© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/22143955-00301006 127 book reviews Materializing Magic Power: Chinese Popular Religion in Villages and Cities. By Wei-ping Lin. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Asia Center, 2015. 173 pages. Hardcover. i sbn 9780674504363. us$39.95. Material Culture and Asian Religions: Text, Image, and Object. Edited by Ben- jamin J. Fleming and Richard D. Mann. New York: Routledge, 2014. 313 pages. Hardcover. isbn: 9780415843782. us$145. Material culture has been neglected as a primary source of information in the field of Asian religious studies despite the extraordinary amount of informa- tion available, especially in the field of visual resources. The gap between ma- terial culture and religious studies, however, is narrowing as scholars in both fields begin to employ the materials available to them. Essential to the two books considered here is the use of material culture to broaden and deepen the understanding of religious practice. In the first one, the field study of a specific popular religious rural cult is accomplished, in the absence of texts, through the study of its images, spiritual mediums, and social contexts as material ex- pressions of its beliefs. The second book, a collection of scholarly essays on Asian religious practice, presents a variety of material resources ranging from unconventional uses of calligraphy, a newspaper, charms, and talismans, to more traditional forms of religious expression such as sculpture and places of reverence. In each essay knowledge is acquired from nontextual sources. Wei-ping Lin’s new book is fascinating and engagingly presented. It exam- ines, on a firsthand level, popular beliefs and rituals in rural and urban Taiwan. The book’s two parts correspond to the rural and urban spheres; there are three chapters in the first half and two in the second. The introduction provides an overview of the elements: icon, spirit medium, and their social context. The au- thor observes the transformation that occurs when rural traditions are brought to the city with the migration of the population. The original gods function differently in their new circumstance, transitioning from permanent in loca- tion to mobile, from independent to being subsumed in a hierarchy of gods. These developments are the result of changes in the relationships between the spiritual manifestations of the gods, the role of their images in rituals, and the efficacy of their spirit mediums. This investigation demonstrates the way religious practices respond to social changes. Most important here is the sig- nificance of “the material culture which is viewed through its cultural mecha- nisms, social consequences and material forms” (8). In the introduction there is a review and assessment of the scholarly literature, the varied approaches to the subject, and the need for a new approach that utilizes material culture