Divinatory Economics (6)—Sacred Mountain Incense-f

For the introduction to the Round and Square series "Divinatory Economics," click here.

[a] Divine RL

The next half-dozen posts center on a research question I have been pondering for some time—the way pilgrims spend their incense on China's southern sacred mountain (南嶽衡山). I gave a lecture on the topic at Erlangen University in November, and then expanded some of that work into an Asian Studies Faculty Research Seminar—an ongoing series in the Beloit College Asian Studies program—in December. Although I will be continuing my research and writing on this subject, I thought that this might be a good time to begin exploring in depth some of the implications of "divinatory economics." If you have not read the introduction to the series, I would recommend it as the place to begin. If you have, settle in for a series of posts that describe the Chinese mountains (the first post, below, re-covers some of the territory from the Longevity Mountain series so that readers without that background are "ready" to spend their incense). I have tried to make these posts reasonably entertaining—even the "theoretical" sections to come next week.  

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Spending Religiosity

In the most basic sense, the question is straightforward. It requires the background information we have covered up to this point and a dash of understanding of what Emile Durkheim might have called “social-religious energy” as pilgrims make their various ways up the mountains. Let us first look at the manner in which Durkheim characterized social gathering and “religious” effervescence.

       When individual minds are not isolated, but enter into close relation with, and 
       act upon, each other, from their synthesis arises a new kind of psychic life. It is 
       clearly distinct from that led by the solitary individual because of its unusual 
       intensity. Sentiments created and developed in the group have a greater energy 
       than purely individual sentiments. A man who experiences such sentiments feels 
       that he is dominated by forces which he does not recognize as his own, and which 
       he is not the master of, but is led by; and everything in this situation in which he is  
       submerged is to be shot through with forces of the same kind. He feels himself in a 
       world quite distinct from that of his own private existence. This is a world not only 
       more intense in character, but also qualitatively different. Following the collectivity, 
       the individual forgets himself for the common end and his conduct is directed by
       reference to a standard outside himself.[1] 

With this foundation, we are ready to engage our key question: How do pilgrims on Longevity Mountain “spend” their “religiosity?”

[b] Options RL

So how do we go about framing this question? The first (but far-too-detailed for this lecture) explanation would be to show all the “divinatory” possibilities for each traveler. I will try to give a sense of the trajectory here, because it will figure into all other analyses that follow in a journey of divinatory possibility up Longevity Mountain.

Now we get down to the microeconomic and social-cultural nitty-gritty. Let me say—as all anthropologists do—that most economists err far too much on the side of individual and “rational” (whatever the heck that means) behavior. This is problematic, but anthropologists need to admit, as well, that there is explanatory power beyond the details, and even beyond the effervescent wave of teeming sociality we prioritize in many of our own studies. Historians, too, need to balance the ever-present tug between particular contingencies (what just happened to happen) and the overlapping structural constraints within which a pilgrim operates.

[c] Chicken head RL

The key components at work, it seems to me, are mode of transportation and willingness to purchase incense. These two variables are so significant that they dwarf all of the others. Related to these are the expenses involved in each variable, which range from a taxi (up to ¥200) or bus (¥30) to hiking (free). Admission to the mountain itself is ¥100.  Incense sticks range from ¥5 to ¥100, the latter being the highly elaborate “dragon head” (龍頭; 龙头) sticks that distinguish the supplicant markedly from her peers. 

From there, the mode of transportation has everything to do with the economics of the process. Remember that it is possible to reach approximately two-thirds of the temples in a car or on a motorcycle, but only twenty-percent (at most) in a bus or about a third in the bus/cable combination—the difference being the “opportunity” (mostly unused) at mid-mountain to visit the various temples there. Finally, even the hiker will only reach eighty-percent or so of the possible “supplication points,” since there are various routes and (this is very significant) the mountain is vast. In my own extended narrative, Longevity Mountain, I also “cover” the side-winding territory that very few pilgrims see. They do not figure prominently in the "divinatory calculations" of pilgrims, but they add to the religious complexity of the mountain in many ways—perhaps most significantly because some of these locations are monasteries and have a relationship with the ongoing religious life of the mountain that are matched by only a few other locations.

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Notes

[1] Emile Durkheim, Selected Writings Edited by Anthony Giddens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 228.

Bibliography

Durkheim, Emile. Selected Writings Edited by Anthony Giddens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.

[d] Modes RL

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NEXT

Base Spending, Peak Spending

Incense allotments at the base temple and peak temple are as close to "required" as we can get in this microeconomic equation. We'll take a closer look at the issue tomorrow.