Steps of Perfection: Exorcist Performers and Chinese Religion in Twentieth-Century Taiwan. By Donald S. Sutton [Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Asia Center and Harvard University Press, 2003, xiii+418 pp. ISBN 0-674-01097-3.]

Extract

This book is an “ethnographic history” of jiajiang (“Infernal Generals” as translated by the author), a peculiar type of ritual dance troupe that has long been an eye-catching feature of southern Taiwan's temple festivals and pilgrimages. Based on extensive ethnographic and historical data collected by Sutton in southern Taiwan between 1988 and 2001, the two main questions that he addresses in this book are framed squarely within the decades-long paradigmatic problematique of Sinology. The first question is “Why and how are the diverse forms of Chinese culture generated from a shared groundwork?” More precisely, in contrast to many attempts to discern a unitary “Chineseness” from extensive variations between local Chinese culture forms, the author aspires to examine how one single tradition in Chinese culture evolved into various local styles. The second question is “Why do local religions keep on thriving in Taiwan despite the fact that the island has modernized to become a world-known industrial economy?” Put differently, why and how does Taiwan's experience repudiate Max Weber's hypothesis on disenchantment?