How can a divinity be god and ghost at the same time?
What has made pilgrimages nation-building practices?
Why do politicians conduct rituals at local temple festivals?
Why does Taiwanese Buddhism spread globally, and how does this phenomenon relate to the dynamics of Chinese/Taiwanese identity at home?
Is all religion necessarily political?
These are some of the questions we explore in this class. Geographically and culturally located at the “interface of empires” (Wu 2020), Taiwan has for centuries been a site of cultural and political interaction but also a meeting place for different religious traditions. We will go from local religion to the national level, then the global and back. Ethnographic studies of local (communal or popular) religion give us a lens on traditional as well as modern Taiwanese society, including practices of devotion that still animate ways of relating with the divine today. In the second half of the class, we will turn to forms of organized religion that are globally oriented, such as Buddhism and Daoism. Adopting a framework invested in studying religion as it is practiced and experienced in everyday life, we focus on organized religions to understand how they a) interact with local traditions and b) shape (and are being shaped by) modern society. That is, we investigate interactions between different religious traditions but also between religion and politics. Specific localities feature centrally here as sites where traditions and practices meet and give rise to new social forms.
The class will mix lectures with seminar style. It is not an introductory class to Taiwan or religion. Participants do not necessarily need prior knowledge of either but are expected to read approximately two articles or chapters per week (c. 50 pages in English).
Image source: https://eng.taiwan.net.tw/m1.aspx?sNo=0029044.
What has made pilgrimages nation-building practices?
Why do politicians conduct rituals at local temple festivals?
Why does Taiwanese Buddhism spread globally, and how does this phenomenon relate to the dynamics of Chinese/Taiwanese identity at home?
Is all religion necessarily political?
These are some of the questions we explore in this class. Geographically and culturally located at the “interface of empires” (Wu 2020), Taiwan has for centuries been a site of cultural and political interaction but also a meeting place for different religious traditions. We will go from local religion to the national level, then the global and back. Ethnographic studies of local (communal or popular) religion give us a lens on traditional as well as modern Taiwanese society, including practices of devotion that still animate ways of relating with the divine today. In the second half of the class, we will turn to forms of organized religion that are globally oriented, such as Buddhism and Daoism. Adopting a framework invested in studying religion as it is practiced and experienced in everyday life, we focus on organized religions to understand how they a) interact with local traditions and b) shape (and are being shaped by) modern society. That is, we investigate interactions between different religious traditions but also between religion and politics. Specific localities feature centrally here as sites where traditions and practices meet and give rise to new social forms.
The class will mix lectures with seminar style. It is not an introductory class to Taiwan or religion. Participants do not necessarily need prior knowledge of either but are expected to read approximately two articles or chapters per week (c. 50 pages in English).
Image source: https://eng.taiwan.net.tw/m1.aspx?sNo=0029044.
- Teacher: Jacob Friedemann Tischer