{"product_id":"sanctity-and-self-inflicted-violence-in-chinese-religions-1500-1700","title":"Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500-1700","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this illuminating study of a vital but long overlooked aspect of Chinese religious life, Jimmy Yu reveals that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, self-inflicted violence was an essential and sanctioned part of Chinese culture. He examines a wide range of practices, including blood writing, filial body-slicing, chastity mutilations and suicides, ritual exposure, and self-immolation, arguing that each practice was public, scripted, and a signal of cultural\n\u003cbr\u003eexpectations. Individuals engaged in acts of self-inflicted violence to exercise power and to affect society, by articulating moral values, reinstituting order, forging new social relations, and\n\u003cbr\u003eprotecting against the threat of moral ambiguity. Self-inflicted violence was intelligible both to the person doing the act and to those who viewed and interpreted it, regardless of the various religions of the period: Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and other religions. This book is a groundbreaking contribution to scholarship on bodily practices in late imperial China, challenging preconceived ideas about analytic categories of religion, culture, and ritual in the study of Chinese religions.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Oxford University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46059251794158,"sku":"9780199844883","price":164.96,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/bookland.com.au\/products\/sanctity-and-self-inflicted-violence-in-chinese-religions-1500-1700","provider":"Book Land AU","version":"1.0","type":"link"}