Ancestors on high: musings on an east Chinese case

Journal article

The focus of this article is on the conventions of ancestor worship in the province of Jiangsu, directing light on certain ethnographic data that do not accord with the general, synthesized sociological picture established for southern China. Exploring Myron L. Cohen's 1990 field data, together with what is known from elsewhere in the province, the tentative discussion in this article concerns the nature of ancestry and the construction of social continuity in a local society with its roots in rice-farming. Here ancestor worship as a cultural grammar takes the form of a pragmatic variation, the search for blessings (continuity) being strongly contrasted with the avoidance of implied malevolence (discontinuity). It is further suggested that ancestry and divinity are interacting iconic forces in the stream of social life.

Authors: Aijmer, G

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Anthropological Society of Oxford
• Journal: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Online
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 61-82
• Publication date: 2018-01-01
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-qagvbk0wp
• ISSN: 2040-1876
• Language: English
• Keywords: cult of the dead; construction of continuity; JASO; East China; iconic expression; ancestry