「底邊階級╱底邊社會」是人類學者喬健教授最早提出的一組重要學術概念。「底邊階級」指的是處於社會底層及邊緣的群體，他們所屬的社會便是「底邊社會」。底邊階級是傳統中國社會的一部分而且是構成整個中國傳統社會階級體系的一種重要基礎。 自1994年起，喬健教授率領一批年輕學者對中國大陸的傳統底邊階級，包括樂戶、剃頭匠、雜技藝人及說唱藝人，作了深入而廣泛的田野研究。2006年他籌辦「底邊階級的傳統與現代：兩岸三地人類學與傳播交流合作工作坊」，邀請兩岸三地有關學者對過往十二年對底邊階級及底邊社會的研究作一總結，本書便是此一總結的具體呈現。內容包括兩岸三地著名學者許倬雲院士、科大衛教授、范可教授等有關的精闢論說。

This volume looks at Religions in China Today. Articles include: Belief in Control: Regulation of Religion in China, Local Communal Religion in Contemporary Southeast China, The Cult of the Silkworm Mother as a Core of Local Community Religion in a North China Village, Local Religion in Hong Kong and Macau, Religion and the State in Post-war Taiwan, Daoism in China Today, 1980-2002, Buddhist China at the Century's Turn, Islam in China: Accommodation or Separatism?, Catholic Revival during the Reform Era, Chinese Protestant Christianity Today, Healing Sects and Anti-Cult Campaigns.

“Good books capture critical moments. Liu has captured one here.” · Asian Anthropology “The book as a piece of writing is fluid and graceful. Liu's ethnographic accounts are indeed masterly--deftly weaving dialogue, observation, metaphor, and analysis in a way that would make many writers (of both fiction and nonfiction) sigh with envy. Liu juxtaposes characters and incidents in such a way as to subtly highlight the themes at hand, using humor, irony, and understatement to bring to life the world of ‘making up numbers.’ Liu effectively suggests that the rise of statistics and the objective mode are, like the rise of Maoism and the ideological mode, a phase in history that may or may not appear equally ridiculous in years to come. Can we see outside our own spot in history, Liu asks, and should we (and the people of China) give up dreaming and utopias merely because our current historical moment favors the narcissistic, corporeal statistic?” · H-Ideas Today’s world is one marked by the signs of digital capitalism and global capitalist expansion, and China is increasingly being integrated into this global system of production and consumption. As a result, China’s immediate material impact is now felt almost everywhere in the world; however, the significance and process of this integration is far from understood. This study shows how the a priori categories of statistical reasoning came to be re-born and re-lived in the People’s Republic - as essential conditions for the possibility of a new mode of knowledge and governance. From the ruins of the Maoist revolution China has risen through a mode of quantitative self-objectification. As the author argues, an epistemological rift has separated the Maoist years from the present age of the People’s Republic, which appears on the global stage as a mirage. This study is an ethnographic investigation of concepts - of the conceptual forces that have produced and been produced by - two forms of knowledge, life, and governance. As the author shows, the world of China, contrary to the common view, is not the Chinese world; it is a symptomatic moment of our world at the present time.

《象征的来历：叶青村纳西族东巴教仪式研究》在本项研究中，笔者尝试串联起客观与主观，提出构拟象征动力学的初步思路。为此，在研究中引入了一个与符号构成对立的概念——实在。在符号与实在的对立轴上，符号偏向作为表达的手段，它的价值受语境的制约；实在则指被看作自身具有内在价值的自足体，也就是说，它是一种主观判断。譬如，某个交通标志在它所属的交通标志系统里，它是一个符号。当这个交通标志按所属系统的规则出现在路上，对于熟悉这个系统的人而言．它是一种实在。又如，一份合同是约定双方相互间的承诺的符号，对于守信的当事人而言，它是一种实在。象征符号的本质是替代品，自身不具备内在价值，它的价值取决于所在的系统。但是，符号不是静止的，符号实在化、实在符号化是文化史中的两股趋势性的力量。符号实在化指符号的替代品本质淡出人们的意识，转化为自在的实在体的过程，时间因素在这个过程里具有关键价值；实在符号化指实在性消解，象征符号还原其作为表达工具的替代品本质，以及与它相伴随的创新概念、发明符号的过程。从符号一实在出发，象征符号的丛林之门悄然开启，微风拂面。

Combining great learning, interpretative originality, analytical sensitivity, and a charismatic prose style, Clifford Geertz has produced a lasting body of work with influence throughout the humanities and social sciences, and remains the foremost anthropologist in America. His 1980 book "Negara" analyzed the social organization of Bali before it was colonized by the Dutch in 1906. Here Geertz applied his widely influential method of cultural interpretation to the myths, ceremonies, rituals, and symbols of a precolonial state. He found that the nineteenth-century Balinese state defied easy conceptualization by the familiar models of political theory and the standard Western approaches to understanding politics. Negara means "country" or "seat of political authority" in Indonesian.In Bali Geertz found negara to be a "theatre state," governed by rituals and symbols rather than by force. The Balinese state did not specialize in tyranny, conquest, or effective administration. Instead, it emphasized spectacle. The elaborate ceremonies and productions the state created were "not means to political ends: they were the ends themselves, they were what the state was for...Power served pomp, not pomp power. " Geertz argued more forcefully in Negara than in any of his other books for the fundamental importance of the culture of politics to a society. Much of Geertz's previous work - including his world-famous essay on the Balinese cockfight - can be seen as leading up to the full portrait of the "poetics of power" that Negara so vividly depicts.

This book relates the stories of four leaders under very different political regimes: Colonial, Nationalist and Communist. The authors compare Chinese notions of respect and inspiration with their equivalents in other religious and political histories of colonial and post-colonial modernity, thereby producing a thorough re-working of the idea of charisma. The result is an intriguing study of the relationship between religious and political authority in a changing world.