Miao-Miao Yang
Biographic Data
| ID | 654135 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Miao-Miao Yang |
| GIVEN NAMES | Miao-Miao |
| FAMILY NAME | Yang |
| SIGNATURE | YANG M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Santa Barbara |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9460-7425 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 264 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
No Nature, No Culture: Chinese Buddhist Vegetarianism, Kinship, and Transmigration
Most studies of Buddhist environmentalism proceed from the prescriptive statements found in Buddhist scriptures and texts. This study of living Chinese Buddhism in a society that has undergone radical state secularization in the past century, proceeds from fieldwork in rural Wenzhou on the southeast China coast. Actual contemporary Buddhist practice and sentiments showed a preference and trend towards vegetarianism, in observance of Buddhist stri…
Chinese Popular Religion and Economy
Chinese popular religion includes shamanism and divination, deities with their cults and pilgrimages, ancestor worship, healing and exorcism rituals, and fengshui or geomancy. While popular religion has been partially absorbed into the more institutionalized Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, it remains tied up with local communities, and therefore exhibits regional differences. Popular religion took shape during the Song Dynasty period of comme…
Huaiyu Chen, In the Land of Tigers and Snakes: Living with Animals in Medieval Chinese Religions
Huaiyu Chen, In the Land of Tigers and Snakes: Living with Animals in Medieval Chinese Religions (New York: Columbia University Press, 2023), 271 pp., $34.98 (pbk), ISBN: 9780231202619
Portrait: Mayfair Yang
My BA was a double major in anthropology and what was then called 'Oriental languages', and my MA and PhD were in anthropology, all at the University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley instilled in me a strong sense of politics and power dynamics and a penchant for social critique in my work. My PhD advisers were Jack Potter, a cultural Marxist who had done fieldwork on peasants in rural Hong Kong and Guangdong Province in China; Paul Rabinow, a p…
Xiaoxuan Wang, Maoism and Grassroots Religion: The Communist Revolution and the Reinvention of Religious Life in China
Buddhist Religiosity: The Wheel of Life, Death, and Rebirth
From sovereignty to governmentality and back: China and the USA
La inmigracion, el desarrollo y la cooperacion son los pilares del Plan de accion para Africa subsahariana que Espana ha elaborado en el marco de la politica de la UE hacia una region prioritaria
Re-enchanting Modernity: Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China
In Re-enchanting Modernity Mayfair Yang examines the resurgence of religious and ritual life after decades of enforced secularization in the coastal area of Wenzhou, China. Drawing on twenty-five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Yang shows how the local practices of popular religion, Daoism, and Buddhism are based in community-oriented grassroots organizations that create spaces for relative local autonomy and self-governance. Central to Wenzhou'…
Goddess across the Taiwan Strait: Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-State, and Satellite Television Footprints
This essay examines complex interactions among the nation-state, popular religion, media capitalism, and gendered territorialization as these are inflected across the Taiwan Strait. Relations across the strait have been fraught with political tension and military preparations over the question of whether taiwan is part of China or an independent state. Since the 1999 presidential elections in Taiwan, the new government there has been more vocifer…
Shamanism and Spirit Possession in Chinese Modernity: Some Preliminary Reflections on a Gendered Religiosity of the Body
巫術與中國現代性:有関性别與身體宗教性的初步探討 摘要 近期在溫州農村和小鎮的實地考察显示出巫術、巫醫和靈媒在後毛澤東時代再次出現,減緩了其經歷明清時期新儒學佔據統治地位,和毛澤東時代壓制形成的長期下降趨勢。與同時期台灣、福建和其他華裔生活的東南亞地區,以及我們所熟知的中華帝國晚期的巫術文化不同,如今在溫州大部分的靈媒都是女性,並且,她們沒有像男巫師一樣在她們主導的剬開宗教儀式裡進行血腥和暴力的禮儀行為。本篇論文探討了四個可能的原因,解釋當今中國官方和主流社會對巫術和靈媒的反感和憎惡。文章中提出的第四個原因,關於巫師儀式表演和巫師的性別問題,至今未在有關中國巫術的研究中被深入挖掘。因此,這個問題需要在今後研究現代中國的靈魂控制等相關課題時得到更多的重視,不應把中國巫術作為一個孤立的個案,而應該把中國巫術研究放在更大的全球環境中,共同探討其在全球現代化中身體構造的重新組合
Do Only Fools Smile at Strangers? Cultural Differences in Social Perception of Intelligence of Smiling Individuals
Studies on social perception reveal that on many dimensions, smiling individuals are perceived more positively in comparison with non-smiling individuals. The experiment carried out in seven countries (China, Germany, Iran, Norway, Poland, USA, and the Republic of South Africa) showed that in some cultures, smiling individuals may be perceived less favorably than non-smiling individuals. We compared ratings of intelligence made by participants vi…
Postcoloniality and Religiosity in Modern China: The Disenchantments of Sovereignty
In the long 20th century, modern China experienced perhaps the world's most radical and systematic secularization process and the decimation of traditional religious and ritual cultures. This article seeks to account for this experience by engaging with postcolonial theory, a body of discourse seldom found relevant to China Studies. The article attempts a two-pronged critique of both state secularization and some aspects of existing Postcolonial …
Spatial Struggles: State Disenchantment and Popular Re-appropriation of Space in Rural Southeast China
This article examines the struggles over space in rural southeastern coastal China, where the market economy has brought newfound prosperity to local communities. Instead of reinvesting all of their wealth into furthering industrial growth, local residents wish to also plow their money into building tombs for their deceased, ancestor halls, deity temples, Daoist and Buddhist temples, Christian churches, and holding extravagant rituals and festiva…
Spatial Struggles: Postcolonial Complex, State Disenchantment, and Popular Reappropriation of Space in Rural Southeast China
Spatial Struggles: Postcolonial Complex, State Disenchantment, and Popular Reappropriation of Space in Rural Southeast China MAYFAIR MEI-HUI Y A N G Tin sun- is consolidating go to the National Science Foundation Presidential Yi*ing Investigator award, the I'( Santa llartura Inst utile ol Social. Behavioral, and Economic Research, and UC Santa Barbara's Inrrrdist iphnarv Humanities Center for funding feldwnrk aixl research. I received useful comm…
Goddess across the Taiwan Strait: Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-State,and Satellite Television Footprints
Mayfair Mei-hui Yang teaches in the anthropology and religious studies departments at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is working on a book manuscript titled "Re-Enchanting Modernity:Sovereignty, Popular Rituals, and Indigenous Civil Society in Coastal China
The Resilience of Guanxi and its New Deployments: A Critique of Some New Guanxi Scholarship
In addressing claims that the art of guanxi is declining in China's current incorporation of capitalism, this article argues that guanxi must be treated historically as a repertoire of cultural patterns and resources which are continuously transformed in their adaptation to, as well as shaping of, new social institutions and structures, and by the particular Chinese experience with globalization. The article takes issue with approaches which trea…
Putting Global Capitalism in Its Place: Economic Hybridity, Bataille, and Ritual Expenditure
This article takes up J. K. Gibson-Graham's call for a theoretical move away from a model of monolithic global capitalism and notions of one-way "penetration" of capitalism. The notion of "economic hybridity" (derived from Bakhtin's writing on linguistic hybridity) is proposed as an alternative to the Marxist concept of "articulation of modes of production" to account for the coming together of economic logics and practices from different epochs …
The Lineage-Village Complex in Southeastern China: A Long Footnote in the Anthropology of Kinship [and Comments and Reply]
Gifts, Favors and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China
A Conversation with Huang Shuqing
Sea Change: Pacific Asia as the New World Industrial Center
Film Discussion Groups in China: State Discourse or a Plebeian Public Sphere
Of Gender, State Censorship, and Overseas Capital: An Interview with Chinese Director Zhang Yimou
Research Article| May 01 1993 Of Gender, State Censorship, and Overseas Capital: An Interview with Chinese Director Zhang Yimou Mayfair Mei-hui Yang Mayfair Mei-hui Yang Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Public Culture (1993) 5 (2): 297–313. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-5-2-297 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Mayfair Mei-hui Yang; Of Gender, State Censor…
Une Histoire du Présent Gouvernement Rituel et Gouvernement D'État dans la Chine Ancienne
C'est de cette prison... que je voudrais faire l'histoire. Par un pur anachronisme ? Non, si on entend par là faire l'histoire du passé dans les termes du présent. Oui, si on entend par là faire l'histoire du présent. ' (Michel Foucault,Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison, Paris, 1975.)Selon une opinion largement partagée en Occident, l'écriture et l'interprétation de l'histoire sont une tradition ancienne dans la civilisation chinoise. C…
Between State and Society: The Construction of Corporateness in a Chinese Socialist Factory
Putting Global Capitalism in Its Place: Economic Hybridity, Bataille, and Ritual Expenditure
This article takes up J. K. Gibson-Graham's call for a theoretical move away from a model of monolithic global capitalism and notions of one-way "penetration" of capitalism. The notion of "economic hybridity" (derived from Bakhtin's writing on linguistic hybridity) is proposed as an alternative to the Marxist concept of "articulation of modes of production" to account for the coming together of economic logics and practices from different epochs …
The Gift Economy and State Power in China
The state apparatus in China today has taken upon itself almost total responsibility for administering the social and economic domain. The welfare and control of the population, the organization of production, planning all social activities, and the distribution of the means of subsistence have become primary concerns of organs of the state. The types of power relationships and their social and symbolic expressions, which have crystallized around…
The Modernity of Power in the Chinese Socialist Order
Spatial Struggles: Postcolonial Complex, State Disenchantment, and Popular Reappropriation of Space in Rural Southeast China
Spatial Struggles: Postcolonial Complex, State Disenchantment, and Popular Reappropriation of Space in Rural Southeast China MAYFAIR MEI-HUI Y A N G Tin sun- is consolidating go to the National Science Foundation Presidential Yi*ing Investigator award, the I'( Santa llartura Inst utile ol Social. Behavioral, and Economic Research, and UC Santa Barbara's Inrrrdist iphnarv Humanities Center for funding feldwnrk aixl research. I received useful comm…
Postcoloniality and Religiosity in Modern China: The Disenchantments of Sovereignty
In the long 20th century, modern China experienced perhaps the world's most radical and systematic secularization process and the decimation of traditional religious and ritual cultures. This article seeks to account for this experience by engaging with postcolonial theory, a body of discourse seldom found relevant to China Studies. The article attempts a two-pronged critique of both state secularization and some aspects of existing Postcolonial …
Goddess across the Taiwan Strait: Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-State,and Satellite Television Footprints
Mayfair Mei-hui Yang teaches in the anthropology and religious studies departments at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is working on a book manuscript titled "Re-Enchanting Modernity:Sovereignty, Popular Rituals, and Indigenous Civil Society in Coastal China
The Lineage-Village Complex in Southeastern China: A Long Footnote in the Anthropology of Kinship [and Comments and Reply]
Film Discussion Groups in China: State Discourse or a Plebeian Public Sphere
Gifts, Favors and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China
Do Only Fools Smile at Strangers? Cultural Differences in Social Perception of Intelligence of Smiling Individuals
Studies on social perception reveal that on many dimensions, smiling individuals are perceived more positively in comparison with non-smiling individuals. The experiment carried out in seven countries (China, Germany, Iran, Norway, Poland, USA, and the Republic of South Africa) showed that in some cultures, smiling individuals may be perceived less favorably than non-smiling individuals. We compared ratings of intelligence made by participants vi…
A Conversation with Huang Shuqing
Une Histoire du Présent Gouvernement Rituel et Gouvernement D'État dans la Chine Ancienne
C'est de cette prison... que je voudrais faire l'histoire. Par un pur anachronisme ? Non, si on entend par là faire l'histoire du passé dans les termes du présent. Oui, si on entend par là faire l'histoire du présent. ' (Michel Foucault,Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison, Paris, 1975.)Selon une opinion largement partagée en Occident, l'écriture et l'interprétation de l'histoire sont une tradition ancienne dans la civilisation chinoise. C…
The Modernity of Power in the Chinese Socialist Order
Between State and Society: The Construction of Corporateness in a Chinese Socialist Factory
The Gift Economy and State Power in China
The state apparatus in China today has taken upon itself almost total responsibility for administering the social and economic domain. The welfare and control of the population, the organization of production, planning all social activities, and the distribution of the means of subsistence have become primary concerns of organs of the state. The types of power relationships and their social and symbolic expressions, which have crystallized around…
Une Histoire du Présent Gouvernement Rituel et Gouvernement D'État dans la Chine Ancienne
C'est de cette prison... que je voudrais faire l'histoire. Par un pur anachronisme ? Non, si on entend par là faire l'histoire du passé dans les termes du présent. Oui, si on entend par là faire l'histoire du présent. ' (Michel Foucault,Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison, Paris, 1975.)Selon une opinion largement partagée en Occident, l'écriture et l'interprétation de l'histoire sont une tradition ancienne dans la civilisation chinoise. C…
Of Gender, State Censorship, and Overseas Capital: An Interview with Chinese Director Zhang Yimou
Research Article| May 01 1993 Of Gender, State Censorship, and Overseas Capital: An Interview with Chinese Director Zhang Yimou Mayfair Mei-hui Yang Mayfair Mei-hui Yang Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Public Culture (1993) 5 (2): 297–313. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-5-2-297 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Mayfair Mei-hui Yang; Of Gender, State Censor…
Film Discussion Groups in China: State Discourse or a Plebeian Public Sphere
A Conversation with Huang Shuqing
Sea Change: Pacific Asia as the New World Industrial Center
The Lineage-Village Complex in Southeastern China: A Long Footnote in the Anthropology of Kinship [and Comments and Reply]
Gifts, Favors and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China
Putting Global Capitalism in Its Place: Economic Hybridity, Bataille, and Ritual Expenditure
This article takes up J. K. Gibson-Graham's call for a theoretical move away from a model of monolithic global capitalism and notions of one-way "penetration" of capitalism. The notion of "economic hybridity" (derived from Bakhtin's writing on linguistic hybridity) is proposed as an alternative to the Marxist concept of "articulation of modes of production" to account for the coming together of economic logics and practices from different epochs …
The Resilience of Guanxi and its New Deployments: A Critique of Some New Guanxi Scholarship
In addressing claims that the art of guanxi is declining in China's current incorporation of capitalism, this article argues that guanxi must be treated historically as a repertoire of cultural patterns and resources which are continuously transformed in their adaptation to, as well as shaping of, new social institutions and structures, and by the particular Chinese experience with globalization. The article takes issue with approaches which trea…
Spatial Struggles: Postcolonial Complex, State Disenchantment, and Popular Reappropriation of Space in Rural Southeast China
Spatial Struggles: Postcolonial Complex, State Disenchantment, and Popular Reappropriation of Space in Rural Southeast China MAYFAIR MEI-HUI Y A N G Tin sun- is consolidating go to the National Science Foundation Presidential Yi*ing Investigator award, the I'( Santa llartura Inst utile ol Social. Behavioral, and Economic Research, and UC Santa Barbara's Inrrrdist iphnarv Humanities Center for funding feldwnrk aixl research. I received useful comm…
Goddess across the Taiwan Strait: Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-State,and Satellite Television Footprints
Mayfair Mei-hui Yang teaches in the anthropology and religious studies departments at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is working on a book manuscript titled "Re-Enchanting Modernity:Sovereignty, Popular Rituals, and Indigenous Civil Society in Coastal China
Spatial Struggles: State Disenchantment and Popular Re-appropriation of Space in Rural Southeast China
This article examines the struggles over space in rural southeastern coastal China, where the market economy has brought newfound prosperity to local communities. Instead of reinvesting all of their wealth into furthering industrial growth, local residents wish to also plow their money into building tombs for their deceased, ancestor halls, deity temples, Daoist and Buddhist temples, Christian churches, and holding extravagant rituals and festiva…
Postcoloniality and Religiosity in Modern China: The Disenchantments of Sovereignty
In the long 20th century, modern China experienced perhaps the world's most radical and systematic secularization process and the decimation of traditional religious and ritual cultures. This article seeks to account for this experience by engaging with postcolonial theory, a body of discourse seldom found relevant to China Studies. The article attempts a two-pronged critique of both state secularization and some aspects of existing Postcolonial …
Do Only Fools Smile at Strangers? Cultural Differences in Social Perception of Intelligence of Smiling Individuals
Studies on social perception reveal that on many dimensions, smiling individuals are perceived more positively in comparison with non-smiling individuals. The experiment carried out in seven countries (China, Germany, Iran, Norway, Poland, USA, and the Republic of South Africa) showed that in some cultures, smiling individuals may be perceived less favorably than non-smiling individuals. We compared ratings of intelligence made by participants vi…
Shamanism and Spirit Possession in Chinese Modernity: Some Preliminary Reflections on a Gendered Religiosity of the Body
巫術與中國現代性:有関性别與身體宗教性的初步探討 摘要 近期在溫州農村和小鎮的實地考察显示出巫術、巫醫和靈媒在後毛澤東時代再次出現,減緩了其經歷明清時期新儒學佔據統治地位,和毛澤東時代壓制形成的長期下降趨勢。與同時期台灣、福建和其他華裔生活的東南亞地區,以及我們所熟知的中華帝國晚期的巫術文化不同,如今在溫州大部分的靈媒都是女性,並且,她們沒有像男巫師一樣在她們主導的剬開宗教儀式裡進行血腥和暴力的禮儀行為。本篇論文探討了四個可能的原因,解釋當今中國官方和主流社會對巫術和靈媒的反感和憎惡。文章中提出的第四個原因,關於巫師儀式表演和巫師的性別問題,至今未在有關中國巫術的研究中被深入挖掘。因此,這個問題需要在今後研究現代中國的靈魂控制等相關課題時得到更多的重視,不應把中國巫術作為一個孤立的個案,而應該把中國巫術研究放在更大的全球環境中,共同探討其在全球現代化中身體構造的重新組合
Goddess across the Taiwan Strait: Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-State, and Satellite Television Footprints
This essay examines complex interactions among the nation-state, popular religion, media capitalism, and gendered territorialization as these are inflected across the Taiwan Strait. Relations across the strait have been fraught with political tension and military preparations over the question of whether taiwan is part of China or an independent state. Since the 1999 presidential elections in Taiwan, the new government there has been more vocifer…
Buddhist Religiosity: The Wheel of Life, Death, and Rebirth
From sovereignty to governmentality and back: China and the USA
La inmigracion, el desarrollo y la cooperacion son los pilares del Plan de accion para Africa subsahariana que Espana ha elaborado en el marco de la politica de la UE hacia una region prioritaria
Re-enchanting Modernity: Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China
In Re-enchanting Modernity Mayfair Yang examines the resurgence of religious and ritual life after decades of enforced secularization in the coastal area of Wenzhou, China. Drawing on twenty-five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Yang shows how the local practices of popular religion, Daoism, and Buddhism are based in community-oriented grassroots organizations that create spaces for relative local autonomy and self-governance. Central to Wenzhou'…
Xiaoxuan Wang, Maoism and Grassroots Religion: The Communist Revolution and the Reinvention of Religious Life in China
Portrait: Mayfair Yang
My BA was a double major in anthropology and what was then called 'Oriental languages', and my MA and PhD were in anthropology, all at the University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley instilled in me a strong sense of politics and power dynamics and a penchant for social critique in my work. My PhD advisers were Jack Potter, a cultural Marxist who had done fieldwork on peasants in rural Hong Kong and Guangdong Province in China; Paul Rabinow, a p…
Chinese Popular Religion and Economy
Chinese popular religion includes shamanism and divination, deities with their cults and pilgrimages, ancestor worship, healing and exorcism rituals, and fengshui or geomancy. While popular religion has been partially absorbed into the more institutionalized Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, it remains tied up with local communities, and therefore exhibits regional differences. Popular religion took shape during the Song Dynasty period of comme…
China (17 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (15 works) · Political science (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Law (12 works) · History (9 works) · Geography (7 works) · History (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Politics (7 works)