Elites, Ideologies and Ghosts

Abstract

Local elites join everyone else in the community in popular religious performances. Elite styles of intepretation, however, differ systematically from non-elite styles. I have so far distinguished only two main styles of interpretation — the more piecemeal, contextualized, pragmatic interpretations of the popular tradition, and the more explicit, universalized ideologies of Buddhism or Taoism. Analysis of the elite calls for further refinement: the modern elite often reinterprets the active spirits of the popular tradition as passive models that inspire good behavior. This style of interpretation grows out of the traditional state cult, an ideologized religious system that the elite generally interpreted passively, and that they used as a form of ideological control. This chapter discusses the modern elite pantheon and traditional elite uses of the state cult, especially as the elite sometimes used the cult to promote religious unities that would serve its political interests. The chapter concludes with a return to the Universal Salvation festival. It examines state attempts to repress and to manipulate the ceremony over the last century, singling out especially the effects of varying styles of interpretation (pragmatic/systematized, active/passive) on the successes and failures of the state’s attempt to control a unified religion that would serve its own interests.