defamiliarizes the everyday knowledge of the people and creates a liminal stage in which a shared fate could be felt. Therefore, this paper is not intended to deconstruct the ethnic identity, but attempts to provide the empirical analysis on a sociological issue of knowledge through contextualizing the usage and implication of the word "minzu" (ethnicity, nation).

AbstractAstrology plays an important role in Indian social life. Indian astrologers' claim to have accurately predicted the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, or the Asian Tsunami, was an effort to legitimize astrology as a full science. This effort demonstrates a difficulty in knowledge categorization, for in India, astrology is neither classified as a science nor as a religion. This is a result of the idea of an Indian nation-state, which rests upon both science and religion as foundations, but at the expense of expelling astrology from religion for not being scientific. However, as astrology continues to be important in India, the astrological interpretation of the Indian Ocean Tsunami drew substantial public attention. Astrology's significant presence in Indian society shows the role of a mature civil society in India as well.

Liang, Yongjia: Introduction : religious revival of ethnic China#Ma, Rong: A Han vs. minorities dual structure of chinese society#Bilik, Naran: The worship of Chinggis Khan : ethnicity, nation-State and situational relativity#Shen, Haimei: Risk society, the predicaments of folk religion and experience of modernity : the guardian spirits in the Mandi Dailue ethnic society of Xishuangbanna #Liang, Yongjia: Turning Gwer Sa La Festival into intangible cultural heritage : state superscription of popular religion in Southwest China#Zhang, Yahui: The relation between politics and religion at a Tibetan Buddhist temple from a historical anthropology perspective