The Cult of the Fox

For more than five centuries the shamanistic fox cult has attracted large portions of the Chinese population and appealed to a wide range of social classes. Deemed illicit by imperial rulers and clerics and officially banned by republican and communist leaders, the fox cult has managed to survive and flourish in individual homes and community shrines throughout northern China. In this new work, the first to examine the fox cult as a vibrant popular religion, Xiaofei Kang explores the manifold meanings of the fox spirit in Chinese society. Kang describes various cult practices, activities of worship, and the exorcising of fox spirits to reveal how the Chinese people constructed their cultural and social values outside the gaze of official power and morality. Kang's book uncovers and reinterprets a wealth of anecdotal historical texts and works of popular literature and draws on her own ethnographic research. She considers how the fox cult operated on the margins of Chinese society as well as the fox's place in the popular imagination. As a symbol, fox spirits have long been marginal and variable creatures with the ability to freely change their gender and age, appearing as both evil and benign. The Chinese people, as Kang demonstrates, have drawn on and manipulated the various meanings of the fox spirit to cope with and give order to the changes in their personal lives and in society. Kang also pays close attention to the ways in which gender was used to construct religious power in Chinese society. Gendered interpretations of the fox were used to define the official and unofficial, private and public, and moral and immoral in religious practices. Kang's analysis of the history of the fox cult addresses central questions in the study of Chinese religion and society, including the dynamic between cultural unity and variation and the relationships of various social groups to popular religion.

ISBN 0231133383   Pages 288 ISBN13 9780231133388 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Columbia University Press   Weight (grammes) 635 Imprint Columbia University Press   Published in New York Format Hardback   Height (mm) 229 Publication date 04 Nov 2005   Width (mm) 152 Library of Congress 2005041377   Spine width (mm) 22 DEWEY 951.05   Academic level Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

		Map : the Chinese empire in the early twentieth century
1		Foxes in early Chinese tradition		14
2		Huxian and the spread of the fox cult		44
3		Foxes and domestic worship		72
4		Foxes and spirit mediums		97
5		Foxes and local cults		127
6		Fox spirits and officials		161

The Cult of the Fox is bound to be the definitive work on the subject. -- Gerald Vinten Reviews in Religion and Theology Vol. 14 Issue 2 Kang has indeed given us a superb study of the fox cult in premodern China. -- Philip Clart China Review International Spring 2006, Vol. 13 No.1 I am certain that others will benefit from reading it as much as I have. -- Chun-Fang Yu Journal of Chinese Religions This book serves as valuable material for all readers interested in East Asian religion, history, and culture. -- Miki Morita Religious Studies Review Vol 36, No 4

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