folding and chanting
China’s extremely rapid urbanization over the past two decades has transformed the religious landscape. In eastern Suzhou, untold thousands of graves have been relocated or destroyed, and hundreds of village temples and their deities have been bulldozed along with the villages that hosted them. Contrary to expectations of both urban planners and most scholars, however, these changes have empowered some aspects of religion. As anthropologists have noted in other cities of the world, urbanization appears to have created an enlarged space for spirit mediums. Is this sort of village-based religion sustainable after villages no longer exist? This paper suggests renewed thinking about the concept of sustainability through a consideration of multiple temporalities. Spirit mediums offer a temporal alternative to: (1) the continuous time of temples (which commemorate the “sustained” memory and presence of a patron deity); (2) the cyclical time of the ritual calendar (with repetitions taking place regularly each year or each lunar month); and (3) the transformational/punctuated time of the urban planners (which replaces a “backward” peasant era with a new era of “modernity”). In contrast, mediums give a present voice to the people and things of the past, especially those that have been bulldozed into the dirt beneath the new city. Time here works like origami, where the past does not simply continue, repeat itself, or disappear in favor of a completely new present. The past is instead folded into the ground, always leaving open the possibility that a medium can unfold it again or fold it into something new. Mediums have always done this, but urbanization has greatly enhanced their role and that of folded time.
Robert P. Weller is Professor of Anthropology at Boston University https://www.bu.edu/anthrop/profile/robert-p-weller/
Response by UF Professor Richard Wang (Languages, Literatures, and Cultures / Chinese) and moderated by UF Professor Will Hasty (Languages, Literatures, and Cultures / German)
Comments
Hello Dr. Weller,
I found the “Folded Time and the Sustainability of Urbanizing Religion in China” webinar to be a fascinating exploration of the intersection between religion and urbanization in China. One point that particularly interested me was the idea of “folded time,” which you described as the coexistence of multiple temporalities in contemporary Chinese society. I would like to know more about how this concept affects religious practices in China, especially as they adapt to the rapid changes brought on by urbanization.
Another topic that stood out to me was the idea of the “sustainability” of religion in urbanizing areas. I like how you noted that as urbanization increases, there is a shift away from rural religious practices and a rise in new, urban religious practices. How do these new practices differ from traditional religious practices, and what impact do they have on the communities that practice them? Additionally, I wonder about the sustainability of these new practices as urbanization continues to transform Chinese society.
April 11, 2023
Hello Dr. Weller,
I had the great opportunity to watch and comment on your webinar "Folded Time and the Sustainability of Urbanizing Religion in China" for a class. I greatly enjoyed watching your presentation. I previously took a class where we talked about how villagers in Russia combined their pagan beliefs with dualism so I was interested to learn about urban versus village religion in China. I definitely learned a lot folding and unfolding, two topics that I had never heard of before in this context.It was interesting lookin gat the photos and seeing a what looked like a different "space-time."
Thank you for your time,
Best,
Arianna Meekins
I also want to take a moment to comment on what a couple of my fellow classmates had to say about the presentation.
Katelyn,
I also thought that it was interesting to see that women were spirit mediums. Like you I probably would have guessed that men took that role as most religions I have looked at are male dominated. I did some more research and found a publication by Erin Cline about women's religious authority in China. It talked about how this idea is significant for two reasons. The first is that low status women are able to hold positions of religious authority. The second is that they address community needs that other religious authorities fo not. Here is a link in case you want to read it: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0097700410372921
Overall I really liked your post and what you had to say.
Jeanna,
I was also curious about the process by which urban religions take over village religions. In some of my other classes we talked about how the village religions were seen as ignorant in many cases and the urban religion must come and educate the villagers on the "truth." This may be an answer to your question asking why village religions were not seen as "real" religions. You asked some great questions and I enjoyed reading your perspective.
December 5, 2021
Dear Jeanna and Katelyn,
Thank you so much for these great questions. Jeanna, the long (really long) answer to your questions has been written by others. I especially like a book called The Religion Question in Modern China by V. Goossaert and D. Palmer. The short answer is that China, starting from the Republican Revolution in 1911 and continuing from there, adapted a basically Protestant understanding of religion as something with sacred texts, trained ministers, an organized theology, and membership by voluntary choice. The sorts of worship I talked about don't have any of those features, and have thus been condemned as superstition, or at least greatly looked down on by elites for over a century now.
Katelyn, your question is harder to answer because we don't have any reliable historical information on the gender of spirit mediums. There have always been female mediums in China, and the gender ration varies by region. If I had to guess, it would be that there used to be more men, but the extended campaigns against this kind of religion (and sometimes specifically targeting spirit mediums) meant that men felt they had too much to lose from it. Because women were often taken less seriously though, they could often pull off things that the men didn't dare. (Sort of a "weapon of the weak" to use a phrase of Jim Scott's.) So I think your instinct on this is correct.
Best,
Robert Weller
December 5, 2021
Hello Dr. Weller,
I immensely enjoyed your presentation surrounding the concepts of culture and time. I am interested in learning more about the difference between urban religion and village religion and understanding why they needed to replace it with a more urbanized one. Is there a reason they went to such great links to stop the people from practicing their religion? Why were the village religions not seen as "real" religions? I also cannot wrap my head around the idea of tearing down a whole village and replacing it with a city, which leads me to wonder why they choose their particular village to build on top of.
Thank you for your time,
Jeanna Tedeton
December 4, 2021
Hello Dr. Weller,
My name is Katelyn Brown. I am currently a student at the University of Florida, and I had the opportunity to attend your “Folded Time and the Sustainability of Urbanizing Religion in China” presentation.
As addressed in the questions and answering segment, the topic of male spirit mediums was brought up. Personally, it was very interesting that the spirit mediums of the culture were female-dominated. In many cultures, religious roles tend to be male-dominated. As you stated, there are some male spirit mediums. However, many of the individuals could not actually name any of them.
My question to you is as follows: how exactly did women come to capture this influential role within the current society? Is it almost a safer role for women of this area to assume? Any more information on the topic would be wonderful.
Thank you so much for your time.
Best regards,
Katelyn Brown
October 21, 2021