In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Like Eric Karchmer, the anthropologist Diane Dorfman is interested in looking at the role of beliefs about rationality, modernization, and power in the contemporary People’s Republic especially as these coalesce around complexes of faith. Her article examines the ubiquitous belief in mixin, superstition, on the part of north China nongmin (peasants). Although all nongmin sometimes profess belief in animal spirits, they do not do so at all times. Discussing these “multiple, shifting subjectivities,” Dorfman shows the many ways in which beliefs interplay with economic and political circumstances. The village in a rural county west of Beijing where she conducted her field research was visited by four animal spirits—the weasel, fox, snake, and hedgehog—each of which created different kinds of mischief and demanded different kinds of recompense. When villagers were seen to suffer from ailments, medical doctors would either treat them or refer them to specialists in spirit healing. These healers cannot demand payment but may accept offerings, showing that they are moral and selfless. Morality is superimposed on political and economic tendencies, with an especially stark contrast drawn between the moral Mao era (before the mid1970s ) and the relatively immoral Deng Xiaoping, postreform era (since the mid-1980s). The Reforms refers to economic restructuring begun in 1985, which restored a degree of autonomy to producers and began the dismantling of the planned, redistributive economy in favor of a limited free-market economy. The social consequences of this dismantling have been dramatic, with great numbers of workers in township enterprises laid off, male household heads leaving the land for semiskilled work in the cities, and care of the domestic rural economy in the hands of wives, mothers, and able-bodied children . The disarray of the rural social order has yielded conditions of fear and uncertainty that are particularly amenable to the resurgence of folk religious ideology and practice. In a fascinating explanation that reflects the curious fusion of Communist politics and spirit possession, villagers claim that Mao was virtuous, poor, and like them and that, since he himself was a powerful spirit (a turtle), he had succeeded in banishing the animal spirits. But, with the ascendance of Deng’s cap323 DIANE DORFMAN 17 The Spirits of Reform The Power of Belief in Northern China italist reform program and its continued national elaboration under Jiang Zemin, corruption and wealth have arrived in rural China, and the animal spirits have returned, as a kind of emanation from the center. The intersection of competing and supporting discourses of power, value, health, and identity may all be seen here in this intriguing case of animal spirit possession in rural north China, a parable of the persistence of religion alongside revolution.—Eds. When Sun Xiulan’s son began having periodic convulsions (choufeng) she called on a spirit healer. The healer traveled from his home in the mountains west of Beijing to Wulin, Sun’s suburban county.l He checked the walled yard fronting her house and told Sun that a yellow weasel spirit (huangshulang) had taken up residence there. The yard was littered with old tools, building materials, broken furniture, torn straw mats, and farming implements. In one corner stood a disused toilet: a pit surrounded on three sides by a low stone wall. The healer explained that the piles of junk were a perfect home for the weasel, who claimed the territory, in part, by imprinting its influence on her son; the deaths of Sun’s mother- and sister-in-law within the last year were also a sign of the spirit’s curse on the family. He agreed to try to exorcise the possessing spirit using incense, spells, spirit money, and food offerings and “patting of the hands” (pai shou). To coax the spirit to leave, the yard had to be cleaned—carefully, so as not to suddenly anger the weasel—and a roof had to be built over the toilet to contain the weasel’s power. When I met Sun Xiulan in the winter of 1990, she told me what the healer had said. She knew I had heard about her son’s illness because villagers often gossiped about it. She knew the villagers gossiped that her son still suffered convulsions, that her yard was still full of junk, and that her family was poor and ill fated. Sun stayed at home taking care of her son and, until the woman’s death, her mother-in-law. With only her husband’s income, the family was poor in comparison with...

Share