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H2020Individual fellowship2019–2022

WIRED · The Role of Infrastructure in the Buddhist Revival in Contemporary China and Beoynd

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2019-09-01 → 2022-07-01
EU contribution
€207,312
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.

Results in brief

Wired: The Role of Infrastructure in the Buddhist Revival in Contemporary China and Beoynd

The project attempts to address the role of infrastructural development in religious revivalism by focusing on the recent Buddhist revival in China and in transnational contexts related to China’s infrastructural expansion in the global south. In Post-Mao China, large-scale infrastructural projects are far from being fixed and stable material forms and structures; instead, they represent inherently heterogeneous, unstable, diversified relations and interactions across various life worlds. The project offers powerful empirical evidence for how material forms deeply shape and are shaped by human actions and interactions, and ways of living and believing. As an anthropological project, it produces invaluable knowledge of people and groups that have been given little previous attention. Drawing from first-hand experiences in China and Namibia (also Madagascar and more), I address how Buddhism is evolving in various countries in Africa, as well as how Chinese spiritual investments are being carried out outside of China and outside of traditional Chinese diasporic societies in Asia. The project also provides empirical evidence about the flows of people, ideas, resources, and money circulating at the transcontinental level. It provides an opportunity to reassess the dichotomous framework of immaterial/material, spirit/matter, and human/nature that have so extensively dominated conventional frameworks of modern scientific inquiries.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

This project examines the critical and unforeseen role that infrastructure has played in the Buddhist revival in China and in China’s global Buddhist projects. Although both state-led developmental projects and religious revivalism in China have been widely discussed, they are usually treated as separate realms of study, as if one represents material development while the other represents immaterial perspectives. The main objective of my study is to show that these two movements are in fact interlinked and that Buddhism works as a form of infrastructure. I use an in-depth ethnographic method to explore the growing infrastructural connections between developmental and religious projects in Chinese domestic and transitional contexts by looking at Buddhist-related construction projects, schools, internet access, facilities, practices, and policies and their impact on the Buddhist revival in and outside China. My study investigates the much neglected relationship that exists between religious movements in society and infrastructural projects by the state. In doing so, it provides not only an alternative perspective from which to understand religious movements in the context of global China, but, more broadly, it offers a critical and theoretical reassessment of the relationships between materiality and immateriality, human and non-human agency, and object and subject. The University of Copenhagen is an ideal place in which to pursue my project. The Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies uniquely combines interdisciplinary inquiry and study across China Studies, Anthropology, and Religious Studies, all of which are crucial to my project. In particular, my project fits well with the research foci of the Department’s Center for Contemporary Buddhist Studies, a world-class research center led by Associate Professor Trine Brox with a focus on the mediating role that Buddhism plays for materiality, spirituality, economy, and value across contemporary societies.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET · KOBENHAVNCoordinatorDenmark

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union