Adam Yuet Chau
Biographic Data
| ID | 192753 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Adam Yuet Chau |
| GIVEN NAMES | Adam Yuet |
| FAMILY NAME | Chau |
| SIGNATURE | CHAU A Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 119 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 22 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Maoism and Grassroots Religion
Sharing the Sacra
“Shared” sites, where members of distinct, or factionally opposed, religious communities interact—or fail to interact—is the focus of this volume. Chapters based on fieldwork from such diverse sites as India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, China, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, and Vietnam demonstrate how sharing and tolerance are both more complex and multifaceted than they are often recognized to be. By including both historical processes (the development of Chin…
Ritual Terroir
The French term "terroir" has entered the English language carrying more or less the same viticultural and culinary references. Despite its close English-language cousin "terrain" and "territory", terroir is a lot more than things having to do with the earth. It is a particular and dynamic "compositional assemblage" (Chau, 2012) of all elements that contribute to the unique qualities of a product (be it wine, foie gras or mushroom): climate, weat…
Cumulus
This special issue is the result of a workshop organised by the two co-editors and held at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) in London and St John’s College in Cambridge, on 28-30 June 2017. The workshop carried the same name as this collection : Cumulus. Hoarding, Hosting, Hospitality. Our aim was to explore further the limits and usefulness of the concept of hospitality, which had in recent years become a voguish keyword in anth…
Hosting as a Cultural Form
In this article, I propose an analytical schema composed of the interrelated concepts of cultural logics, cultural forms, and institutional/structural forms. Cultural logics are operating principles and interpretive models for the organization of social relations and social life that have been transmitted from generation to generation, while cultural forms are the significant, recurring occasions (i.e., performative mechanisms) through which cult…
Human Organs in Oil Tank Trucks
Since the 1980s the northern part of Shaanbei (northern Shaanxi Province) and neighbouring areas of Inner Mongolia have been experiencing a huge economic boom, thanks to the discovery and successful extraction of coal, oil, and natural gas. While conducting fieldwork on the revival of popular religion in this region in the mid- and late 1990s, I came across various stories relating to suspicions of human organs being transported in large oil tank…
Household Sovereignty and Religious Subjectification
This essay is an attempt to explore the cultural logics behind two very different orientations towards spirits (divinities), one Chinese and the other Christian, and the kinds of religious subjects that are produced by practices informed by these two differing orientations. Specifically, I examine the role the household plays in Chinese religious life as a site and structural unit to host different categories of spirits (gods, ghosts and ancestor…
Culinary subjectification
The idea for this article began with a couple of innocent questions: How would one translate the word "menu" (i.e., restaurant menu) into the native languages of people without any experience of restaurants and menus? And how would you explain to them how ordering from the menu works? It quickly became clear that translating the word "menu" entails not only translating the world of restaurant-going and ordering from the menu but also our (i.e., i…
Sociality
Khun Eng Kuah-Pearce (2011) Rebuilding the Ancestral Village
La channeling zone
According to official religious policies in China, the activities surrounding popular religious temples such as temple festivals are considered superstitions to be eradicated. However, during the reform period in the past thirty years, local temple leaders in many rural areas have been engaging in the politics of legitimation to protect and expand their communities' temples and related activities. At the same time, the de-centralisation of politi…
Modalities of Doing Religion
This chapter presents a model for understanding religious practice in Chinese culture by means of five modalities: the discursive or scriptural, based on the composition and use of religious texts; the personal‐cultivational, involving a long‐term interest in cultivating and transforming oneself; the liturgical, which makes use of procedures conducted by priests, monks or other ritual specialists; the immediate‐practical, aiming at quick results …
Modalities of doing religion and ritual polytropy
This article examines the Chinese religious landscape through the lenses of 'modalities of doing religion' and 'ritual polytropy' and explores the implications such different conceptualisations might bring to the religious-market model. It argues that in Chinese religious culture one can identify five modalities of doing religion (the scriptural/discursive, the self-cultivational, the liturgical, the immediate-practical and the relational), each …
Religion in Contemporary China
Before the modernist transformations of the twentieth century, China had one of the richest and most diverse religious cultures in the world. The radical anti-traditionalist policies of both the Republican and Communist regimes as well as other socio-historical factors posed formidable challenges to China’s religious traditions but, this book argues, these conditions also presented new opportunities for re-generation and innovation. It shows that…
The Shaolin Monastery
An awful mark
This article investigates the relationship between forms of public writing and power, physical violence and symbolic violence in the context of urban spatial transformation in China. Specifically, it examines the widespread phenomenon in China of painting a big character (chai, meaning ‘to demolish’) on the walls of old buildings that are designated to be demolished. Even though this sign carries a definite semantic meaning, its power is more sig…
The Sensorial Production of the Social
In China temple festivals are replete with noises, sights, smells, tastes, and ambient sensory productions. When worshipers converge on a particular temple festival, they produce and experience honghuo (social heat or red-hot sociality). This native concept of honghuo highlights the importance of the social production of a heightened sensory ambience as well as the sensorial production of sociality. In co-producing honghuo the festivalgoers are e…
Southern Fujian
Discovering nature
Herrou, Adeline
Anthropos , Seite 265 - 266
The Politics of Legitimation and the Revival of Popular Religion in Shaanbei, North-Central China
From the early 1980s onward, popular religion has enjoyed a momentous revival in Shaanbei (northern Shaanxi province), as in many other parts of rural China. But despite its immense popularity, popular religion still carries with it an aura of illegality and illegitimacy. Not properly Daoism or Buddhism, which are among the officially recognized religions, popular religion in theory constitutes illegal, superstitious activities. This article addr…
Hosting Funerals and Temple Festivals
This article examines how Chinese peasants stage important folk event productions such as funerals and temple festivals, and how it might be fruitful to look beyond the ritual-procedural aspects of religious activities and examine how these activities are socially embedded and socially produced. I suggest that there is nothing particularly "religious" about the ways in which popular religious activities are organized; the same set of social skill…
Popular Religion in Shaanbei, North-Central China
(2003). Popular Religion in Shaanbei, North-Central China. Journal of Chinese Religions: Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 39-79
The Sensorial Production of the Social
In China temple festivals are replete with noises, sights, smells, tastes, and ambient sensory productions. When worshipers converge on a particular temple festival, they produce and experience honghuo (social heat or red-hot sociality). This native concept of honghuo highlights the importance of the social production of a heightened sensory ambience as well as the sensorial production of sociality. In co-producing honghuo the festivalgoers are e…
The Politics of Legitimation and the Revival of Popular Religion in Shaanbei, North-Central China
From the early 1980s onward, popular religion has enjoyed a momentous revival in Shaanbei (northern Shaanxi province), as in many other parts of rural China. But despite its immense popularity, popular religion still carries with it an aura of illegality and illegitimacy. Not properly Daoism or Buddhism, which are among the officially recognized religions, popular religion in theory constitutes illegal, superstitious activities. This article addr…
Hosting Funerals and Temple Festivals
This article examines how Chinese peasants stage important folk event productions such as funerals and temple festivals, and how it might be fruitful to look beyond the ritual-procedural aspects of religious activities and examine how these activities are socially embedded and socially produced. I suggest that there is nothing particularly "religious" about the ways in which popular religious activities are organized; the same set of social skill…
Household Sovereignty and Religious Subjectification
This essay is an attempt to explore the cultural logics behind two very different orientations towards spirits (divinities), one Chinese and the other Christian, and the kinds of religious subjects that are produced by practices informed by these two differing orientations. Specifically, I examine the role the household plays in Chinese religious life as a site and structural unit to host different categories of spirits (gods, ghosts and ancestor…
Culinary subjectification
The idea for this article began with a couple of innocent questions: How would one translate the word "menu" (i.e., restaurant menu) into the native languages of people without any experience of restaurants and menus? And how would you explain to them how ordering from the menu works? It quickly became clear that translating the word "menu" entails not only translating the world of restaurant-going and ordering from the menu but also our (i.e., i…
La channeling zone
According to official religious policies in China, the activities surrounding popular religious temples such as temple festivals are considered superstitions to be eradicated. However, during the reform period in the past thirty years, local temple leaders in many rural areas have been engaging in the politics of legitimation to protect and expand their communities' temples and related activities. At the same time, the de-centralisation of politi…
Ritual Terroir
The French term "terroir" has entered the English language carrying more or less the same viticultural and culinary references. Despite its close English-language cousin "terrain" and "territory", terroir is a lot more than things having to do with the earth. It is a particular and dynamic "compositional assemblage" (Chau, 2012) of all elements that contribute to the unique qualities of a product (be it wine, foie gras or mushroom): climate, weat…
Hosting as a Cultural Form
In this article, I propose an analytical schema composed of the interrelated concepts of cultural logics, cultural forms, and institutional/structural forms. Cultural logics are operating principles and interpretive models for the organization of social relations and social life that have been transmitted from generation to generation, while cultural forms are the significant, recurring occasions (i.e., performative mechanisms) through which cult…
Popular Religion in Shaanbei, North-Central China
(2003). Popular Religion in Shaanbei, North-Central China. Journal of Chinese Religions: Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 39-79
Hosting Funerals and Temple Festivals
This article examines how Chinese peasants stage important folk event productions such as funerals and temple festivals, and how it might be fruitful to look beyond the ritual-procedural aspects of religious activities and examine how these activities are socially embedded and socially produced. I suggest that there is nothing particularly "religious" about the ways in which popular religious activities are organized; the same set of social skill…
The Politics of Legitimation and the Revival of Popular Religion in Shaanbei, North-Central China
From the early 1980s onward, popular religion has enjoyed a momentous revival in Shaanbei (northern Shaanxi province), as in many other parts of rural China. But despite its immense popularity, popular religion still carries with it an aura of illegality and illegitimacy. Not properly Daoism or Buddhism, which are among the officially recognized religions, popular religion in theory constitutes illegal, superstitious activities. This article addr…
Southern Fujian
Discovering nature
Herrou, Adeline
Anthropos , Seite 265 - 266
An awful mark
This article investigates the relationship between forms of public writing and power, physical violence and symbolic violence in the context of urban spatial transformation in China. Specifically, it examines the widespread phenomenon in China of painting a big character (chai, meaning ‘to demolish’) on the walls of old buildings that are designated to be demolished. Even though this sign carries a definite semantic meaning, its power is more sig…
The Sensorial Production of the Social
In China temple festivals are replete with noises, sights, smells, tastes, and ambient sensory productions. When worshipers converge on a particular temple festival, they produce and experience honghuo (social heat or red-hot sociality). This native concept of honghuo highlights the importance of the social production of a heightened sensory ambience as well as the sensorial production of sociality. In co-producing honghuo the festivalgoers are e…
The Shaolin Monastery
Religion in Contemporary China
Before the modernist transformations of the twentieth century, China had one of the richest and most diverse religious cultures in the world. The radical anti-traditionalist policies of both the Republican and Communist regimes as well as other socio-historical factors posed formidable challenges to China’s religious traditions but, this book argues, these conditions also presented new opportunities for re-generation and innovation. It shows that…
Modalities of Doing Religion
This chapter presents a model for understanding religious practice in Chinese culture by means of five modalities: the discursive or scriptural, based on the composition and use of religious texts; the personal‐cultivational, involving a long‐term interest in cultivating and transforming oneself; the liturgical, which makes use of procedures conducted by priests, monks or other ritual specialists; the immediate‐practical, aiming at quick results …
Modalities of doing religion and ritual polytropy
This article examines the Chinese religious landscape through the lenses of 'modalities of doing religion' and 'ritual polytropy' and explores the implications such different conceptualisations might bring to the religious-market model. It argues that in Chinese religious culture one can identify five modalities of doing religion (the scriptural/discursive, the self-cultivational, the liturgical, the immediate-practical and the relational), each …
Sociality
Khun Eng Kuah-Pearce (2011) Rebuilding the Ancestral Village
La channeling zone
According to official religious policies in China, the activities surrounding popular religious temples such as temple festivals are considered superstitions to be eradicated. However, during the reform period in the past thirty years, local temple leaders in many rural areas have been engaging in the politics of legitimation to protect and expand their communities' temples and related activities. At the same time, the de-centralisation of politi…
Household Sovereignty and Religious Subjectification
This essay is an attempt to explore the cultural logics behind two very different orientations towards spirits (divinities), one Chinese and the other Christian, and the kinds of religious subjects that are produced by practices informed by these two differing orientations. Specifically, I examine the role the household plays in Chinese religious life as a site and structural unit to host different categories of spirits (gods, ghosts and ancestor…
Culinary subjectification
The idea for this article began with a couple of innocent questions: How would one translate the word "menu" (i.e., restaurant menu) into the native languages of people without any experience of restaurants and menus? And how would you explain to them how ordering from the menu works? It quickly became clear that translating the word "menu" entails not only translating the world of restaurant-going and ordering from the menu but also our (i.e., i…
Human Organs in Oil Tank Trucks
Since the 1980s the northern part of Shaanbei (northern Shaanxi Province) and neighbouring areas of Inner Mongolia have been experiencing a huge economic boom, thanks to the discovery and successful extraction of coal, oil, and natural gas. While conducting fieldwork on the revival of popular religion in this region in the mid- and late 1990s, I came across various stories relating to suspicions of human organs being transported in large oil tank…
Cumulus
This special issue is the result of a workshop organised by the two co-editors and held at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) in London and St John’s College in Cambridge, on 28-30 June 2017. The workshop carried the same name as this collection : Cumulus. Hoarding, Hosting, Hospitality. Our aim was to explore further the limits and usefulness of the concept of hospitality, which had in recent years become a voguish keyword in anth…
Hosting as a Cultural Form
In this article, I propose an analytical schema composed of the interrelated concepts of cultural logics, cultural forms, and institutional/structural forms. Cultural logics are operating principles and interpretive models for the organization of social relations and social life that have been transmitted from generation to generation, while cultural forms are the significant, recurring occasions (i.e., performative mechanisms) through which cult…
Ritual Terroir
The French term "terroir" has entered the English language carrying more or less the same viticultural and culinary references. Despite its close English-language cousin "terrain" and "territory", terroir is a lot more than things having to do with the earth. It is a particular and dynamic "compositional assemblage" (Chau, 2012) of all elements that contribute to the unique qualities of a product (be it wine, foie gras or mushroom): climate, weat…
Sharing the Sacra
“Shared” sites, where members of distinct, or factionally opposed, religious communities interact—or fail to interact—is the focus of this volume. Chapters based on fieldwork from such diverse sites as India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, China, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, and Vietnam demonstrate how sharing and tolerance are both more complex and multifaceted than they are often recognized to be. By including both historical processes (the development of Chin…
Maoism and Grassroots Religion
Sociology (16 works) · Archaeology (13 works) · China (13 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (12 works) · History (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Law (8 works) · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Art (6 works)