Place and spirit in Taiwan

Alessandro Dell'Orto
RoutledgeCurzon
 9780700715688
0-7007-1568-1

Based on field-work in Taiwan, this book examines the ancient, indigenous religious cult of Tudi Gong both as a religio-social phenomenon and as an appropriate medium for exploring and analysing the social.

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changes that have been occurring in contemporary Taiwan, and the people's strategic adaptations to these changes. In this comprehensive ethnography of Tudi Gong, Dell'Orto engages in a theoretical discussion of the practices, processes and strategies of ethnography and ethnographic writing, and contributes to the construction of an anthropology of place by analysing a number of key concepts related to the notion of place and space. The study combines the use of personal ethnography with raconteurs' own accounts as a way of tracing senses of place and memories of the past. This is a pioneering foundation text for an anthropology of non domestic place and space and brings the most important recent work of social geographers into the field of anthropology.