Social Scientific Studies of Religion in China
Social Scientific Studies of Religion in China

Author: Fenggang Yang

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2011-01-27

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9004214798

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The revival of religious belief and practice in China over the past thirty years, after decades of severe repression, has attracted much attention by scholars. Social scientific studies of religion by mainland Chinese scholars has also increased in recent years, using theories and methods developed mainly outside China. Increasingly, mainland scholars are also debating whether theories and concepts developed in western societies are fully appropriate for the study of religion in Chinese societies. This volume presents a selection of papers by sociologists, anthropologists, and historians of religion on these themes. The chapters include rich field studies of particular religions and religious activities, along with theoretical and historical reflections by scholars inside and outside China on problems and opportunities in the revival of the social scientific study of religion in Chinese societies.

Social Scientific Studies of Religion in China
Social Scientific Studies of Religion in China

Author: Fenggang Yang

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2011-01-27

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 9004182462

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book provides a sampling of recent field studies of religions in China, along with theoretical reflections by sociologists, anthropologists and religious studies scholars, both inside and outside China, on the revival of the social scientific study of religion in Chinese societies.

Atlas of Religion in China: Social and Geographical Contexts
Atlas of Religion in China: Social and Geographical Contexts

Author: Fenggang Yang

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-09-04

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 9004369902

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The speed and the scale with which traditional religions in China have been revived and new spiritual movements have emerged in recent decades make it difficult for scholars to stay up-to-date on the religious transformations within Chinese society. This unique atlas presents a bird’s-eye view of the religious landscape in China today. In more than 150 full-color maps and six different case studies, it maps the officially registered venues of China’s major religions - Buddhism, Christianity (Protestant and Catholic), Daoism, and Islam - at the national, provincial, and county levels. The atlas also outlines the contours of Confucianism, folk religion, and the Mao cult. Further, it describes the main organizations, beliefs, and rituals of China’s main religions, as well as the social and demographic characteristics of their respective believers. Putting multiple religions side by side in their contexts, this atlas deploys the latest qualitative, quantitative and spatial data acquired from censuses, surveys, and fieldwork to offer a definitive overview of religion in contemporary China. An essential resource for all scholars and students of religion and society in China.

Religion and Media in China
Religion and Media in China

Author: Stefania Travagnin

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-11-10

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1317534522

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume focuses on the intersection of religion and media in China, bringing interdisciplinary approaches to bear on the role of religion in the lives of individuals and greater shifts within Chinese society in an increasingly media-saturated environment. With case studies focusing on Mainland China (including Tibet), Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as diasporic Chinese communities outside Asia, contributors consider topics including the historical and ideological roots of media representations of religion, expressions of religious faith online and in social media, state intervention (through both censorship and propaganda), religious institutions’ and communities’ use of various forms of media, and the role of the media in relations between online/offline and local/diaspora communities. Chapters engage with the major religious traditions practiced in contemporary China, namely Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Christianity, Islam, and new religious movements. Religion and the Media in China serves as a critical survey of case studies and suggests theoretical and methodological tools for a thorough and systematic study of religion in modern China. Contributors to the volume include historians of religion, sinologists, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and media and communication scholars. The critical theories that contributors develop around key concepts in religion—such as authority, community, church, ethics, pilgrimage, ritual, text, and practice—contribute to advancing the emerging field of religion and media studies.

China's Green Religion
China's Green Religion

Author: James Miller

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2017-05-16

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0231544537

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How can Daoism, China's indigenous religion, give us the aesthetic, ethical, political, and spiritual tools to address the root causes of our ecological crisis and construct a sustainable future? In China's Green Religion, James Miller shows how Daoism orients individuals toward a holistic understanding of religion and nature. Explicitly connecting human flourishing to the thriving of nature, Daoism fosters a "green" subjectivity and agency that transforms what it means to live a flourishing life on earth. Through a groundbreaking reconstruction of Daoist philosophy and religion, Miller argues for four key, green insights: a vision of nature as a subjective power that informs human life; an anthropological idea of the porous body based on a sense of qi flowing through landscapes and human beings; a tradition of knowing founded on the experience of transformative power in specific landscapes and topographies; and an aesthetic and moral sensibility based on an affective sensitivity to how the world pervades the body and the body pervades the world. Environmentalists struggle to raise consciousness for their cause, Miller argues, because their activism relies on a quasi-Christian concept of "saving the earth." Instead, environmentalists should integrate nature and culture more seamlessly, cultivating through a contemporary intellectual vocabulary a compelling vision of how the earth materially and spiritually supports human flourishing.

Making Religion, Making the State
Making Religion, Making the State

Author: Yoshiko Ashiwa

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0804758417

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume combines the perspective of religion as a constructed category of modernity with the analytic focus and empirical grounding of institutional social science to develop a new approach to the study of state and religion in modern and contemporary China.

Christianity, Femininity and Social Change in Contemporary China
Christianity, Femininity and Social Change in Contemporary China

Author: Li Ma

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-12-11

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 3030318028

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Women make up the vast majority of Protestant Christians in China—a largely faceless majority, as their stories too often go untold in scholarly research as well as popular media. This book writes Protestant Chinese women into the history of twenty-first-century China. It features the oral histories of over a dozen women, highlighting themes of spiritual transformation, politicized culture, social mobility, urbanization, and family life. Each subject narrates not only her own story, but that of her mother, as well, revealing a deeply personal dimension to the dramatic social change that has occurred in a matter of decades. By uncovering the stories of Christian women in China, Li Ma offers a unique window onto the interactions between femininity and Christianity, and onto the socioeconomic upheavals that mark recent Chinese history.

Confucianism as a World Religion
Confucianism as a World Religion

Author: Anna Sun

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-08-11

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0691168113

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Is Confucianism a religion? If so, why do most Chinese think it isn't? From ancient Confucian temples, to nineteenth-century archives, to the testimony of people interviewed by the author throughout China over a period of more than a decade, this book traces the birth and growth of the idea of Confucianism as a world religion. The book begins at Oxford, in the late nineteenth century, when Friedrich Max Müller and James Legge classified Confucianism as a world religion in the new discourse of "world religions" and the emerging discipline of comparative religion. Anna Sun shows how that decisive moment continues to influence the understanding of Confucianism in the contemporary world, not only in the West but also in China, where the politics of Confucianism has become important to the present regime in a time of transition. Contested histories of Confucianism are vital signs of social and political change. Sun also examines the revival of Confucianism in contemporary China and the social significance of the ritual practice of Confucian temples. While the Chinese government turns to Confucianism to justify its political agenda, Confucian activists have started a movement to turn Confucianism into a religion. Confucianism as a world religion might have begun as a scholarly construction, but are we witnessing its transformation into a social and political reality? With historical analysis, extensive research, and thoughtful reflection, Confucianism as a World Religion will engage all those interested in religion and global politics at the beginning of the Chinese century.

Gendering Chinese Religion
Gendering Chinese Religion

Author: Jinhua Jia

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2014-07-31

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1438453078

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A gender-critical consideration of women and religion in Chinese traditions from medieval to modern times. Gendering Chinese Religion marks the emergence of a subfield on women, gender, and religion in China studies. Ranging from the medieval period to the present day, this volume departs from the conventional and often male-centered categorization of Chinese religions into Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and popular religion. It makes two compelling arguments. First, Chinese women have deployed specific religious ideas and rituals to empower themselves in various social contexts. Second, gendered perceptions and representations of Chinese religions have been indispensable to the historical and contemporary construction of social and political power. The contributors use innovative ways of discovering and applying a rich variety of sources, many previously ignored by scholars. While each of the chapters in this interdisciplinary work represents a distinct perspective, together they form a coherent dialogue about the historical importance, intellectual possibilities, and methodological protocols of this new subfield.

The Battle for China's Spirit
The Battle for China's Spirit

Author: Sarah Cook

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2017-05-16

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 1538106116

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Battle for China’s Spirit is the first comprehensive analysis of its kind, focusing on seven major religious groups in China that together account for over 350 million believers: Chinese Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Tibetan Buddhism, and Falun Gong. The study examines the evolution of the Communist Party’s policies of religious control, how they are applied differently to diverse faith communities, and how citizens are responding to these policies. The study—which draws on hundreds of official documents and interviews with religious leaders, lay believers, and scholars—finds that Chinese government controls over religion have intensified since November 2012, seeping into new areas of daily life. Yet millions of religious believers defy official restrictions or engage in some form of direct protest, at times scoring significant victories. The report explores how these dynamics affect China’s overall social, political, and economic environment, while offering recommendations to both the Chinese government and international actors for how to increase the space for peaceful religious practice in a country where spirituality has been deeply embedded in its culture for millennia.