Bernard Formoso

De Jiao - A Religious Movement in Contemporary China and Overseas: Purple Qi from the East

De Jiao (Teaching of Virtue) is a China-born religious movement, based on spirit-writing and rooted in the tradition of the halls for good deeds, which emerged in Chaozhou during the Sino-Japanese war. The book relates the fascinating process of its spread throughout Southeast Asia in the 1950s, and, more recently, from Thailand and Malaysia to post-Maoist China and the global world.

Zomian or zombies? What future exists for the peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif?

Against the simplistic thesis that hill peoples are marginal and unruly groups by choice, in conflict with state power, this article shows that, in the context of mainland Southeast Asia, hill peoples develop relationships with lowland state societies that are more complex and ambiguous than usually portrayed. Ethnographic and historical evidence reveals that they compromise and cooperate with the lowland state more often than they oppose it. Although hill peoples are commonly conceived as ‘barbarians’ of the periphery, and ill-treated or instrumentalized accordingly, in some circumstances they played a central role in the defence and the reshaping of pre-modern and modern Southeast Asian states. Moreover, their political and religious acculturation by lowland societies sometimes proves to have been instrumental in the perpetuation of a specific identity under the guise of surface assimilation. This article not only highlights the dynamics of past and present interactions between lowland and upland societies but also questions the future of the latter, in the context of an increasing engulfment by nation-states and, conversely, of new perspectives offered by globalization. The analysis thus demonstrates that hill peoples often take advantage of new forms of partnership resulting from globalization to renegotiate their image and status more favourably, and to counter the pressure exerted by the dominant society. Finally, they appear to be neither Zomian – that is, uncompromising rebels to ‘stateness’ in James C. Scott’s formulation – nor zombies, unable to adapt.

Economic Habitus and Management of Needs: The Example of the Gypsies

corresponding adjective? Does ’economics’ refer to a specific relationship between ends and means, as some think, or is it defined, more prosaically, as the satisfaction of material needs? Is it a category of specific facts or a praxeology of goal-oriented action? Some interesting debates on the matter, which have brought formalist, substantivist, and Marxist writers into conflict, have revealed marked ideological distortions, some reductionism, and finally epistemological positions that were difficult to reconcile. In the following pages I shall summarize these debates in order to introduce a new

Chinese Temples and Philanthropic Associations in Thailand

Among the Chinese associations in Thailand which who have shown the highest rate of expansion the last decades have a philanthropic aim. This paper places such associations in their social, historical, and religious context, and describes their multifarious activities, showing that they play an important role in the persistence of Chinese identity in Thailand.

Tai Cosmology and the Influence of Buddhism

young girls. The white Tai imagine that the third level is also peopled by dwarves. The soul is multiple, according to the Tai, and its components become distributed post mortem among the two upper levels of the ternary world mentioned above. Indeed, some souls of the deceased migrate to an afterlife in the heavens, others take up residence in the altar of ancestors where they become tutelary household spirits, while the remainder, bound to the body of the deceased, reside in the cemetery. The heavens in turn are made up of two levels: the world of celestial deities and the abode of the souls of the dead. The world

Pour un contre-esthétisme didactique dans les musées d'ethnologie

Dans ce court article, l’auteur procede a une revue critique des logiques museales aujourd’hui dominantes en matiere de presentation des objets elabores par les societes non occidentales. A l’encontre de la derive esthetisante qui caracterise ces modes de presentation et qu’emblematise le Musee du Quai Branly, il plaide en faveur d’une approche didactique qui privilegie la fonction et le sens des objets, au detriment de leur forme ; l’objectif etant de renouer avec la mission premiere des musees d’ethnologie, qui est d’introduire les visiteurs a des univers conceptuels autres par l’entremise de leurs productions materielles.

A Wishful Thinking Claim to Global Expansion? The Case of De Jiao

De Jiao is one of these New Religious Movements (NRM) which emerged in Asia in the boom of religious innovation following the Second World War. Although originally a local reaction from Teochiu mediums against the Japanese occupation of Chaozhou (Northeast of Guangdong province), it rapidly took another dimension through the promulgation of a basic doctrine and, following the Communist takeover of 1949, it spread throughout several countries of Southeast Asia (Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia). More recently, following divine oracles, it rooted back into China while starting a worldwide expansion. In this paper, the author analyzes the motivations involved in the origin of this ongoing process, and interprets its modest achievements by considering its sociological basis, organizational features and cultural orientation.