Diviners with Membership and Certificates: An Inquiry into the Legitimation and Professionalisation of Chinese Diviners

Abstract

In wrestling with the precariousness of their legitimacy and reputation, diviners in China have developed their own approaches to legitimating and professionalising their business and occupation. This paper discusses the strategy of incorporating the occupation of divination into modern knowledge production and expert systems by forming academic associations and purchasing professional certificates. Diviners’ imitation of professionalism is interpreted as a struggle towards gaining membership of modern society. The efforts of diviners to seek legitimacy also provide an opportunity to observe how a marginalised social group whose behaviour is generally stigmatised justifies their role in society.

Keywords:

• Divination
• Professionalisation
• Legitimacy
• Imitation
• China

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Philip Taylor, Andrew Kipnis, Benjamin Penny, Yang Shen and Linliang Qian for their comments.

Notes

[1] The common services given by a diviner include: (1) forecasting the fate and characteristics of an individual on the basis of four components of the time of birth—the year, month, day and hour; (2) analysing a hexagram composed of six lines generated randomly; (3) choosing auspicious names and dates; (4) geomancy (feng shui); and (5) physiognomy. It is common for a diviner to use at least three or four kinds of techniques to run a business, sometimes crosschecking their analysis using different methods.

[2] The book's title is written out as ‘I Ching’ in the Wade-Giles system of romanizing Chinese language.

[3] The close relationship between text, calculation and reasoning is partly why the majority of diviners in mainland China are men. In ancient China, few women were literate and as a result few had the capability to be text-based diviners. Now, although more and more women have chosen to be diviners, men still dominate this profession. In Taiwan and Hong Kong, where divination is deeply entwined with the entertainment industry, many female diviners are active in public.

[4] Xiansheng usually refers to intellectuals. Shifu is often used to address skilled workers of the working class. Dashi means a great master. Zhuanjia is a relatively new term compared to the other three titles of xiansheng, shifu and dashi. Zhuanjia implies special knowledge and skills obtained after training. It often refers to technologists, doctors, scholars and other specialists whose systematic education accords them public trustworthiness. I argue that diviners in modern Chinese society not only want to keep their identity as ‘experts’ in the general sense, but especially try to incorporate themselves into the modern expert system in the form of institutions on the basis of new social divisions of labour.

[5] For a review and a list of recent works in these two approaches, see Adam Chau (2011a, 6–7).

[6] The sponsor is responsible for the politically acceptable behaviour of the association. The principal legal ‘mass organisations’, such as the Women’s Federation, Chinese Association of Writers or the Federations of Industry and Commerce, are akin to an extended part of the executive government and as such, act as sponsors of subordinate associations.

[7] Provinces and cities do not need to have identical mass organisations. Some cities or provinces may or may not have a Yijing research society.

[8] 1.00CNY=0.159USD (as at 11 March 2015).