Interaction ritual chains in the resurgence of popular religion in China
Working paper presented at Kollegforschergruppe meeting “Religious individualization in historical perspective”; Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, June 26/27, 2018 Carsten Herrmann-Pillath
[email protected] Abstract This paper is a companion to the paper “Religious Individualization in China: A Two-Modal Approach” and explores the theory of ‘interaction ritual chains’ proposed by the sociologist Randall Collins in understanding popular religion in China today. I concentrate on the specific phenomenon of the resurgence of ancestor worship and lineage rituals which I have explored in joint fieldwork with Guo Man in Shenzhen metropolis. I study two empirical cases, the emergence of sacred spaces that project the ritual infrastructure of the traditional village onto the modern urban infrastructure, and the role of the internet in mediating ritual activities between the local and the global.
1. Introduction: a sacred space in a global metropolis The Chinese metropolis Shenzhen has a history of a few decades, as the founding myth in socialist China says, ‘from fisher village to mega city’, with an estimated population of more than 20 million people, with most of them migrants from other places of China. The visitor is overwhelmed by a landscape of skyscrapers, wonders about bustling traffic on vast highways with many BMWs, Audis and no less fancy Bentleys than in neighbouring Hong Kong, uses a state-of-the art modern subway, and learns that in Shenzhen the Chinese internet behemoths are domiciled, with literally billions of high-end smartphones outpoured in recent years. Shenzhen incorporates the Chinese clichés of modernity in a global economy. But there is another Shenzhen. In the midst of the original Shenzhen special economic zone, Luohu district bordering Hong Kong, the visitor may step aside the broader streets and may happen to walk into Hubei village, an assembly of old dilapidated houses of the pre-reform era which goes back to earlier settlements in the region, with some of them apparently even dating back to Ming times. In fact,
1
old Shenzhen was not a fisher village, but a bustling regional marketplace (虚) for centuries. Hubei village was one of the Zhang villages, a most powerful lineage controlling much of the market in the 19th and early 20th century, including economic flows between Shenzhen locality and Hong Kong. Today, Hubei village is no longer the home of the Zhang, but houses about 20,000 migrants from Chaoshan region. The Zhang had become wealthy landlords renting out their old houses to the workers that fuel the Shenzhen economic boom.
Figure one:
The sacred
space of Hubei
village (top:
own
pictures;
bottom:
http://www.lifeweek.com.cn/2016/0811/47955.shtml?from=groupmessage&isappinstalled=0)
Apart from the ramshackle state of the houses, the poor sanitary conditions with rats crossing the narrow alleyways, and chaotic electrical lines criss-crossing the houses, the visitor will probably notice another phenomenon even more saliently. The village smells of incense: There are many small altars cramped into corners of alleys, including some larger temple-like
2
structures, and small instalments carrying incense sticks can be found everywhere (see figure 1). Many houses are decorated by religious posters. At the altars, mostly elderly women are busy with conducting rituals, including the burning of ‘ghost money’ in its original form, that is, colourful paper items that have been folded in tedious work by the women themselves, which are burned in special ovens, and the smoke sent to the ghosts and ancestors. The uniformed visitor may believe that she has entered the domain of a monastic order or other religious community. But the village is bustling with small business, there are alleyways squeezed with lines of shops selling many items of everyday need, especially food any kind. The visitor also notices huge poster instalments of one of the biggest Shenzhen developers, and posters with slogans of the local neighbourhood committee which show pictures of a futuristic Hubei transformed into the brave new world of Shenzhen modern life. This reveals that Hubei is bound to be redeveloped soon. In fact, the owners of the houses, the Zhang lineage, agreed on that years ago. But many of the Chaoshan people live there for one generation already, and cheap alternative housing at a prime location such as Luohu district is difficult to find, especially maintaining the local community that has grown via the process of chain migration, often gathering people from the same native place and even lineages. It appears that the tenants have acquired customary rights, which according to Chinese traditional law, have almost equal status like that of the original owners of the land. After all, the legal situation is messy anyway, because the land has been transformed into urban land when establishing Shenzhen municipality, with all inhabitants becoming urban citizens, which implies that the land is now state-owned. However, the original villages retained control of land-use rights, which were rented out to the tenants. Hubei village gained fame in Shenzhen because it attracted intensive attention by the public as an example of attempted radical redevelopment which would leave no trace of the original dwelling. 1 Different from most other cases in China, the resistance of the local people was taken up by public intellectuals, triggering a protracted debate in social media and newspapers about the adequate approach in dealing with traditional dwellings and villages in Shenzhen. In fact, there are other places where the old villages have been preserved and renovated, such as Nantou ancient city, and have become tourist sites with shops, museums and exhibitions. However, that would not present a solution for the Chaoshan people living in Hubei village. Thus, currently
1
For a detailed chronicle of the debates, see http://www.retumu.org/wordpress/?p=660 (accessed May 30, 2018).
3
the situation seems in a stalemate since the developer and the local authorities need to convince the tenants to move out voluntarily. The strength of the local community is expressed in the ubiquitous rituals of popular religion. In this paper, I want to analyse this phenomenon based on joint fieldwork with Guo Man in Shenzhen. However, I leave more detailed ethnographic analyses to our other publications. Here, I wish to concentrate on theoretical reflections, though based on empirical observations. For this, I introduce a specific conceptual framework, Randall Collins’ (2005) theory of ‘interaction ritual chains’. I think that this framework is powerful to analyse the relationship between individual and group in the context of traditional Chinese religion and thus can contribute to the cross-cultural study of individualization. If I refer to Chinese religion here, I mainly have so-called ‘popular religion’ in mind, which is what touches the visitor’s senses when entering Hubei village. 2 This is not about religion as being formally recognized by the Chinese government, such as Buddhism or Christianity. Daoism plays an intermediate role, although in formal terms it would be also limited to organized Daoism. In all these contexts we have standard elements of organized religion, such as religious experts (‘professionals’, such as monks or Daoist priests), religious texts, sometimes also canonized, or sacred places, such as Buddhist temples managed by a Buddhist congregation. Yet, most religious phenomena in China have never been exclusively associated with formal organized religion, which has motivated the famous characterization of Chinese religion as ‘diffuse’. 3 In communist China, these practices were mostly derogated as ‘superstition’, or, more recently, have been neutralized as ‘local customs’. However, there are also new developments, such as recognizing and even supporting quasi-religious cults devoted to ancient cultural heroes of Chinese civilization, in which certain elements of popular religion become embedded. At a closer look, two aspects of Chinese popular religion loom large that I will focus on in this paper: First, popular religion is community based. 4 Traditionally, the context of popular religion was the village and the marketplace. A village is a sacred space, marked by at least one temple, but
2
For a concise overview, see Clart (2010). Yang (1961). This characterization is also echoed by Chinese scholars, such as Gui (2013, 2014) who emphasized the deep mutual penetration of everyday life and religious behaviours in Chinese rural society, which does not institutionalize ‘religion’ as a separate societal domain. 4 For an illuminating case study highlighting the conditions in early 20th century China, see DuBois (2005): 3
4
often more, devoted to different deities, some with explicit reference to the locality, such as the ‘Earth God’. 5 The sacred nature of the place is enacted by the flows of cosmic forces that create the propitious environment for the community living together, further disaggregating into the locations of single houses and, most importantly, cemeteries and tombs. Second, a village community consists of families, who conduct the religious rites of ancestor worship. In cases where one or few single villages dominate the community, the sacred space is also demarcated by the ancestral hall where public rituals are conducted. However, at the same time each family also conducts their private rites and altars in their homes. There are intermittent stages between domestic and public rituals. 6 The remarkable phenomenon in Shenzhen today is that we observe the resurgence of ritual practices in many forms, including the reconstructing of sacred spaces, such as re-identifying the ‘village’ in the modernist environment of the metropolis. However, this does not simply mean that a one-to-one correspondence to traditional popular religion holds. As I will show, of interest is the role of modern media, especially the Worldwide Web and, increasingly in China, social media such as WeChat. Via modern media, what are apparently local phenomena become enmeshed with national and even global ritual activities. For understanding this, I suggest Collin’s concept of ‘interaction ritual chains’ as powerful analytical means. The working paper proceeds as follows. In section 2, I summarize Collins’ theory, with selective emphasis on aspects such as the ‘market for rituals’. Section 3 sketches the affirmation of sacred spaces in Shenzhen via ritual activities of local lineages. Section 4 presents the case of a global descent group partly rooted in Shenzhen which increasingly coordinates ritual activities via the internet. Building on the brief ethnographic sketches, section 5 presents an analysis in terms of Collin’s theory. Section 6 concludes with observations on the general validity of the concept of individualization when considering ritual.
2. Interaction ritual chains: basic theory One problem in dealing with Chinese popular religion is the simple question how far certain rituals ‘really’ have a religious meaning. In the famous distinction between ‘orthopraxy’ and ‘orthodoxy’ it has been claimed that this question may already present an ethnocentric bias, 5
The sacred nature of the village is explicated in detail by Lagerwey (2010) who also presents a stylized map of the sacred territorial structure. 6 On these interactions between the domestic and the public sphere, see Yue (2014).
5
suggesting the necessary reference to an ‘inner’ religious meaning in terms of certain types of belief. 7 In China, it is argued, inner belief is of less significance than proper conduct of ritual as an externalized and embodied form of action involving certain objects, such as temples or ancestral tablets. In this sense, however, we can establish a clear connection to classical sociological analyses of religion, foremostly with Durkheim, in starting out from ritual in understanding religious actions and its structure. 8 This does not automatically entail a clear-cut borderline between religion and non-religion but offers a powerful approach to understanding religious practice in China today. In the Durkheimian tradition, religious activity is the collective handling of sacred objects that create states of emotional effervescence in which the identity of a group of believers is expressed, and which create long-term effects, such as the disposition to respond with strong feelings of moral indignation or even aggression when sacred objects are mishandled, such as contaminating with impurities or blaspheme utterances. This creates ambiguities, because, for example, the national flag may be involved in similar conditions, but it may be in the eye of the beholder whether this constellation spoils the definition of religion, or simply implies that certain forms of nationalism are religion. In the case of Chinese popular religion, however, the Durkheimian view clearly supports the interpretation of many phenomena as ‘religious’ as they always involve sacred objects that establish transcendental references, such as to deities or ancestors. Collins’ theory of interaction ritual chains goes far beyond the Durkheimian view in setting up a detailed analytical framework for understanding the role of rituals in human societies, in any form. Rituals involve: •
Firstly, certain standardized practices in a collective of actors that centre on specific objects, including places, buildings and other kinds of larger material structures.
•
Secondly, these practices are pursued at specific occasions where members of the collective come together and establish physical closeness of bodies, thus allowing for the multi-aspectual expression and diffusion of emotional states, which Collins analyses in terms of ‘emotional energy’.
•
Thirdly, as a result, the events create states of shared emotional experience of effervescence, which create and transit emotional energy. This emotional energy can be
7 8
For an overview on the debates in Chinese studies, see Sutton (2007). For an overview on recent studies on ritual, see Stephenson (2015).
6
retained over longer time periods and may imbue individuals with different endowments of energy which can be invested in the creation and maintenance of social relations, which are in turn expressed via rituals: These are the interaction ritual chains. •
Fifthly, interaction ritual chains are essential for maintaining the fabric of the collective via sustainable interactions and via expressing and performing shared identities. In this sense, rituals have the function of reproducing the shared culture of a community.
The notion of emotional energy is essential for the theory, as it also relates to the notions of status and exchange. Different endowments of emotional energy create status distinctions between individuals. For example, a ritual leader may obtain high levels of emotional energy that enable the creation of large and productive social relationships, which are partly exchanged with other members of the collective, also in the sense of creating the collective good of shared identity. Consequently, the members of the collective may develop a shared feeling of moral superiority and righteousness. Rituals may also be such of negative discrimination, which create low or even negative energy of the individuals that become the object of discrimination. This results in cementing low status not only via structural factors, but also via creating states of weak potential for agency and limiting the capability to create expanding social relations that may support agency (‘social capital’). The concept of a ‘market’ is of special interest here, as in religious studies we also have the notion of a ‘religious market’. 9 But Collins’ theory differs fundamentally from this view. This is because the religious market theory presupposes a general concept of rational individual with given religious needs; the rational individuals interact on a quasi-market, sometimes even formalized market, as producers and consumers of religious products and services. In Collins’ view, individuals cannot be treated as starting point of the analysis, as individual agency is only emerging in certain situational contexts which are created by ritual actions. Yet, individuals pursue emotional energy and stay in relations of exchange of emotional energy. In this sense, Collins speaks of a market for rituals. This market for rituals is primordial to the economic market for goods and services, for two reasons: •
First, interaction ritual chains are the precondition for creating trust, social capital and shared identities among market actors that only enable the successful conclusion of economic transactions.
9
I deal with this in the companion paper Herrmann-Pillath (2018a) where the pertinent literature is cited.
7
•
Second, most economic needs, beyond mere survival, are ultimately ritual needs, such as defining one’s personal identity via the repetition of certain consumption patterns, expressing shared group identities via following consumption standards such as agegroup specific music preferences, or by mobilizing emotional experiences that can be communicated to others.
In this sense, a ‘religious market’ would by no means stand in principled tension to gift exchange if it is approached as a specific ritual market in the first place. 10 Indeed, established notions of gift exchange always invoke rituals that govern the exchange of gifts and define the forms of reciprocity involved through time. Collins suggests that eventually even a reconciliation with economic notions of rationality is feasible, if rationality is not interpreted as an irreducible property of individuals, but as emerging through time in the flow of ritual interactions, in the sense of creating distributions of emotional energy that approach maximal states under given constraints. That is, rationality is not a property of individuals, but of collective states, even in the probabilistic sense. This might explain why many ethnographic facts can often be interpreted in different, theoretically contradicting ways, such as in terms of rational equilibria or as expressing a moral economy. Therefore, I think that Collins’ view can be very productive in shedding new light on current debates in Chinese religious studies. In using the analytical metaphor of the market, Collins introduces ideas that can be especially useful in the context of China. •
The first is that rituals of popular religion indeed serve to create states of emotional effervescence, and often in contexts which simultaneously involve religious activities and economic exchange. For this, the term ‘ritual economy’ has been coined, which therefore can be theoretically grounded as a specific pattern of interaction ritual chains that simultaneously create shared identities and enable economic transactions. 11
•
The second is that there is no given distinction between group and individual, as both are emergent phenomena of the process of creating interaction chains by attending, following and enacting rituals. In this sense, the notion of ‘individualization’ becomes context-specific. This has been theorized by Adam Chau (2011) in terms of the polytropic nature of popular religion, meaning that individuals may choose and enact many different modes of religious activity, depending on perceived situational needs. In
10
This question has been discussed in detail in Chinese studies, with Palmer (2011) a most important contribution. On the notion of ‘ritual economy’, see Yang (2007). I explore that concept extensively in Herrmann-Pillath (2017). 11
8
Collins’ terms, these needs can be related to a common currency, emotional energy. That would lead to consider various dimensions of emotions, such as expressing grief in funeral rites, or searching for relief when worrying about the future. •
The third is that rituals are polysemic, depending on the various interaction chains that may tie up with the same ritual objects. This touches upon the orthopraxy controversy: In this sense, ‘orthodoxy’ does not matter because different agents may have different objectives in doing rituals, or even the same individuals may pursue many goals simultaneously. Thus, the same ritual object, such as a newly built temple, may be a business project for one, a symbol of community resilience for the other, and a sacred site for the next, and sometimes all of that for one single person. 12
In sum, I think that Collins approach is very promising for understanding phenomena such as the resurgence of popular religion in China happening concomitant with rapid economic modernization. Let us look at empirical cases to substantiate this claim.
3. Sacred spaces and places in contemporary Shenzhen Let me start by introducing another field site in Shenzhen, Fenghuang village. Fenghuang was a single lineage village in old days, inhabited by a branch of the prestigious Wen lineage, Cantonese ‘Man’. The case is of considerable interest, because there is another branch in the Hong Kong New Territories which was studied over decades by one of the leading scholars in Chinese contemporary and historical anthropology, James Watson (1985), who, as we have already seen, is also a major contributor to the orthopraxy discourse. After opening up, the Hong Kong Wen played an important role in resuscitating traditional kinship ritual. As an elite lineage, the Wen trace themselves back to a historical ‘high ancestor’, the Song dynasty general Wen Tianxiang, who also gained fame as a poet, and is remembered as a national hero in resisting the Mongols. 13 Wen Tianxiang’s tomb, however, is located in Ji’an, Jiangxi province, his birthplace. The branches of the Shenzhen Wen identify themselves with various lines of descent, including Wen Tianxiang’s brothers, even though all of them highlight the role of Wen Tianxiang. Therefore, the Wen come close to the precise definition of a ‘clan’, as a culturally constructed descent group, different from biological consanguinity.
12 13
For an exemplary case study, see Kang (2009). In Chinese kinship studies, the role of ‘high ancestors’ is neglected, as Cohen (2017) points out.
9
Fenghuang is another example of an ‘urban village’ like Hubei. However, it is located in the so-called second line rural areas in Bao’an county, originally bordering the Shenzhen SEZ before integrating both territories in Shenzhen municipality. Therefore, the simple fact counts that much more space was available that was exploited by means of inviting foreign-invested manufacturing firms to invest there. Today, Fenghuang is a prosperous urban community (shequ). In recent years, Fenghuang pursued economic diversification, with tourism and leisure as one strategic focus. In implementing the strategy, the sacred space was a focal concern, in two respects (see fig. 2).
Fig. 2: The sacred space of Fenghuang village (top: village square with ancestral hall; bottom: temple in mountain park) (source: own pictures)
10
•
First, the old village was not demolished but renovated as a tourism site, with many buildings serving as small shops or tea houses. The central place of the village was also renovated: It is dominated by a large ancestral hall, combined with other buildings such as an academy for traditional learning (thus mimicking the traditional pattern of combining an ancestral hall with a school for the boys of the lineage) and other buildings devoted to ritual purposes, also including an administrative building.
•
Second, the original site of the centuries old village temple in the near hills was redeveloped into a large temple complex with a Guanyin temple at the centre, surrounded by smaller temples such as devoted to the Earth God. The surroundings of the temple were demarcated as a gated ‘mountain park’, including restaurants and shops, and open for leisure and tourism at a fee.
These two central locations of the tourism project directly reflect the dual structure of the sacred space of the traditional Chinese village, with ancestral hall and temple. Traditionally, both sacred places were by no means always active throughout the year, but only on certain ritual occasions. This is also true today. The temple is not just a tourist site, but the Buddhist statues inside have been activated by proper rituals (‘kai guang’ 开 光 ), and a sitting monk is responsible for taking care of the proper religious rituals. The special religious power of the place is also visible in the presence of fortune tellers, who are excluded from other places that are supervised by the local government. The community uses the place for holding special rituals, and the original historical temple is still part of the venue. At the ancestral hall at the central square, proper lineage rituals are held at the respective holidays, including large socalled ‘common pot feasts’(pencai) at New Year celebrations (more on that soon). We can interpret this constellation as an almost ideal-typical manifestation of the ‘ritual economy’: In the tourism project, genuine ritual concerns are merged with business activities. This becomes even more visible if we explore the institutional structures undergirding the activities. The village has a so-called ‘Cooperative shareholding company’ which administers the land use rights and has grown into a holding company which has different branches, one managing the tourism activities. Without going into the details here, which my co-author and I have reported elsewhere extensively, this company bears strong resemblances with the lineage estates in Imperial China, since the lineage members are the owners of the shares, which cannot be sold or inherited outside the lineage. 14 That means, kinship ritual permeates the corporate
14
See Guo Man and Herrmann-Pillath (2017).
11
structure, highly visible at the New Year celebrations when dividends are distributed. This is accompanied by the ‘common pot’ feast on the public square in front of the ancestral hall, a dining rite typical for the single lineage villages of the Pearl River delta but unknown in other parts of China (see fig. 3). The common pot deviates radically from established norms of dining in China, since all ingredients of the dish are mixed in one big basin served per table, and all guests can simply pick out what they want. It was an important lineage ritual in the past, such as on occasion of the birth of a son, performing the solidarity and unity of the family and lineage. 15
Fig. 3: The ‘common pot’. Top left: New Year feast at Fenghuang; top right: typical common pot dish; bottom left: The ‘big common pot’ at Xiasha 2016; bottom right: The common pot instalment at Huang museum, Xiasha
15
The ‘common pot’ was also studied by James Watson (1987, 2014) in his research on the New Territories. Rare follow-up studies include Chan (2010), also with focus on Hong Kong. Guo Man and Herrmann-Pillath (2018a) present the Shenzhen practices in more detail.
12
Sacred spaces can be found in many parts of modern Shenzhen, and they are sites on which specific rituals are performed, often also in an innovative way. An important example is Xiasha village in the Central Business District. Xiasha is a village of the Huang lineage, who became wealthy landlords after implementing the standard model of ‘urban villages’, namely building multi-storey apartment blocks for migrant workers. In 2005, Xiasha succeeded in getting separate status as a shequ, thus restoring the old village identity also formally. The wealth of the lineage is displayed on the central ‘Cultural Square’ which hosts many religious instalments of various origin, even including Buddhist status from Thailand and other places. The central buildings are a huge ancestral hall and a lavishly decorated Houwang temple, again manifesting the dual structure of the traditional village. 16 The cultural square is the location of a modern transformation of the ‘common pot’ ritual, the so called ‘big common pot’. The event is held on the occasion of world meetings of the Huang surname group (more on that in the next section) and has truly gigantic dimensions, with sometimes the thousands of guests and thousands of tables. The importance of the event is demonstrated in the local Huang museum (fig. 3). The museum locates in the headquarter of the cooperative shareholding company of Xiasha village, which corresponds to the organization in Fenghuang. The museum recounts the glorious history of the Huang, who even trace themselves back to the mythical founder of Han China, the Yellow Emperor, and has one room entirely devoted to two life-sized groups of bronze status which show two common pot tables and guests enjoying the feast. Sacred spaces have many different forms, shapes, and may be often not be discernible to the superficial glance. For example, another former Wen village, Gangxia, does not have an ancestral hall and no temple, and appears just as a cramped urban village squeezed into hotels, malls and office buildings. The native Wen live in luxury high-rise apartments overlooking the area. Yet, the ritual dimension is present in combining the public school at the border of the urban village with a 30-meter mural that depicts the lives and times of Wen Tianxiang, thus always evoking the memory of the original significance of the place.
16
The Shenzhen scholar and Blogger Mary-Ann Douglas has a post that shows many pictures of the place and provides some background information: https://shenzhennoted.com/2017/05/04/xiasha-k-k-one/ (accessed May 2, 2018).
13
Fig. 4: The Wen ‘High Ancestor’ Wen Tianxiang. Top left: Wen Tianxiang statue in Xintian village, Hong Kong; top right: Wen Tianxiang memorial in Fenghuang village; bottom right: Wen Tianxiang mural at Gangxia; bottom left: Wen pilgrimage to Ji’an (source: Wen family)
It must be noticed that sacred spaces are interconnected spatially, as in the case of the Wen villages where Wen Tianxiang is a unified reference (fig. 4). For example, the Wen village in
14
Hong Kong New Territories has erected a huge Wen Tianxiang statue on a hill that overlooks the village and is directed to Shenzhen, the places where the other Wen live. There are many ritual activities that express these connections, most importantly, mutual visits for holding joint ancestral rituals. This includes pilgrimages to the sacred sites of origin, such as in this case the Wen Tianxiang tomb in Ji’an, Jiangxi province. It goes without saying that this original site has become another tourism project, originally suggested by Wen living abroad and ‘searching for their roots’. Pilgrimages involves hundreds of Wen driving their cars to the sacred site and holding rites together (a so-called ‘ancestral worship convoy’, jizu chedui 祭祖车队). We observe the general trend of intensifying these ritual activities, always combined with business interests. If Wen from all corners of the world meet at Wen Tianxiang’s birthplace, business certainly is a top topic at the banquets accompanying the rites. Another example is the recent activity of Shenzhen Wen in Hainan, where another historical tomb of one brother of Wen Tianxiang is located who is seen as high ancestor of one Shenzhen branch. This is partly driven by a special ritual concern, namely identifying sacred spaces for cemeteries. In the past, the Communist government had put huge pressures on local communities to convert cemeteries and tombs into usable land, often aggressively destroying tombs. In today’s Shenzhen, the lineages are acutely aware of the high economic value of scarce land. Therefore, Wen transfer tombs and whole cemeteries to Hainan. The Hainan local authorities welcome this, because it goes along with launching other business projects in Hainan. As a result, annual pilgrimages to the Hainan tomb are organized. To sum up, I argue that sacred spaces have been re-emerging in China today, as reflected in the creation of various important ritual artefacts which are involved in intensifying ritual activities. These spaces are interconnected via the activities. That means, spaces enable interaction ritual chains, but they also are being continuously created and recreated in these dynamic and fluid networks. Recently, we notice that the internet becomes an important mediator.
4. Virtualizing ritual I have already introduced the Huang and the fact that they sometimes host the local conventions of the World Huang surname association. Indeed, the Xiasha leader and CEO of the shareholding corporation, Huang Yingchao, was elected President in April 2018. The Huang is
15
an interesting case where we can observe the construction of global interaction ritual chains which increasingly move to the internet. 17 When the Huang refer to themselves, they use different terms, such as ‘family’, ‘clan’ or ’surname’. This is as confusing in English as in Chinese. For clarification, I distinguish between the ‘lineage’, which is the local community of kin living together in the village, the ‘clan’ which is a network of lineages that trace themselves back to an ancestor that is the origin of these different branches, and the ‘surname’ which is just the people having the same surname. 18 In the latter case, we speak of roughly thirty million people worldwide with that surname, also in different pronunciations (e.g. ‘Wong’ in Cantonese), including languages such as Korean. Theoretically, the surname association would include all of them, but of course only those Huang are members who expressively share a myth of common origin. This could in fact include all Huang, if they referred to the Yellow Emperor. But more concretely, the Huang conceive themselves as going back to certain tribes in the heartland of Chinese civilization during the Warring States period who later migrated to various Chinese regions, thus creating the primordial branches. The most important destination was Hubei and Jiangxia in particular (today a suburban district of Wuhan megalopolis). Therefore, Jiangxia is almost synonymous with Huang. In the Jiangxia line, the most important high ancestor is Huang Qiaoshan, a scholar-official of Tang times. The Shenzhen Huang go back to his descendants who settled in the region. The Xiasha ancestral hall has a mural that summarizes this genealogy to the public, thus highlighting the prestigious history of the lineage. What is remarkable about the Huang is that they have created a network of Huang ritual activities that encompasses ‘Cultural China’, that means, the entire mainland including Taiwan, Singapore, Southeast Asia and even beyond, and which partly mediated via the internet. Therefore, we can speak of the internet as emerging element in the Huang sacred space. That can be taken literally in the case of websites that offer sacred spaces explicitly as a business. 19 That means, customers may set up virtual ancestral halls and pay for various services, such as burning incense, hence conducting virtual rituals. In the Huang case, what is more significant is that the internet serves as mediator of real activities. That means, there are many websites of local Huang in which they communicate their activities, publish their
17
For more detail, see Guo Man and Herrmann-Pillath (2018b). Chinese kinship terminology has been subject to intensive scholarly debates over decades, see Ebrey and Watson (1986) or Chun (2000). 19 For example, http://www.yunjisi.net/, accessed May 19, 2018. 18
16
genealogies, or post special documents such as their ‘family customs’ (jia feng). These local websites are integrated in comprehensive Huang portals. 20 The Huang portals also reorganize all local documents in topical sections, that is, they do not only just publish the links to the local sites. Further, WeChat has emerged as even more active medium, with various Huang accounts where contributions from local Huang are collected and reports are disseminated. 21 One remarkable observation about the digital activities is that they go along with business concerns. The WeChat portal includes a ‘Huang shopping city’ where global Huang business offer their products (which includes traders, hence not only Huang made); there is also a Huang Chamber of Commerce that offers a wide range of business support. A favourite topic of Huang news are reports about ritual activities; That means, the internet as a surrogate sacred space mediates references to real sacred places and allows Huang to tie up with ritual performances all over the globe. Typically, this includes visits at important Huang locations, such as going to Jiangxia. There are many pictures showing different stages in performing the rituals, showing the halls, the ancestral tablets and so forth. Locations can have special significance in constructing Huang networks. For example, there is a relatively recent magnificent hall devoted to Jiangxia culture in Xiamen, where the relevant high ancestor of very recent vintage is an important political leader of the Xinhai revolution. This hall attracts many visitors from Taiwan in their way to other places, and the local leader is also the General Secretary of the World Huang Chamber of Commerce. One very important observation about Huang rituals is that they establish a connection to the collective identity of the Chinese. This deserves emphasis because ‘clannishness’ has been often singled out as a determinant of a perceived lack of national identification. But especially with reference to South China, in Ming times the Chinese Imperial state had started to imbue lineage rites with functions in governing society and establishing direct connections to the Imperial ideology via dissemination of Neoconfucian ideas (Faure 2007). We notice a revival of this approach in contemporary China, such as when President Xi Jinping officially praises the role of ‘family customs’ in creating the ground for the flourishing of a harmonious society.22
20
Important portals are: http://www.ihuang.org/ and http://www.jxhzw.org. Huang WeChat accounts are, for example, ‘JiangXiaHuang008’ or ‘qqhsyjq’ 22 These developments received much attention by Japanese scholars, see Kawagusa (2016). 21
17
Fig. 5: Huang rituals Top: The Grand Ancestral Rites offered to the Yellow Emperor in Xinzheng, Henan Province, April 18, 2018 (source: http://www.jxhzw.org/bzdt/1407.html) Middle: Grand Rites offered to Emperor Shun in Yongzhou, Hunan Province, November 22, 2017 (source: http://www.jxhzw.org/bzdt/1314.html) Bottom: A Huang delegation visiting Huangchuan, capital of Huang Dukedom in the Warring States Period, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/QyL3B7-oGtgDAqW4kDMmwQ
18
Indeed, Huang rites tie up with newly emerging rituals that explicitly establish a continuity between the modern Chinese nation and the Empire. The background is that the Huang claim direct descendance to the ‘Yellow Emperor’, which motivates the ubiquitous use of the colour yellow in Huang activities: For example, when Huang organize teams that go to poor areas to do community service, they would wear yellow vests. Today, official Grand Rites are held devoted to the Yellow Emperor where military honours are paid, and national political leaders give speeches. There are also new rituals devoted to the mythical Emperor Shun. 23 At such events, Huang all over the country will send delegations to take part (fig. 5). These are not necessarily local lineages, but groups who define themselves as being parts of the larger descent group. This reference to national culture is an emerging general phenomenon that can be explained by the fact that most lineages in South China (as we have also seen in the case of the Wen) trace themselves back to key migration events in Song dynasty, when the Han Chinese were driven Southwards by the Mongol invasion, including elite leaders. Therefore, the lineage genealogies often highlight themes that invoke broader cultural myths of Chinese identity. For example, although the common pot is a regional ritual, the myths about its origin often refer to an event in Song times, when local people welcomed the hungry Imperial troops from the North and provided them with rich food in big basins. In all these activities, different interpretations are meaningful at the same time. For local authorities, investing in the reconstruction of historical Huang sites and supporting ritual activities is a profitable tourist business supporting the local economy. The national government increasingly fosters the revival of traditional culture as a medium by which a national identity can be imbued with meaningful social practices, and by which conservative values are sustained that may be a bulwark against perceived pernicious influence from the West. However, there is also the religious dimension, which becomes salient if we move to the local level, and if we look at ways how rituals are actively performed by different groups. As we have seen, the internet, and especially WeChat, has become an essential mediator of creating and maintaining the interaction ritual chains of the Huang. Today, pictures of events with high emotional loading can be shared with almost no costs, and even videos that add audio information. Yet, as the many travels illustrate that are reported, this does not substitute the essential value of physical co-presence in performing rituals.
23
On this, see McNeal (2014)
19
5. Analysis: ritual interaction chains and ritual markets The revival of popular religion in China is a complex phenomenon. The concept of interaction ritual chains is helpful for understanding it. If we look at the Huang case, we observe a process of growing and thickening interaction ritual chains in which Huang identity is expressed and cultural frames are created and solidified via recurrent interactions mediated by ritual, which, in the age of modern media, also includes the possibility of continuous observation of the action of others: If you register at the WeChat account of the Huang surname association, almost every day you receive a short report about ritual activities, such as about a Huang delegation from Foshan visiting Huang Qiaoshan’s tomb and holding ancestral rites. In creating these interaction chains, ritual is essential, in the shape of specific ritual objects, such as collecting and displaying genealogies, and certain forms of action, such as visiting the ancestor’s graves on Qingming holiday. As we have seen, the sacred nature of these objects is increasingly enmeshed with political meanings, which is highly significant as Communist ideology is rarely referred to explicitly, otherwise. The permeable borders between political ideology and popular religion have been noticed for long, both with reference to traditional China and to modern China: For example, the hierarchy of gods and deities mirrors the Imperial bureaucracy, or the domestic Kitchen God is assumed to report directly to the Yellow Emperor about the family. In modern China, political leaders such as Mao Zedong have become deities in many temples, and even on the virtual ancestral sites users can burn incense in expressing devotion for them. 24 On all levels, an essential function of the rituals is to express and assert group identities. These are layered, as descent is layered: The local group demarcates itself against other local groups, the higher-order lineages and clans demarcate themselves against other clans, and ultimately, all branches are branches of the Han Chinese, distinct from other cultural groups. In this sense, along the lines of earlier analyses of popular religion, Chinese religious behaviour is deeply enmeshed with culture, and often appears secular, in having explicit social functions. Indeed, this was the position of many Confucian scholars in the past who shared the same concerns as modernist reformers of the 20th century about the dangers of superstitious and possibly heretic activities in the populace (Lagerwey 2010: 11).
24
A classical study of this double nature of popular religion, both potentially subversive and merged symbolically with the political order, see Feuchtwang (1992). On modern mergers between political and religious symbols, see Goossaert and Palmer (2011: Chapter seven).
20
The secular dimension seems also salient in the role of business concerns. Again, the concept of interaction ritual chains proves useful. If we consider the organizational construct of a ‘shareholding cooperative’, we can just approach this as a business concern, mostly controlled by village elites who often live a very different lifestyle than the ordinary, though prosperous lineage members (for example, the undisputed leader of Fenghuang village and shareholding cooperative is reported to complain about the roads leading the company because he cannot drive his Ferraris there). A cynical view would just declare rituals as ideological tools to camouflage the real economic power relations. However, there are many phenomena that might not fit this simplistic deconstruction. For example, the powerful Xiasha leader was faced with public protests by lineage members in front of the ancestral hall who complained about corruption and abuse of power. So far, his position is safe, and he is celebrated in the local museum as visionary leader. Yet, the protests also reveal that there are moral economy frames that find expression in rituals such as the common pot. The significance of the common pot is explained by locals as expressing that there is always “an I in the you, and a you in the I”. 25 Indeed, there are many examples in which the shareholding cooperatives clearly express an underlying organizational culture of community and sharing of benefits. For example, the village neighbouring Fenghuang is inhabited by one of the richest local lineages, the Pan. Its shareholding cooperative publishes even daily records of its bank account on several billboards in the village, including full public account about guarantees given to other companies (interestingly, Fenghuang playing a big role), and the ongoing village development plan will heavily subsidize the internal decoration of the new apartments to which villagers will move, and which are allocated by drawing lots, thus treating all members equally. Business interactions are partly supported by interaction ritual chains. Huang Yingchao is a case in point, as he manoeuvres across chains on different levels, which finds expression in the ritual innovation of the ‘big common pot’ where all the levels become co-terminous spatially and temporarily at events that are vibrant with emotional energy. In assuming the various roles of the local lineage leader, organizer of joint ritual activities of Huang at other places, and eventually becoming the President of the World Huang surname association, he accumulates resources that according to Collins’ view are condensed in emotional energy as embodying social status.
25
http://paper.oeeee.com/nis/201406/06/226791.html, accessed October 17, 2017.
21
Certainly, kinship rituals are typical situations of emotional effervescence in which the participants share the feelings of belonging to a group that maintains common values. Common values are an important part of lineage identity, even though they often boil down to propositions that are very similar across various groups, mainly reflecting the century long history of Neoconfucian indoctrination and designing lineage institutions (Ebrey 1985, Faure 2007). In this sense, lineage values are almost the same as cultural values of the Han Chinese, thus directly reflecting the political dimension of lineage rituals. In celebrating lineage rituals, the participants also express their Chineseness. In which sense can we also speak of a ritual market in Collins’ sense? It seems to me that this is manifest in the fusion of tourism and business with ritual. Lineages compete against each other in organizing rituals that also attract other groups and pull them into the orbit of their interaction chains. In treating the rituals even as officially recognized ‘cultural heritage’, they become ‘marketized’: However, this does not mean that they become devoid of their ritual significance. If the Huang at Xiasha want to boost their local business in leisure and tourism, they also signal their cultural excellence and their unity as the group that is successful in these activities. In other words, successful business also signals the inherent cultural qualities of the group. 26 Perhaps I might overstretch the ritual viewpoint, but it seems that the large projects in redeveloping urban villages themselves obtain ritual meaning: The Xiasha Cultural Square is close to a newly constructed giant shopping mall and apartment high rise building that manifests the business prowess of the local lineage. Indeed, we can even speak of a competition between ritual spaces that is visible in the mutual over-bidding in the size and glamour of the real estate projects. Therefore, the interaction ritual chain concept seems very powerful in understanding the microsociological foundations of the ‘ritual economy’ in China. Whether one can reduce certain ritual activities to economic interests, or vice versa, becomes a moot point: In interaction ritual chains, both aspects are inextricably merged.
6. Conclusion: Individualization, revisited Collins’ notion of interaction ritual chains offers a fresh view on the question of religious individualization in a cross-cultural context because it starts out from a different
26
This phenomenon has been also noticed with reference to Christian communities in Wenzhou, see Cao (2009).
22
conceptualization of action. This is evident if we compare this approach with the religious markets notion that I discussed in my companion paper (Herrmann-Pillath 2018). There, I argue that the model of religious markets should not be interpreted as an empirical hypothesis, but as a methodological tool by which certain forms of individualization can be identified that have been materialized in the specifically Western cultural setting, especially the United States. I defended the view that for understanding China, the model might catch one mode of individualization that is visible in the market-like dynamics of doing popular religion, such as individuals freely choosing among different providers of religious services. However, there is also the ‘gift exchange mode’ highlighted by Palmer (2011), in which individuals actively engage in creating communities of religious practices, which differs fundamentally from the utilitarian setting of the religious markets model. A complete view needs to recognize the dialectics between the two modes, which only in conjunction can grasp the complexity of culturally specific forms of individualization. Collins’ concept of interaction ritual chains offers an alternative view because it does not start out from an economic model of the individual in stating its fundamental social ontology. Individuals are endogenous to the unfolding of interaction ritual chains, which are a necessary precondition for enabling agency. Even markets are embedded in these dynamic structures, and thus cannot serve as an independent analytical template. In interaction ritual chains fostered by Chinese popular religion, agents express their communal belongings and identities, but at the same time this creates potential for individual agency, especially in the economic context. In addition, even though the community rituals require individual commitment, there is no exclusive claim on individual beliefs, and the organization of popular religion allows for much freedom in choosing among a large variety of ‘modes of doing religion’ (Chau 2011). Therefore, Chinese interaction ritual chains can be conceived as a culturally specific form of religious individualization. In a sense, the modernizing state has bolstered this via its containment of religion: Since any competing claim for power over individual is vigorously suppressed by the state, religious action paradoxically enjoys high degrees of individual freedom vis à vis the diverse authorities that represent organized religion, including the community that is institutionalized as the ‘village’ in modern metamorphoses.
23
References Cao, Nan Lai. 2009. ‘Raising the Quality of Belief. Suzhi and the Production of an Elite Protestantism’, China Perspectives, 2009/4: 54-65. Chan, Selina Ching. 2010. ‘Food, Memories, and Identities in Hong Kong’. Identities 17, 2–3: 204–27. Chau, Adam Y. 2011. ‘Modalities of Doing Religion and Ritual Polytropy: Evaluating the Religious Market Model from the Perspective of Chinese Religious History’, Religion 14(4). 547-68. Chun, Allen John Uck Lun, (2000)Unstructuring Chinese Society: The Fictions of Colonial Practice and the Changing Realities of “Land” in the New Territories of Hong Kong, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic. Clart, Philip. 2012. ‘Chinese Popular Religion.’ In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions, ed. R. Nadeau, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. 219-35. Collins, Randall. 2005. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. DuBois, Thomas D. 2005. The Sacred Village: Social Change and Religious Life in Rural North China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Ebrey, Patricia B. 1985. ‘The Chinese Family and the Spread of Confucian Values”’ in Rozman, G., eds., The East Asian Region. Confucian Heritage and Its Modern Adaptation, 45-83. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ebrey, P. B. and Watson, J. L. (1986): Introduction, in Ebrey, P. B. and Watson, J. L., eds., Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China, 1000-1949, 1-15. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Faure, David. 2007. Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China. Stanford: Stamford University Press. Feuchtwang, Stephen. 1992. The Imperial Metaphor. Popular Religion in China, London and New York: Routledge. Goossaert, V, Palmer, D. A. (2011) The Religious Question in Modern China, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Gui Hua 桂华. 2014. Li yu shengming jiazhi. Jiating shenghuo Zhong de daode, zongjiao yu fal, 礼与生命价值。家庭生活中的道德，宗教与法律，Beijing: Commercial Press. Gui Hua 桂. 2013. ‘guo rize’ yu yuanman rensheng – nongcun zongjiao shenghuo jiben xingtai 过日子于圆满人生—农村宗教生活的基本形态. Ershiyi shiji 二十一世纪 140. 40-54. Guo Man and Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten (2017), ‘Power, Property and Governmentality in South China: The Case of the Wen (Man) Clan in Hong Kong and Shenzhen (December 18, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3089728 Guo Man and Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten (2018b), ‘Lineage, Food and Ritual in a Chinese Metropolis’, forthcoming: Anthropos. Guo Man and Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten (2018b): ‘Iclan’: The Chinese Ritual Economy in the 21st Century (April 22, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3166765 Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten (2017), China’s Economic Culture. The Ritual Order of State and Markets, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. 24
Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten (2018), ‘Religious Individualization in China: A Two-Modal Approach’, forthcoming in: Linkenbach, Rüpke, Fuchs, Parson, Otto, eds., Religious Individualization in Historical Perspective. Kang, Xiao. 2009. ‘Two Temples, Three Religions, and a Tourist Attraction: Contesting Sacred Space on China’s Ethnic Frontier’, Modern China 35(3). 227-55. Kawagusa Yukihiro. 2016. “Sōzoku keisei, henhō soshite genzai. Guangdong shū Zhujiang delta no itsu sōzoku no jirei kara” (Formation, Transformation and Current Status of Lineages: A Case in Guangdong Province Pearl River Delta), in Segawa Masahisa and Kawagusa Yukihro, eds.: “Sōzoku” to chūgoku shakai. Sono henhō no jinreigaku kenkiū no genzai (Lineage and Chinese Society: Its Transformations and the Current State of Anthropological Research) (Tokio: Fukyo Publishing Inc., 2016), 263-309. Lagerwey, John. 2010. China. A Religious State. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. McNeal, Robin. 2014. ‘Moral Transformation and Local Identity: Reviving the Culture of Shun at Temples and Monuments across China’, Modern China 41, 4, 436–64. Palmer, David. 2011. ‘Gift and Market in the Chinese Religious Economy’, Religion 41(4). 569-94. Stephenson, Barry. 2015. Ritual: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sutton, D. S. 2007. ‘Ritual, Cultural Standardization, and Orthopraxy in China: Reconsidering James L. Watson’s Ideas’, Modern China 33(1). 3-21. Watson, James L. 2003. “Hereditary Tenancy and Corporate Landlordism in Traditional China: A Case Study.” In James L. Watson and Rubie S. Watson, Village life in Hong Kong: Politics, Gender, and Ritual in the New Territories, 145-167. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Watson, James L. 1987. “From the Common Pot: Feasting With Equals in Chinese Society”. Anthropos 82: 389-401. Watson, James L. 2014. Meat: A Cultural Biography in (South) China. In: Jacob A. Klein and Anne Murcott (eds.), Food Consumption in a Global Perspective. Essays in the Anthropology of Food in Honour of Jack Goody, pp. 25-44. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Yang, Mayfair M.-h. 2007. “Ritual Economy and Rural Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics.” in Cultural Politics in a Global Age: Uncertainty, Solidarity and Innovation edited by D. Held and H. Moore, 216-223, Oxford: Oneworld. Yang, C. K. 1961. Religion in Chinese Society: A Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of Their Historical Factors. Berkeley: University of California Press. Yue, Yongyi. 2014. ‘Holding Temple Festivals at Home of Doing-gooders: Temple Festivals and Rural Religion in Contemporary China’, Cambridge Journal of China Studies 9(1). 48-95.
25
