List price
USD $215.00
Search Results
Abstract
The rise of urban violence in China over the past decade differs from the Western experience in that it is neither a sign of the failure of urban communities nor a simple legal issue of violent crime. Rather, it is the product of special urban governance mechanisms. In gray governance, a large number of gray zones are created in urban spatial practice, and semi-official operations dominate front-line administration, so that a delicate balance is maintained between those in power and those who are affected by that power. Although there is an asymmetric relationship between those who govern and those who are governed, power in practice is restrained and flexible, and the governed also have autonomous space, so that the cross-boundary interaction between them presents a mixed state of alliance, compromise, resistance, and attack. The process of gray governance includes a protective consultation mechanism and a boundary change mechanism. Within the context of enhanced organizational regulation and media mobilization, the mode of compliance between governor and governed might not be sustainable, whereupon mutual attack dominates the cross-boundary relationship. In such a situation, grey governance reproduces urban violence.
Part One: Introduction to the Field
This is the first comprehensive book that presents the manifold aspects of divination and prognostication in traditional and modern China, from the early period of oracle bones to present-day fortune-tellers. It introduces what is out there in the field of Chinese divination and prognostication, and how we can further explore it especially through different disciplines. Eminent specialists outline the classifications of divination, recently excavated texts, the relationship between practitioners and clients, the place of the “occult” arts in cosmology, literature and religion, and the bureaucratic system.
Contributors are: Constance Cook, Richard J. Smith, Marc Kalinowski, Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Lü Lingfeng, Liao Hsien-huei, Philip Clart, Fabrizio Pregadio, Esther-Maria Guggenmos, Andrew Schonebaum, and Stéphanie Homola.
Contributors are: Constance Cook, Richard J. Smith, Marc Kalinowski, Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Lü Lingfeng, Liao Hsien-huei, Philip Clart, Fabrizio Pregadio, Esther-Maria Guggenmos, Andrew Schonebaum, and Stéphanie Homola.
Part One: Introduction to the Field
This is the first comprehensive book that presents the manifold aspects of divination and prognostication in traditional and modern China, from the early period of oracle bones to present-day fortune-tellers. It introduces what is out there in the field of Chinese divination and prognostication, and how we can further explore it especially through different disciplines. Eminent specialists outline the classifications of divination, recently excavated texts, the relationship between practitioners and clients, the place of the “occult” arts in cosmology, literature and religion, and the bureaucratic system.
Contributors are: Constance Cook, Richard J. Smith, Marc Kalinowski, Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Lü Lingfeng, Liao Hsien-huei, Philip Clart, Fabrizio Pregadio, Esther-Maria Guggenmos, Andrew Schonebaum, and Stéphanie Homola.
Contributors are: Constance Cook, Richard J. Smith, Marc Kalinowski, Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Lü Lingfeng, Liao Hsien-huei, Philip Clart, Fabrizio Pregadio, Esther-Maria Guggenmos, Andrew Schonebaum, and Stéphanie Homola.
Abstract
Both non-haem iron (iron salt) and haem iron (cytochrome c) are components of the Caenorhabditis elegans Maintenance Medium (CeMM). However, the quantitative requirements of non-haem iron and its relationship with haem iron were unknown. A basal medium was prepared with both non-haem iron and haem iron eliminated from the CeMM. After being pre-cultured in this basal medium, C. elegans were inoculated into a 3 × 5 factorial design of experimental media, consisting of five levels of non-haem iron (0, 0.0672, 0.336, 8.40 and 210 μg ml–1) and three levels of cytochrome c (0, 50.0 and 500 μg ml–1). The population growth of C. elegans in various experimental media was counted at day 28, and the iron uptake (ng (1000 nematodes)–1) and percentage iron absorption (total iron in nematode tissue/total iron in original media) of the nematodes were analysed by atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS). At 0 μg ml–1 iron and 0 μg ml–1 cytochrome c, the population growth (2530±220 nematodes ml–1) was very poor. At 0 μg ml –1 cytochrome c, as iron level increased to 8.40 μg ml–1, the nematode population increased to 5980±530 nematodes ml–1. At 0 μg ml–1 iron, as cytochrome c level increased from 0 to 500 μg ml–1, the population growth was greatly increased from 2530±220 nematodes ml–1 to 45 900±3600 nematodes ml–1. Under the experimental conditions, the highest population growth (258 000±9000 nematodes ml–1) was achieved at 8.40 μg ml–1 iron and 500 μg ml–1 cytochrome c, suggesting an additive requirement of non-haem and haem iron. As the concentration of iron further increased from 8.40 to 210 μg ml–1, significant declines in nematode population were observed, indicating iron toxicity. Based on the Atomic Absorption analysis, the iron uptake by C. elegans increased when either non-haem or haem iron concentration increased in the media. At 0 μg ml–1 cytochrome c, the percentage iron absorption decreased from 7.39 to 0.118% with the increase of iron concentration (0-210 μg ml–1) in the media. This observation was in accordance with the 'mucosal block' theory. At 50.0 and 500 μg ml–1 cytochrome c, the percentage iron absorption greatly increased, and percentage iron absorption reached a maximum of 85.9% when media contained 0.336 μg ml–1 iron and 50.0 μg ml–1 cytochrome c, indicating an optimal percentage iron absorption in C. elegans.
In:
Nematology
Chinese Buddhist Dice Divination in Transcultural Context
What do dice and gods have in common? What is the relationship between dice divination and dice gambling? This interdisciplinary collaboration situates the tenth-century Chinese Buddhist “Divination of Maheśvara” within a deep Chinese backstory of divination with dice and numbers going back to at least the 4th century BCE. Simultaneously, the authors track this specific method of dice divination across the Silk Road and into ancient India through a detailed study of the material culture, poetics, and ritual processes of dice divination in Chinese, Tibetan, and Indian contexts. The result is an extended meditation on the unpredictable movements of gods, dice, divination books, and divination users across the various languages, cultures, and religions of the Silk Road.
Chinese Buddhist Dice Divination in Transcultural Context
What do dice and gods have in common? What is the relationship between dice divination and dice gambling? This interdisciplinary collaboration situates the tenth-century Chinese Buddhist “Divination of Maheśvara” within a deep Chinese backstory of divination with dice and numbers going back to at least the 4th century BCE. Simultaneously, the authors track this specific method of dice divination across the Silk Road and into ancient India through a detailed study of the material culture, poetics, and ritual processes of dice divination in Chinese, Tibetan, and Indian contexts. The result is an extended meditation on the unpredictable movements of gods, dice, divination books, and divination users across the various languages, cultures, and religions of the Silk Road.
Abstract
The conclusions explore the main actors of dice divination’s relational network one by one. They demonstrate how dice and books encode cosmologies, but at the same time inject randomization and play into these cosmologies and frustrate divination users’ attempts to impose any rigid order. The conclusions also reflect on gods and poetics and their shifting roles within dice divination’s oracular responses. This also returns to the question of the relationship between a given god and a given mantic figure created by the roll of the dice, and whether this mantic figure should be taken as a sign, a symbol, or even as a god itself with the power to protect or to harm. Turning to divination users, there is a similar variability ranging from the “tricky” Tibetan oracular gambler who steals from the goddess to the Chinese divination user who fully adopts the pose of sincerity prescribed by the text. Arguing that the gods of the wind and sky, as well as devouring mother goddesses like Hārītī, are leitmotivs for the innate flux and variability of dice divination, the conclusion sees dice divination’s opposition to order and control as a force that dignifies the human, divine, and material actors in its relational network.
Abstract
Chapter two places the Divination of Maheśvara in the context of Chinese traditions of divining with numbers and with dice going back to the early first millennium BCE. It explores the material culture of Chinese numerical trigram divination, particularly the use of stalks and counting rods, but also dice and objects similar to dice. In the process it reveals continuities and discontinuities with the Divination of Maheśvara and its ritual assumptions. In its subchapters it explores the fourth-century-BCE bamboo manuscript known as the Stalk Divination (Shifa), as well as the Baoshan divination record; the third-century Empowered Draughtsmen Divination Method (Lingqi bufa), and the late-sixth-century Sutra for the Prognostication of Good and Evil (Zhancha shan‘e yebao jing). The longest subchapter is a case study that investigates the development of one specific form of stalk divination as represented in three separate texts, the Tricks of Jing, the Duke of Zhou Divination Method (Zhougong bufa), and the Guan Gongming Divination Method (Guan Gongming bufa). Their divergences and developments with regard to both poetics and pantheons make for an interesting case study parallel to that of the Divination of Maheśvara and its Indic antecedents. The chapter ends with a discussion of poetics, and of the relationship between divination and talismans.