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Rethinking Feng Shui

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Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism

Part of the book series: Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology ((CGHA))

Abstract

Feng shui has been a problematic concept both in archaeology and Western culture as a whole. This chapter is an attempt to rethink feng shui in order to rehabilitate it as an archaeological concept. I suggest the decisive distinction between feng shui and dominant Western understandings of spatiality centers on a difference in their source of intelligibility—between transcendent logical order and emergent aesthetic order. Taking examples from painting, formal garden design, architecture, and mortuary practices, I provide examples of the pervasiveness of this difference. Finally, I suggest productive ways in which archaeologists might use the concept of feng shui in their interpretations of Chinese sites in North America and beyond.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Zoe Crossland, Mark Leone, Nan Rothschild, and Barbara Voss for reading and commenting on earlier versions of this chapter, and my lovely wife Li Yuan for her support and help with classical Chinese. Early versions of this chapter were presented at the Society for California Archaeology conference in Berkeley, 2013, and the Theoretical Archaeology Group conference in Chicago, 2013.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    John Molenda

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  1. John Molenda
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Correspondence to John Molenda .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA

    Mark P. Leone

  2. Washington, District of Columbia, USA

    Jocelyn E. Knauf

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Molenda, J. (2015). Rethinking Feng Shui. In: Leone, M., Knauf, J. (eds) Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism. Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12760-6_8

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