Pursue Good Fortune and Avoid Calamity

The Practice and Status of Divination in Contemporary Taiwan

Bibliographic Data

ID7516708
AuthorsHomola (0000-0002-1329-3610, Établissement public Campus Condorcet, corresponding author), Stéphanie Homola
Year2013
Volume41
Issue2
Pages124-147
Publication date2013-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Chinese Religions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0737-769X • E-ISSN: 2050-8999
PublisherManey Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1179/0737769x13z.0000000005
OpenAlexW1589851731
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited12

This article describes divination practices and analyses the evolution of their status in contemporary Taiwan. Unlike classical studies on divination, which focus on fortune tellers and aim to explain the symbolic system on which divination is based, this research carries out an ethnography of clients’ practices. Thus, in the first part of the article, I put divination practices in the context of the clients’ life stories and commitments of daily life to underline how they are led to consult, and how they process divination results. In the second part, I rely on the historical factors that have shaped the social status of divination as “superstition” from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards, and on the development of scholarly studies of divination, to account for the current evolution of its meaning in Taiwanese society. Indeed, Taiwanese social science researchers have shown a growing interest in this subject, particularly in the context of the “indigenization movement” (bentuhua 本土化), which advocates a new approach to the study of divination practices

Archaeology · Art · Context (archaeology · Divination · Epistemology · Ethnography · Indigenization · Literature · Meaning (existential · Sociology · Superstition · Anthropology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Japanese History and Culture · Philosophy