User talk:John Carter/Falun Gong books

John, a couple suggestions:

• Consider adding Benjamin Penny's new book. Penny has, of course, written many articles on the topic before, and the book received very positive advance reviews. David Palmer (also an expert on Falun Gong) wrote of it: “The Religion of Falun Gong is a rare book—it is about a new religious movement, but written with the erudition of a specialist in China’s classical language and religious history. It is also attuned to contemporary Chinese realities and draws on Penny’s own experience in China and with Falun Gong practitioners. Polished and accessible, this enjoyable read is one of the best books available on Falun Gong.” Anthony Yu provided a yet more substantive account: “Benjamin Penny’s new study presents a highly persuasive case for considering Falun Gong as a religion by examining all its defining features represented in both traditional and contemporary media: history; charismatic personality; doctrinal and informational texts (disseminated in print and electronic format); foundational teachings and continual development; individual and group cultivation; and evolving organizational structures. The systematic treatment, seasoned with judicious comparison with other religions, makes clear the movement’s grounding in certain diction and symbols of historical Buddho-Daoist traditions, selective conceptual idioms and techniques of pneumatic calisthenics (qigong), and the innovative rhetoric of its own. It is a timely and valuable contribution to help us understand China’s new and changing religious landscape.”

• Noah Porter's ethnographic study is worth adding. As David Ownby writes of it, "Noah Porter's excellent "Falun Gong in the United States: An Ethnographic Study" is ... rich in information on Falun Gong, based on fieldwork carried out in Tampa, Florida, and Washington, DC, and energetic research in all available sources. Although not a sinologist by training or even a professional academic (at least when he carried out his research), Porter's methodology resembles my own, and our findings accord on many points." (Ownby, Falun Gong and the Future of China, p 21). Other citations listed here.

• David Ownby's literature review also contains a critique of Maria Chang's End of Days. Reviews from other experts on this field are worth quite a lot of weight, I think, and should be included. He suggests that Chang's book is not "about Falun Gong per se," in that "the author's purpose seems to be to liken the end of Communist rule in China to the final phase of traditional dynastic decline, with Li Hongzhi as the leader of the equivalent of a millenarian peasant uprising." He says it is "pleasingly written and provides a serviceable narrative of the rise and demise of Falun Gong," but it "moves too quickly over too much terrain and lacks a firm grounding in Chinese history and popular religion. Chang cites little or no scholarly literature on qigong or Falun Gong, did no fieldwork with Falun Gong practitioners, and thus offers a fine essay on China at the beginning of the twenty-first century—without telling us much that we didn't already know about Falun Gong." (Ownby, Falun Gong and the Future of China, pp 20-21).

• Scott Lowe recently published a review of James Tong's Revenge of the Forbidden City in Nova Religio (Volume 15, No. 4. May 2012, pp 124 - 125). This is a representative excerpt:

"Revenge of the Forbidden City is not the best book to read if one wants an introduction to the history of Falun Gong...James Tong assumes that most readers are familiar with Falun Gong and provides only a bare, through adequate, introduction to the movement and its spread before the Chinese government crackdown in 1999. Tong's primary goal in this book is to document the extent and range of the government's suppression of the movement. To this end, he has scoured hundreds of Chinese languages sources....The government's expenditure of time, money, and human effort is mind numbing. In fact, mind numbing is probably the best adjective to describe the massive documentation presented in this book; the sheer quantity of information Tong has gathered and analyzed will make Revenge of the Forbidden City very hard slogging for most readers. As a reviewer, I find it all but impossible to convey the full effect of Tong's dogged research. Any attempt to do so sounds hyperbolic and scarcely believable...Revenge of the Forbidden City documents beyond any reasonable doubt that the government of the PRC went to extraordinary lengths and incredible expense to identify, reeducate, and/or imprison the ordinary, well-meaning citizens who found health, happiness, and meaning in the practice of Falun Gong."

• Consider also including Cheris Shun-Ching Chan's article in the China Quarterly, The Falun Gong in China: A Sociological Perspective. Although only a journal article, it is one of the few available pieces of fieldwork conducted principally in Asia. Another book chapter that may be valuable is Vivienne Shu's Legitimacy Crisis in China?, in Peter Hays Gries and Stanley Rosen (eds), State and Society in 21st-Century China: Crisis, Contention, and Legitimation (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 24–49. It is also quite widely cited, and seeks to situation Falun Gong within the context of challenges to state legitimacy.

Thought I would get a few of these suggestions up while I can ;) Best of luck completing your project. Homunculus (duihua) 17:06, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Missing references

References named FGFC2 and Qf1 are not defined. AgadaUrbanit (talk) 18:16, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

• Yep, typos, I noticed that myself, was just too lazy initially to straighten them out. Will do so by the end of the day today. John Carter (talk) 18:22, 15 July 2012 (UTC)