This study deals primarily with Ch'inan, a village in northern Taiwan whose residents belong to one ethnic group: Hokkien-speaking Chinese whose ancestors made the journey from the southeast coast of mainland China over 200 years ago. It deals almost exclusively with the complex of institutions associated with the care and management of the dead. The book covers the history of Ch'inan, and how the village is organized today, making use of historical records, such as lineage genealogies. Sociological correlates of ancestor worship in ancestral halls and before domestic altars are examined. The darker side of ancestor worship is also explored, in which the dead stand out as dangerous creatures capable of harming or frightening the living. Perspective is then expanded to other parts of Taiwan, to consider how the form of the community affects the cult of the ancestors, how different reciprocal obligations between the living the dead affect ancestor worship, and in what ways people react to the obligations of ancestor worship.

In Delicious Prose: Reading the Tale of Tobit with Food and Drink, Naomi S.S. Jacobs explores how the numerous references to food, drink, and their consumption within The Book of Tobit help tell its story, promote righteous deeds and encourage resistance against a hostile dominant culture. Jacobs’ commentary includes up-to-date analyses of issues of translation, text-criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism, and issues of class and gender. Jacobs situates Tobit within a wide range of ancient writings sacred to Jews and Christians as well as writings and customs from the Ancient Near East, Ugarit, Greece, Rome, including a treasure trove of information about ancient foodways and medicine.

During the late imperial era (1500-1911), China, though divided by ethnic, linguistic, and regional differences at least as great as those prevailing in Europe, enjoyed a remarkable solidarity. What held Chinese society together for so many centuries? Some scholars have pointed to the institutional control over the written word as instrumental in promoting cultural homogenization; others, the manipulation of the performing arts. This volume, comprised of essays by both anthropologists and historians, furthers this important discussion by examining the role of death rituals in the unification of Chinese culture.

The term bodylore was coined for the American Folklore Society in 1989 to focus concerns with body language, costumes and accoutrements, movement, discourses, and representations, considering the human body as a cultural artifact rather than a natural object. Ten essays from various panels since then explore such topics as women in the American spa culture, body puns in Hamlet, quilts and women's bodies, and medical discourse. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The centrality of death rituals has rarely been documented in anthropologically informed studies of Buddhism. Bringing together a range of perspectives including ethnographic, textual, historical and theoretically informed accounts, this edited volume presents the diversity of the Buddhist funeral cultures of mainland Southeast Asia and China. While the contributions show that the ideas and ritual practices related to death are continuously transformed in local contexts through political and social changes, they also highlight the continuities of funeral cultures. The studies are based on long-term fieldwork and covering material from Theravāda Buddhism in Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and various regions of Chinese Buddhism, both on the mainland and in the Southeast Asian diasporas. Topics such as bad death, the feeding of ghosts, pollution through death, and the ritual regeneration of life show how Buddhist cultures deal with death as a universal phenomenon of human culture.

Death Across Cultures: Death and Dying in Non-Western Cultures, explores death practices and beliefs, before and after death, around the non-Western world. It includes chapters on countries in Africa, Asia, South America, as well as indigenous people in Australia and North America. These chapters address changes in death rituals and beliefs, medicalization and the industry of death, and the different ways cultures mediate the impacts of modernity. Comparative studies with the west and among countries are included. This book brings together global research conducted by anthropologists, social scientists and scholars who work closely with individuals from the cultures they are writing about.