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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Living In This World: A Social History Of Buddhist Monks And Nuns In Nineteenth-Century Western China, Gilbert Zhe Chen
Living In This World: A Social History Of Buddhist Monks And Nuns In Nineteenth-Century Western China, Gilbert Zhe Chen
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation relies on about 600 legal cases from the Ba County Archive that survive from the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century to investigate the social life of ordinary Buddhist monks and nuns. Although they played a crucial in maintaining the survival and proper functioning of Buddhism at the local level, they have remained significantly understudied. This dissertation adopts a bottom-up approach to investigate ordinary monastics’ involvement in various socioeconomic activities. By shifting the analytical focus from elite monks to their more mundane counterparts, this study illuminates how deeply ordinary monastics were embedded in their communities. The shift also …
The Afterlife Of Corpses: A Social History Of Unburied Dead Bodies In Qing China (1644-1911), Joohee Suh
The Afterlife Of Corpses: A Social History Of Unburied Dead Bodies In Qing China (1644-1911), Joohee Suh
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation began with the reading of numerous Qing-dynasty records pertaining to dead bodies that remained on the ground without proper burial. These bodies were not necessarily the victims of extraordinary events such as wars or natural disasters, but the remains of ordinary people whose families failed to arrange a burial site. A wide range of historical materials recorded the presence of these bodies, such as commentaries and critiques on popular burial customs written by the imperial government and literati elites, and Qing popular tales where these bodies were described as man-hunting zombies (jiangshi 僵屍). These sources demonstrate unburied dead …
In Praise Of The Peaks: Science, Art, And Nature In Kojima Usui’S Mountain Literature, Aaron Paul Jasny
In Praise Of The Peaks: Science, Art, And Nature In Kojima Usui’S Mountain Literature, Aaron Paul Jasny
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
During the Meiji period (1868–1912), a newly constituted Japanese nation sought equal standing among the global powers it encountered with increasing frequency, by updating and modernizing in various fields of knowledge and cultural production. Science and technology were adopted and adapted from the nations of the West in order to bolster the economy, improve infrastructure, and ensure the health and well-being of the Japanese people. Meanwhile, literature and the arts were refashioned to make them more suitable for dealing with modernization, urbanization, empirical and rational thinking, and a regard for individual autonomy and subjectivity. Meiji Japan witnessed numerous innovations, which …