“Divination has been extremely common and important in Chinese culture since earliest times, but surprisingly little information appears in the Western-language literature. This excellent ethnography goes a long way toward remedying the gap… Most ethnographically exciting in this book are Homola's accounts of fortune-casting sessions in Taipei, Beijing, and Kaifeng, especially her warm and empathetic accounts of particular practitioners, ranging from highly successful heads of large corporate operations to wandering seers who depend on small donations. The practice has been condemned as misleading for 2,000 years and as ‘superstition’ (mixin) for at least a century, yet it persists: people demand any lead, however small and tentative. - Highly Recommended.” • Choice
“Represents an extremely valuable resource, both as a one-stop account of the politics of divination in modern China (the Republic pre-1949, PRC, and Taiwan), its intellectual history, and some key methods, and as a detailed ethnographic account of how diviners and clients engage with divination as a decision-making process and set of cosmological ideas. • William Matthews, London School of Economics
“Excellent and very timely survey of the broad field of Chinese divination. And so much more than "a survey"! A comprehensive, detailed review of a complex and fascinating subject.” • David Zeitlyn, University of Oxford
From housewives to students and high-ranking officials, people from all social backgrounds in China and Taiwan visit fate calculation masters to learn about their destiny. How do clients assess the diviner’s skills? How does one become a fortune-teller? How is a person’s fate calculated? The Art of Fate Calculation explores how conceptions of fate circulate in Chinese and Taiwanese societies while resisting uniformization and institutionalization. This is not only due to the stigma of “superstition” but also to the internal dynamic of fate calculation practice and learning.
Stéphanie Homola is Researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and member of the French Research Institute for Eastern Asia (IFRAE). She was previously Assistant Professor for Ethnology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and Director of the Elite Master's Program "Standards of Decision-Making across Cultures".
LC: BF1773.2.C5 H666 2023
BL: DRT ELD.DS.741981
BISAC: SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social; SOC005000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Customs & Traditions; SOC008020 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Ethnic Studies/Asian Studies
