Reorienting Western Theories of Atmospheres: A case study of Feng Shui practices in Taiwan and Northeast England.

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'Feng Shui' is a popular way of relating to 'qi', or the vital and spiritual power of air. Nearly half of the Chinese population believes in the practice (Zhang et al., 2021). Internationally, the internet and migration have led Feng Shui to become celebrated as "a new popular philosophy uniting East and West, even as a new religion" (Bruun,2003: xxiv). Indeed, today Feng Shui's appeal is truly global and yet also ambiguous and often misunderstood. An authority on the topic concludes that "Feng Shui means different things in different societies and to different people" (Bruun, 2008: 3). By studying Feng Shui practitioners, this project offers a practice-based and place-based approach to understandings of qi as atmosphere. In contrast to the more theoretical and detached conceptualization of air and atmosphere currently popular and dominant in the West, I will be drawing on interviews, videography, repeat photography, and a narrative-based experimental mode of writing to produce a practicebased ethnography of Feng Shui practitioners in my native Taiwan and in Northeast England. To do this, I will be working together with the Feng Shui Society, which is the leading independent Feng Shui registration organisation for Feng Shui consultants in the UK and Europe. In short, my project critically analyzes Western orientalised adaptations of Feng Shui. In so doing, this project problematises knowledge transfer in the context of current debates on atmosphere, while also contributing to practice-based approaches to knowledge production.