Since the early 1980s, the study of the Yijing (I Ching, or Book of Changes) has grown by leaps and bounds because of archaeological discoveries. The new archaeological findings (such as the Mawangdui silk manuscript and the bamboo strips from Wangjiatai) not only elucidate the complexity of the received text, but also show the differences between the Zhouyi (the Change of the Zhou dynasty) and the Yijing (the Classic of Changes). As a result, today's scholars make a sharp distinction between the Zhouyi and the Yijing. Whereas the Zhouyi refers to the divination manual based on the sixty-four hexagrams, the Yijing denotes the canonized Confucian classic consisting of the hexagrams, the hexagram and line statements, and the commentarial materials known as the Ten Wings. Hence, the same Yijing text can now be used to study two different periods of Chinese history: the Zhou dynasty (1100–221 BCE) when the Zhouyi was compiled, and the imperial period (206 BCE–1912 CE) when the Yijing was part of the Confucian orthodoxy legitimizing the imperial state.

In The Classic of Changes in Cultural Context, Scott Davis focuses on the Zhou dynasty. Although he gives his book the subtitle “A Textual Archaeology of the Yi Jing,” he actually writes about the Zhouyi. In his words, his goal in writing the book is to provide “a penetrating anthropological view into the conditions of thought in an archaic society to a degree previously unavailable” (p. xv). Through a study of the Zhouyi hexagrams, he shows the momentous change in early China when its economy was transitioning from hunting and gathering to agriculture, and its sociopolitical system was shifting from small, self-sufficient communities to a large agrarian empire.

Since his interest is “the conditions of thought” of early China, Davis differs from other Zhouyi scholars by focusing on concepts and categories. For him, the sixty-four hexagrams are not merely tools of divination, but also “highly ramified cultural action maps” that reveal “the ongoing connectivity of the human situation” (p. 16). To underscore the close relation between hexagrams and social patterns, he equates hexagrams to musical notes. In the Zhouyi, he asserts, the hexagrams are so systematically linked together that “one hears the entire musical system sounding with the event of each note as it reveals its place within the whole system” (p. 14). In each hexagram, he contends, one can see the broad social and cultural patterns of the Zhou people.

This “structuralist” reading of the Zhouyi allows Davis to focus attention on two social patterns of early China: lifecycles defined by age (chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6) and the arrangement of time based on correspondence and opposition (chapters 8, 9, 10, and 11). In the former set of chapters, he delineates the complex process through which a Zhou person attained his or her social identities. In particular, he emphasizes the significance of age groups (especially twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties) in determining the social roles in Zhou society. In the latter set of chapters, Davis describes how the Zhou people managed time according to recurring patterns (e.g., reduplication and opposition). By mapping time in grids, the Zhou people linked their lives to bigger patterns, such as the four seasons. Together, the social and temporal patterns discerned by Davis indicate the sophistication of the Zhou people in classification and social organization.

For this reason, Davis sees the Zhouyi as a profoundly valuable historical document. He finds that the Zhouyi, besides an oracle, is also “a flexible, aleatory grid of expressive acts mapped within a social framework, a ramified landscape of sometimes semi-rigid and sometimes yielding features that exemplify how intentions spread, refract and thereby become realized, distributed in the context and configuration of a cultural event” (p. 260).

Ironically, although Davis is deeply interested in the social patterns of early China, he does not extend his interest in structure to the organization of his book. Uneven and loosely connected, the eleven chapters of the book resemble essays written for different occasions. In terms of contents, some chapters are repetitious (such as chapters 1, 2, and 5 on the structure of the Zhouyi), some are short essays that briefly introduce a theme without elaboration (such as chapter 7 on sinological controversy and chapter 10 on the four seasons), and some are “excursuses” that explore topics tangentially related to the Zhouyi (such as carriages in chapter 5 and piglets and fish in chapter 9). This loose structure weakens Davis's main argument. Despite its claims, his book only hints at possible social meanings of the sixty-four hexagrams. It does not show a structural parallel between the hexagrams and the social conditions of Zhou China.