Introduction -- Why 'culture'? Why 'production'? -- History and the rhetoric of legitimacy: the Mazu cult of Taiwan -- Dialectics of alienation: individuals and collectivities in Chinese religion -- Power and transcendence in the Mazu pilgrimages of Taiwan -- 'Power' against ideology: a critique of Foucaultian usage -- Women's production: gender and exploitation in patrilineal mode -- Fathers and sons in a patrilineal mode of production of desire: preliminary analysis of the story of nezha from Fengshen Yanyi -- Afterword: 'excess', change and the limits of analysis
