Burning Money: The Material Spirit of the Chinese Lifeworld

For a thousand years across the length and breadth of China and beyond, people have burned paper replicas of valuable things-most often money-for the spirits of deceased family members, ancestors, and myriads of demons and divinities. Although frequently denigrated as wasteful and vulgar and at times prohibited by governing elites, today this venerable custom is as popular as ever. Burning Money explores the cultural logic of this common practice while addressing larger anthropological questions concerning the nature of value. The heart of the work integrates Chinese and Western thought and analytics to develop a theoretical framework that the author calls a materialist aesthetics. This includes consideration of how the burning of paper money meshes with other customs in China and around the world.