Pursue Good Fortune and Avoid Calamity

The Practice and Status of Divination in Contemporary Taiwan

Dados Bibliográficos

ID7516708
AutoresHomola (0000-0002-1329-3610, Établissement public Campus Condorcet, autor correspondente), Stéphanie Homola
Ano2013
Volume41
Fascículo2
Páginas124-147
Data de publicação2013-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Chinese Religions (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0737-769X • E-ISSN: 2050-8999
EditoraManey Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1179/0737769x13z.0000000005
OpenAlexW1589851731
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas12
Referências citadas12

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