Book Review Editor’s Note

Journal of Chinese Religions 36 (2008) 213 Book Review Editor’s Note Throughout its history the Journal of Chinese Religions has published book notes every now and then. These were short descriptions of notable new publications that were unlikely to be reviewed in the Journal (usually because they were published in Asian languages), but that deserved to be brought to the attention of its readers. While the Journal now also reviews some Asian language works, the book review section will remain focused on Western language publications. In the interest of a balanced coverage, we therefore endeavor to reestablish a permanent “Book Notes” section that will be devoted primarily (even if not exclusively) to Asian language scholarly works on Chinese religions. All readers are invited to submit such notes of important new publications that have come to their attention. Please send them as email attachments to the book review editor, Philip Clart, at clart@uni-leipzig.de. Their format should follow that of the samples listed below. Further requirements include: • The descriptive text (exclusive of the bibliographic information) should not exceed 250 words. • The work introduced needs to be of a scholarly nature. • Its publication year should not be more than two years prior to the JCR issue in which the note is to appear. Thus, for example, in the 2009 issue of the Journal, we will only run notes for books published in 2007, 2008, and 2009. PHILP CLART 214 Journal of Chinese Religions Zhongguoshi zongjiao shengtai: Qingyan zongjiao duoyangxing ge’an yanjiu 中国式宗教生态：青岩宗教多样性个案研究 Chen Xiaoyi 陈晓毅. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe 社会科学文献 出版社, 2008. 544 pages. ISBN 978-7-80230-927-2. RMB 65.00 paper. Based on field research in the town of Qingyan 青岩 (Guizhou 贵州 province) between 2001 and 2007, the author provides a meticulous overview of the religious landscape of an area that is characterized by religious and ethnic pluralism. Han 汉, Miao 苗, and Buyi 布依 share different varieties of popular religions (minsu zongjiao 民俗宗教), Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Christianity. Chen Xiaoyi seeks to analyze this complicated situation by means of his notion of “religious ecology” (zongjiao shengtai), which treats the local religious scene as a quasi-ecological system that tends toward a state of harmonious balance among its component parts. In this view, religious conflicts such as a famous massacre of Catholics in 1861 (Qingyan jiao’an 青岩教案) appear as temporary losses of balance that are corrected in the next phase of “ecological” adjustment. The author uses this approach to develop a critique of Samuel Huntington’s notion of the “clash of civilizations” by stressing that religions in a Chinese context tend to harmonize rather than antagonize and may therefore play a positive role in the creation of a harmonious society. He also calls on both scholars and policy-makers to give greater weight to the important role of popular religion in mitigating and mediating religious conflict and thus maintaining a systemic balance in the local religious ecology. Shanghai minjian xinyang yanjiu 上海民间信仰研究 Fan Ying 范荧. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe 上海人民出版社, 2006. 383 pages. ISBN 978-7-208-06012-6. RMB 27.50 paper. An overview of elements of popular religion in the Shanghai area, mostly from the Ming dynasty to the Republican period, based on written sources such as gazetteers, “brush notes,” inscriptions, and popular tales and fiction. The book’s five parts focus in turn on (1) the historical development of popular religion from the Neolithic to the Yuan period, (2) “magical” practices, (3) popular deities, (4) temple fairs, and (5) taboos and avoidances. ...