Filial Obsessions

I would like to recommend a new book–my colleague Steve Sangren’s just-published, long-awaited work on Chinese patriliny and filial piety:

Sangren, P. Steven. Filial Obsessions: Chinese Patriliny and its Discontents. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing/Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 383 p. ISBN: 9783319504926; 3319504924

Contents:

• Preface and overview
• Popular religion, a Chinese superboy, and “the investiture of the gods”
• “Filial piety” and cultural difference
• Spirit possession, family issues, and the revelation of gods’ biographies
• Filial piety: fathers, real and ideal
• The social production of desire
• Ancestor worship, the Confucian father, and filial piety
• Women as outsiders: princesses, defilement, and Buddhist salvation
• Woman as symptom: beyond gender?
• A concluding manifesto: culture and desire.