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In Re-enchanting Modernity Mayfair Yang examines the resurgence of religious and ritual life after decades of enforced secularization in the coastal area of Wenzhou, China. Drawing on twenty-five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Yang shows how the local practices of popular religion, Daoism, and Buddhism are based in community-oriented grassroots organizations that create spaces for relative local autonomy and self-governance. Central to Wenzhou's religious civil society is what Yang calls a "ritual economy," in which an ethos of generosity is expressed through donations to temples, clerics, ritual events, and charities in exchange for spiritual gain. With these investments in transcendent realms, Yang adopts Georges Bataille's notion of "ritual expenditures" to challenge the idea that rural Wenzhou's economic development can be described in terms of Max Weber's notion of a "Protestant Ethic". Instead, Yang suggests that Wenzhou's ritual economy forges an alternate path to capitalist modernity.
List of contents
Acknowledgments 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
About the author
Mayfair Yang is Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara; author of
Gifts, Favors, and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China; and editor of
Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation and
Spaces of Their Own: Women's Public Sphere in Transnational China.
Summary
Mayfair 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.
