The Varieties Of Confucian Experience

The Varieties of Confucian Experience offers a number of ethnographic accounts of the popular Confucian revival taking place in China since the beginning of the 21st Century.

Winner of the 2015 Pierre-Antoine Bernheim Prize for the History of Religion by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres After a century during which Confucianism was viewed by academics as a relic of the imperial past or, at best, a philosophical resource, its striking comeback in Chinese society today raises a number of questions about the role that this ancient tradition might play in a contemporary context. The Sage and the People is the first comprehensive enquiry into the "Confucian revival" that began in China during the 2000s. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork carried out over eight years in various parts of the country, it explores the re-appropriation and reinvention of popular practices in fields as diverse as education, self-cultivation, religion, ritual, and politics. The book analyzes the complexity of the "Confucian revival" within the broader context of emerging challenges to such categories as religion, philosophy, and science that prevailed in modernization narratives throughout the last century. Exploring state cults both in Mainland China and Taiwan, authors Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval compare the interplay between politics and religion on the two shores of the Taiwan strait and attempt to shed light on possible future developments of Confucianism in Chinese society.

Confucianism and Reflexive Modernity criticizes the paradigm of Asian Value Debate and defends a balance between individual empowerment and flourishing community for human rights in the context of global risk society from an enlightened post-Confucianism perspective.

This groundbreaking study highlights the importance of images within Confucianism and to a shrine-tomb for Confucius's buried robe and cap.

An interdisciplinary exploration of the contemporary Confucian revival. Until its rejection by reformers and revolutionaries in the twentieth century, Confucianism had been central to Chinese culture, identity, and thought for centuries. Confucianism was rejected by both Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong’s Communist Party, which characterized it as an ideology of reaction and repression. Yet the sage has returned: today, Chinese people from all walks of life and every level of authority are embracing Confucianism. As China turned away from the excesses of the Cultural Revolution and experienced the adoption and challenges of market practices, alternatives were sought to the prevailing socialist morality. Beginning in the 1980s and continuing through the years, ideas, images, behaviors, and attitudes associated with Confucianism have come back into public and private life. In this volume, scholars from a wide range of disciplines explore the contemporary Confucian revival in China, looking at Confucianism and the state, intellectual life, and popular culture. Contributors note how the revival of Confucianism plays out in a variety of ways, from China’s relationship with the rest of the world, to views of capitalism and science, to blockbuster movies and teenage fashion.

This fascinating and timely volume analyzes data from a four-year study of the religious experience in contemporary China--the results of which will radically transform the understanding of the role religion plays in twenty-first-century Chinese culture. Focused on the Han Chinese, who make up more than ninety percent of mainland China's population, Religious Experience in Contemporary China considers that groundbreaking research in an almost wholly new context: though the suppression of religion by communist authorities in the latter part of the twentieth century is well documented, much less is known about the underlying resurgence of religious life within the world's most populous nation. Until recently, such research would not have been permitted, and the fascinating results presented here make Religious Experience in Contemporary China an essential addition to the increasing amounts of publications on China in the new age.

This book explores the complexities of cultivating ‘Confucian individuals’ through classics study in contemporary China by drawing on the individualization thesis and its implications for the Confucian education revival. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a Confucian classical school, three topics are investigated: parents’ narratives and actions related to ‘dis-embedding’ their children from mainstream state education and transferring them to Confucian education as an alternative; the specific discourses and practices of teaching and learning the classics in everyday school life, guided by the aim of training students to become autonomous learners; and the institutional and subjective dilemmas that arise when parents and students seek to ‘re-embed’ themselves in either the state education system or further Confucian studies at an advanced academy for the next stage of education. The research presented in this book contributes to understanding the hidden dynamics of individualization in the Confucian education revival and the intricacies of subject-making through Confucian teaching and learning in the socialist state of China.

This book explores the relationship between Confucianism and citizenship and the rise of Confucian citizens in contemporary China. Combining theoretical and empirical approaches to the topic, the book constructs new frameworks to examine the nuances and complexities of Confucianism and citizenship, exploring the process of citizen-making through Confucian education. By re-evaluating the concept of citizenship as a Western construct and therefore challenging the popular characterization of Confucianism and citizenship as incompatible, this book posits that a new type of citizen, the Confucian citizen, is on the rise in 21st-century China. The book’s clear, accessible style makes it essential reading for students and scholars interested in citizenship, Confucianism and Chinese studies, and those with an interest in religion and philosophy more generally.