"Superstition Specialist Households"? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices

迷信專業戶？中國宗教實踐中的家戶型宗教服務供給者

10.30157/JCRTF.200609.0004

周越(Adam Yuet Chau)

迷信 ； 家戶型宗教服務供給者 ； 迷信專業戶 ； 道士 ； 法事互助 ； superstition ； the household idiom ； religious specialists ； Daoist priests ； ritual jamming

民俗曲藝

153期（2006 / 09 / 01）

157 - 202

英文

本文嘗試分析中國宗教實踐中「家戶」的概念及家戶型宗教服務供給者。首先，筆者介紹中國大陸近年來出現的一個新稱呼：「迷信專業戶」。這是指那些依靠民間宗教掙錢的各種家戶型宗教服務供給者：巫神，陰陽先生，算命先生，火居道士，紙紮匠等。這輕蔑的稱呼卻把這些宗教專業者歸類成倍受讚美的「個體戶」而使之顯得合法。根據陝北的田野調查及各種文獻資料，本文闡述家戶型宗教服務供給者的經營手法及其相互合作的方式，凸顯家戶型宗教服務供給型態的歷史及結構優越性。

This article examines the role of the householder religious service provider and the household idiom in the overall field of religious practice in China. First I will look at the emergence of a new label, superstition specialist households (mixin zhuanyehu), in the PRC, and attempt to situate this emergence within the socio-economic and political context of reform-era China. This label shows how the Chinese party-state now conceptualizes ritual specialists such as spirit mediums, yinyang masters, fortune-tellers, and others who make a living in the popular religious realm (including folk musicians and opera performers who perform at temple festivals, temple caretakers, non-monastic Buddhist and Daoist ritualists, votive offering manufacturers, etc.). Though sardonic and condemnatory in tone, this appellation also puts these people in the larger category of getihu (private business households), whose existence is not only legitimate but even celebrated in reform-era China. I then present a couple of vignettes from my ethnographic fieldwork in Shaanbei (north-central China) to illustrate how householder religious service providers typically work (one vignette on a spirit medium; the other on a yinyang master). While operating upon very different principles yinyang masters rely on esoteric knowledge and ritual orthopraxy, whereas spirit mediums rely on deity power and efficacy both kinds of ritual specialist are religious entrepreneurs taking full advantage of the ”household idiom,” in contradistinction to affiliation with formal institutions such as monasteries, temples, or guilds. Next I look at what I call ”ritual jamming,” referring to the ad hoc coming together of householder ritualists to stage larger rituals in response to some clients' more elaborate needs. I also examine the household idiom and see what advantages it has over the corporatist idiom in terms of ritual service provision at the grassroots level, as well as its ability to weather political suppression. I conclude by offering some speculative comments on the probable future of the household idiom in Chinese religious culture.

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