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.
- Cover
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Part I. Introduction
- 1. From “Superstition” to “People’s Customs”: An Ethnographic Discovery of Key Questions in Wenzhou
- 2. The Wenzhou Model of Rural Development in China
- Part II. Religious Diversity and Syncretism in Wenzhou
- 3. Popular Religiosity: Deities, Spirit Mediums, Ancestors, Ghosts, and Fengshui
- 4. Daoism: Ancient Gods, Boisterous Rituals, and Hearthside Priests
- 5. Buddhist Religiosity: The Wheel of Life, Death, and Rebirth
- Part III. Religious Civil Society and Ritual Economy: Grassroots Initiative, Gendered Agency, and Alternative Economic Logic
- 6. Sprouts of Religious Civil Society: Temples, Localities, and Communities
- 7. The Rebirth of the Lineage: Creative Unfolding and Multiplicity of Forms
- 8. Of Mothers, Goddesses, and Bodhisattvas: Patriarchal Structures and Women’s Religious Agency
- 9. Broadening and Pluralizing the Modern Category of “Civil Society”: A Friendly Quarrel with Durkheim
- 10. What’s Missing in the Wenzhou Model?: The “Ritual Economy” and “Wasting of Wealth”
- Conclusion
- Appendix A. Chronology ofChinese Dynasties
- Appendix B. Notes on Currency, Weights, Measurements, and Chinese Romanization and Pronunciation
- Appendix C. Religious Sites Visited in Wenzhou by Author, 1990–2016
- Notes
- Glossary
- References
- Index
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