{"product_id":"jimmy-yu-sanctity-and-self-inflicted-violence-in-chinese-religions-1500-1700-9780199844906","title":"Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500-1700","description":"In 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 expectations. 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 protecting 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.","brand":"Oxford University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53768968634710,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0925\/5829\/5382\/files\/product_image_9780199844906_1.jpg?v=1781804633","url":"https:\/\/www.momoxbooks.com\/products\/jimmy-yu-sanctity-and-self-inflicted-violence-in-chinese-religions-1500-1700-9780199844906","provider":"momoxbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}