Ethnography of an Enchanted Land: Varieties of Religious Organization in China

By John Lagerwey

Based on thirty years of fieldwork in collaboration with local authors, this book is about the centrality of religious practices in the organization of pre-1949 Chinese society. With multiple concrete examples, it describes the role of geomancy and the festival calendar in the creation of sacred space and time in the villages and towns of four provinces in SE China. It shows as well the late imperial construction of large lineages and of village alliances built around central temples and the gods. Coming after the author's China, a Religious State, it could be called China, a Religious Society.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9004745505
• ISBN13: 9789004745506
• Release Date: December 2025
• Publisher: Brill
• Length: 450 Pages