Repair has visibly come to the fore in recent academic and policy debates, to the point that ‘repair studies’ is now emerging as a novel focus of research. Through the lens of repair, scholars with diverse backgrounds are coming together to rethink our relationships with the human-made matters, tools and objects that are the material mesh in whi…[Read more]

Distributed ledger technology and the development of digital smart contracts have the potential for a new disruptive technology. Applications based on them could find their way into the management of many areas of every day life. However, they also carry certain risks for sustainable development of our society. This paper is intended as a…[Read more]

A report published by the Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission this week, ‘Elitist Britain’, found that two fifths (39%) of Britain’s ‘leading people’ were educated privately, more than five times as many as in the population as a whole, with almost one quarter (24%) graduating from Oxbridge. I therefore thought it would be timely to publis…[Read more]

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Based on a cluster of Great Peace (taiping 太平) and Weft (wei 緯) materials dealing with stages in human reproduction (impregnation, gestation, intrauterine infancy, birth) and the logic governing annual cycles, this study shows how ontological and cosmological representations were translated into religious discourse and practice in early medie…[Read more]

A state-of-the-art study of popular movements and religiosity in Late Antiquity China (1st–2nd cent. CE), focused on issues of theology, practice, sources and terminology, and including a critical assessment of received scholarship.

Review of MAKING TRANSCENDENTS: ASCETICS AND SOCIAL MEMORY IN EARLY MEDIEVAL CHINA. By Robert Ford Campany. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009. Pp. xviii + 300.

Review of THE CHENWEI RIDDLE: TIME, STARS, AND HEROES IN THE APOCRYPHA. By Licia Di Giacinto. (Deutsche Ostasienstudien, vol. 13). Gossenberg: Ostasien Verlag, 2013. Pp. xi + 332. 25 Figures, 40 Tables, 4 Appendices, List of Illustrations, Bibliography.

Religions are widely accessible in the digital community and Hinduism and Hindu Nationalism Online engages with some of the internet’s representations of Hinduism, with a focus primarily on political and politico-nationalist representations. Juli L. Gittinger focuses on three organizations throughout the book: Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), R…[Read more]

Review of AFFILIATION AND TRANSMISSION IN DAOISM: A BERLIN SYMPOSIUM. Edited by Florian C. Reiter. (Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 78). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012. Pp. viii + 300 pages.

Review of THE EMERGENCE OF DAOISM: CREATION OF TRADITION. By Gil Raz. (Routledge Studies in Taoism). Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2012. Pp. 292.

Review of CELESTIAL MASTERS: HISTORY AND RITUAL IN EARLY DAOIST COMMUNITIES. By Terry F. Kleeman. (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 102). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016. Pp. xiii + 425. Maps, illustrations.

A review of THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF WORLD RELIGIONS: DAOISM. Edited by James Robson. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015. Pp. xxxii + 754 + A29. Map, illustrations.

Official Chinese historiography is a treasure trove of information on local resistance to the centralised empire in early medieval China (third to sixth century). Sinologists specialised in the study of Chinese religions commonly reconstruct the religious history of the era by interpreting some of these data. In the process, however, the primary…[Read more]

This article explores three facets of green space within a medieval monastic context: its origin, its effects and properties and the way it was shaped into an expression of power. We learn a great deal about the history of green space through the nuances of monastic thought and vice versa. The term ‘green space’ in a medieval context may ini…[Read more]

This article explores three facets of green space within a medieval monastic context: its origin, its effects and properties and the way it was shaped into an expression of power. We learn a great deal about the history of green space through the nuances of monastic thought and vice versa. The term ‘green space’ in a medieval context may ini…[Read more]

This essay ruminates the ethics of a co-implicated, bounded dependence between objects (human and otherwise) that are always in some sense withdrawing from each other but also always together in a some-place labeled “here”: the world (where no Absolute or Outside vantage point is possible or habitable). This essay also considers the possibility,…[Read more]

This is a chronological comparative study of five visual artefacts spanning about a millennium in Chinese history and retrieved from various sources included in the mid-fifteenth century collection called in English the Taoist Canon. All five specimens are basically titled “Taiping fu” 太平符 in Chinese, literally “Great Peace Symbol”. By briefly in…[Read more]

This paper deals with the political ideology of late pre-imperial and early imperial China as documented by remnants of an under-explored genre known in English as weft (wei 緯) writings or “Confucian Apocrypha”. It focuses on the transcendence of hierarchy and sovereignty, the transfer of dynastic legitimacy, and the pragmatic vehicle of “tang…[Read more]