Guanyin's Limbo
Icons as Demi-Persons and Dividuating Objects
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2259537 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David A Palmer (0000-0003-0884-995X, Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences/Department of Sociology University of Hong Kong Hong Kong, corresponding author), Martin M H Tse (0000-0001-7556-0297, Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences University of Hong Kong Hong Kong, corresponding author), Chip Colwell (0000-0003-0836-3394, Department of Anthropology Denver Museum of Nature & Science Denver CO 80205 USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 121 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 897-910 |
| Publication date | 2019-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Anthropologist (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/aman.13317 |
| OpenAlex | W2969381760 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 47 |
How do objects and humans relationally constitute one another? In this article, we examine statues of Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion, in Hong Kong to illuminate the forms of personhood and agency that arise through human-icon relations in a modern metropolis. We follow the life course of Guanyin statues, investigating their production, circulation, animation, and disposal-teasing out worshippers' contradictory discourses on whether the deity is present in the statue or in the mind of the worshipper. These ethnographic observations lead us to consider how anthropological debates about the nature of cultural objects asrepresentationsor asagentsparallel Guanyin practices and discourses in Hong Kong. We suggest how the ambivalent status of Guanyin statues is negotiated for practitioners as "demi-persons" and can be understood for anthropologists through the concept of the "dividuating object." [material religion, animism, agency, personhood, icon, Hong Kong
Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Animism · Art · Compassion · Consciousness · Epistemology · Folklore · Icon · Object (grammar · Personhood · Social science · Sociology · Statue · Theology · Veneration · Visual arts · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies
Iconoclash
History and magical power in a Chinese community
Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society
Art And Agency
A History of Cultic Images in China
Faces in the Clouds
Things
Modalities of Doing Religion
The Social Life of Things
More Than Belief
Material Culture and Asian Religions
The Lives of Chinese Objects
The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture
Buddhist images in action
Living Buddhist Statues in Early Medieval and Modern Japan
Posthumanist Performativity
Reassembling the Social
Materiality and the Study of Religion
Thinking Through Things
The Gender of the GiftProblems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia
New Philosophy of Society
A thousand plateaus
Recycling Icons and Bodies in Chinese Anti-Buddhist Persecutions
Kuan-Yin
The agency between images
Female Gender in Chinese Religious Symbols
China's Quest for National Identity
Biographical Objects
Anthropology and What There Is
What Makes Anthropomorphism Natural
Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism
What is an animated image
Marching the devotional subject
Partible penitents
Anthropomorphism or sub-anthropomorphism? An anthropological approach to gods and robots
Guanyin's Limbo
The Buddhist Icon and the Modern Gaze
"Animism" Revisited
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,71 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2026 (8) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |