"Expanding Cities and Transforming Religions in Contemporary China," with Professor Robert Weller

The Sigur Center for Asian Studies presents a talk by Robert P. Weller, Professor of Anthropology and Research Associate at the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs at Boston University.

Rapid urban expansion in wealthy parts of China has led to the resettlement of many villagers into high-rise buildings, making earlier forms of social organization impossible. At the same time, large-scale urban reconstruction has displaced many old city neighborhoods. The result is that the territorially based religion described in much of the anthropological and historical literature has become increasingly untenable. Instead we see an expansion in other forms of religiosity less tied to place. This talk examines what appears to be an especially creative zone for religious innovation: the expanding urban edge. The cases come from various cities in southern Jiangsu and focus on ghost attacks, a spirit medium network, and innovations in the forms and objects of temple worship. The conclusion compares these changes in popular religion with developments in other religious traditions as China urbanizes.

Robert P. Weller is Professor of Anthropology and Research Associate at the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs at Boston University. He is the author of Rethinking Pluralism: Ritual, Experience, and Ambiguity (with Adam Seligman, 2012), which focuses on ways in which we can live with the ambiguities that necessarily accompany our need to categorize, and on the implications of this for how we can live with difference. Other books include Alternate Civilities: Chinese Culture and the Prospects for Democracy, Discovering Nature: Globalization and Environmental Culture in China and Taiwan, Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity (co-author), and most recently an edited volume on religion in the lower Yangzi region, 江南地区的宗教与公共生活.

Light Refreshments will be provided.

RSVP here.