Description
Book SynopsisMayfair Yang examines the reemergence of religious life and ritual after decades of enforced secularized life in the coastal city of Wenzhou, showing how local practices of popular religion, Daoism, and Buddhism influence economic development and the structure of civil society.
Trade Review“Mayfair Yang's wonderful ethnography reveals an alternative ‘ritual economy’ under the dizzying churn of market relations in China. It is attuned to giving, reciprocity, and the materialization of a social and spiritual life. While committed to wealth-making, the people of Wenzhou are by the same token committed to the health of their communal lives.” -- Prasenjit Duara, Duke University
“Mayfair Yang's compelling account of the re-enchantment of everyday life in Wenzhou, China, reveals lines of flight through which re-ritualization reworks capitalist accumulation to produce new communal relations. A must-read for anyone interested in alternative possibilities for China's future.” -- Kenneth Dean, Raffles Professor of Humanities, National University of Singapore
"An engaging, diachronic portrayal of recent religious developments… I strongly recommend it to readers interested in these topics, and I would also recommend sections of it for certain graduate and advanced undergraduate classes on Buddhism." -- Douglas Gildow * H-Buddhism, H-Net Reviews *
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Re-enchanting Modernity clearly deserves recognition for its presentation of salient ethnographic data combined with innovated inquires, all of which calls our attention to the resilience of Chinese religious beliefs and practices while adapting to the challenges of the modern era. . . . Yang's findings should inspire future generations of scholars to undertake further ethnographic research on this vitally important topic." -- Paul R. Katz * Review of Religion and Chinese Society *
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Re-enchanting Modernity is a terrific study of the relationship between religion, state, and civil society in post-Mao China. . . . A must-read." -- Jules Zhao Liu * China Review International *
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Re-enchanting Modernity presents a very intriguing and in-depth ethnographic investigation of religion and ritual in modern China." -- Yujie Zhu * Journal of Anthropological Research *
"Yang’s book is an excellent contribution to a growing body of scholarship examining post-Mao China’s religious resurgences and the broader conditions under which modernity brings about the (re)production of new and older forms of enchantment. I also find the book highly relevant and refreshing in providing insight into some of the complexities of rural China’s emerging religious civil society in ways that defy and push back against the current resurgence of Orientalism in the 'liberal' West with respect to 'illiberal' China." -- Micah F. Morton * Anthropos *
"This book contains some of the most compelling analyses of Chinese society I have read, and it will continue to nourish future debates. As Yang powerfully suggests, pluralized discussions of civil society and the ritual economy may help bring alternative visions of society and economy into being." -- Jiazhi Fengjiang * Pacific Affairs *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Part I. Introduction 1
1. From "Superstition" to "People's Customs": An Ethnographic Discovery of Key Questions in Wenzhou 1
2. The Wenzhou Model of Rural Development in China 32
Part II. Religious Diversity and Syncretism in Wenzhou 49
3. Popular Registry: Deities, Spirit Mediums, Ancestors, Ghosts, and Fengshui 51
4. Daoism: Ancient Gods, Boisterous Rituals, and Hearthside Priests 92
5. Buddhist Religiosity: The Wheel of Life, Death, and Rebirth 125
Part III. Religious Civil Society and Ritual Economy 159
6. Sprouts of Religious Civil Society: Temples, Localities, and Communities 161
7. The Rebirth of the Lineage: Creative Unfolding and Multiplicity of Forms 190
8. Of Mothers, Goddesses, and Bodhisattvas: Patriarchal Structures and Women's Religious Agency 224
9. Broadening and Pluralizing the Modern Category of "Civil Society": A Friendly Quarrel with Durkhelm 257
10. What's Missing in the Wenzhou Model? The "Ritual Economy" and "Wasting of Wealth" 279
Conclusion 315
Appendix A. Chronology of Chinese Dynasties 321
Appendix B. Notes on Currency, Weights, Measurements, and Chinese Romanization and Pronunciation 323
Appendix C. Religious Sites Visited in Wenzhou by Author, 1990–2016 325
Notes 331
Glossary 335
References 345
Index 365
