Improper Religion
Improper Religion
State Deterritorialization of Popular Religious
Spaces in the People's Republic of China, 1982-2023
By Omer Sharon
I.D. No. 206731481
To Prof. Orna Naftali
Seminary paper in "Society and Culture in China: Contemporary Issues"
Introduction
My research question is as
follows: "Does the post-Mao Chinese state
deterritorialize popular religious spaces? If so, how do these processes of
state deterritorialization occur?". Within this inquiry, I will
explore state interaction with folk religion. What local reactions, be that of
resistance, submission or compromise occur in the face of attempts at state
deterritorialization?
Throughout his paper, I will use state action
to gauge how uniform is the state's spatial perception, and what notions of
modernity are expressed in spatial interactions between the state and popular
religion. I suspect that modernity, for
the post-Mao state, is not a distinctly defined idea but rather a series of
loosely connected notions. The most apparent of these notions are derived from
western sources, such as historical denigrations of China. (Yang 2004) Other
notions related to modernity come from Maoist and late Imperial perceptions and
practices. Local Chinese uses of modernity are imbued with historical Chinese
practices. (Rofel 1992). Modernity has similarities overlapping between Chinese
and non-Chinese conceptions of progress, rationality, scientific methodology
and other related terms.
Modernity is relevant here
because it seems to be a driving force in the implementation of "proper
religion" in post-Maoist China. The postcolonial complex, "in which
the imperialists are thrown out, but their denigrations of the collective self
and models of modernity leave a deep imprint on the collective psyche."
(Yang 2004: 724) seems resonant both to reformist attempts at proper religion
and republican and Maoist era attempts at eradicating superstition. (Chau 2006,
Brook 2009)
I will use the terms "popular
religion" and "folk religion" in their broadest sense. Any
popular practices that imply or include a supernatural element and do not fit comfortably
into officially recognized religions are valid objects of inquiry for this
paper. Certain rituals fall both in the purview of Confucianism and of popular
religion. However, Confucian morality and ritual order are not, in themselves,
objects of inquiry for this paper. To further focus this inquiry, I will not
look into qigong or falungong, and my examination of popular religious spaces
will focus on rural areas.
Popular religion will be
examined in this paper insofar as it interacts with the state in or over a
shared space. While it is tempting to designate these interactions entirely as
spatial struggles, (Yang 2004) that may strengthen a perception of a wholly antagonistic
dichotomy between state and popular religious practice. While I believe a
state-religion dichotomy is justified in the case of popular religion, I would
nonetheless like to strive for an "institutional framework of multiple
actors". (Ashiwa & Wank 2009:3)
This framework sees religion
as defined, propagated, and enacted not exclusively by the state and not through
its coercive power alone. This approach examines the state's organizational
aspects as well, focusing on the manners in which state and religion constitute
themselves in relation to each other. Furthermore, this approach sees religion
as constituted not only through its various interactions with the state, but
also through its own efforts at legitimacy. Both "proper religion"
and the state have a complicated and often adversarial relationship with the "superstition"
examined here. This approach focuses not solely on religious institutions
struggling with state decrees, but both state and religious institutions
interacting and contrasting themselves with folk religious practices. (Ashiwa
& Wank 2009: 5-6)
In many ways, this paper continues the
conversation started with "spatial struggles", while aiming to add
nuance to it and expand its geographical and temporal scope. This expanded scope is made possible by the
works of Adam Yuet Chau in Shaanbei, Ray X.L. Qu in Fujian, Yanfei Sun in
Zhejiang, and broader inquiries such as those authored by Susanne Brandstater
and Yujie Zhu. The nuance added in especially indebted to the above-mentioned
essay by Ashiwa and Wank, Timothy Brook's essay on the late imperial origins of
the regulatory state, and to Qu's stratification of the state in his 2020
paper.
This paper will use many tools and cases
from Yang's 2004 paper. I shall utilize Henri Lefebvre's three dimensions of
space as a working definition of a space/territory. Yang presents these
dimensions in the following quote:
“Spatial practices” are
physical and material constructions of space, or flows and interactions of people and things that both
occur in space and impart social order to space. “Representations of space” are
the knowledge, cultural sign systems, and codes of social order imposed on
space which allow and limit the consciousness, discussion, and manipulation of
space. These representations are authoritative and dominating discourses that
shape, mobilize, and delimit spatial practices. “Representational spaces” are
more elusive than the other two dimensions of space, being symbolic spaces or
imaginary landscapes that are clandestine and underground." (Yang 2004:
725)
Moreover, the idea of state deterritorialization of space in China is also
derived from Yang, who applies it to representations of space in particular.
Yang explains state deterritorialization the following quote:" These
knowledges and discourses of space in the twentieth century have led to a
“state de-territorialization” of space (Deleuze and Guattari 1987) in China, from
dispersed local communities to the sovereign and cohesive unity of a
nation-state territory administratively oriented to the central space of
Beijing." (Yang 2004: 726)
There
are several features of deterritorialization which I believe are salient to the
inquiry of state deterritorialization of popular religion in China, which originate
in the work of Deleuze and Guattari. The first is the deterritorialization
always involves multiple actors. The second is that deterritorialization is
measured in degree and intensity, which cannot be determined by the speed of
the deterritorialization process. The third concludes that " the least
deterritorialized reterritorializes on the most deterritorialized." (Deleuze
and Guattari 1987: 174-5)
The Oxford dictionary of critical theory
defines deterritorialization as a severing of desire's connection to its
initial territory, that being its drive. (Buchanan 2010) In an analogous
process, the flow of activity and resources in popular religious spaces is
constantly diverted by state action and the disciplining gaze of state cadres,
which I will demonstrate in the following chapters.
What I found, after looking into popular
religious spaces in several different provinces over several decades, is that
the PRC state does deterritorialize spaces of popular religion. With that said, it does not do that as a
blanket policy, nor does it try to fashion these processes of modernization and
integration into a uniform path popular religious spaces have towards
legitimacy. The post-Mao PRC state does utilize and attempt to deterritorialize
popular religious spaces that are able to compensate for the state's own
inadequacies, such as in providing services to neglected rural areas and
creating lasting connections with overseas Chinese.
I further learned that state
deterritorialization is enacted on spaces that both avoid state destruction and
attract the attention of state actors with sufficient power to deterritorialize
them. Which state organs the particular space attracts and if said organs
deterritorialize the space is determined by more specific factors. I will
expand on these factors in the following chapters.
The first chapter, "The Politics of Registration",
will discuss the different options that popular religious spaces have to
receive legal recognition from the state, and whether or not they
deterritorialize the spaces that pursue them. It will also touch on the
registration campaigns meant to curb the post-Mao fervor of temple
establishment and reestablishment.
The
next chapter, "State Disciplinary Gaze", will show how state
deterritorialization can occur without official state intervention or decree,
but merely as a consequence of the threat of forceful reappropriation. This
chapter will also give an account of power relations through the lense of
subjectivation and the gaze.
The final chapter, "Determining State
Deterritorialization", will stratify the Chinese state to better
understand its actions and present the different ways in which different strata
of the state deterritorialize popular religious spaces.
Modernity, the consequences of
colonialism in China, and a population's interaction with an authoritarian
regime were all prominent issues in this course. For example, the relationship
between religion, legitimacy and development present in our discussion of
Christianity in China, and this relationship is central to understanding
popular religion's treatment by the PRC state. Our discussion of life cycle
rituals touched on popular religion itself, and the relationship between an
authoritarian regime and the people subjected to it is unavoidable when
discussing contemporary China.
Chapter 1: The Politics of Registration
Since 1982, the central state changed its
position regarding religion; instead of promoting atheism, as it did in 1956-1976,
the state decided to recognize and accommodate five recognized religions
through the reinstatement of the "Religious Affairs Bureau". The five
officially recognized "proper" religions, who enjoy constitutional
protection, are Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Daoism and Buddhism. Other
religious and spiritual practices are left without official protection. These
practices are often labeled as "superstition" or "feudal
superstition". These include divination, possession, purification, and
supplication to local deities.
Many local temples, torn down during the
cultural revolution, have been rebuilt, in most cases, through the action and
initiative of local citizens. The reestablishment of temples is often caused by
divine revelation in dreams or divine possession. (Chau 2009) However, this
rational is not satisfactory for state approval, let alone endorsement. State
hostility to superstition is not exclusive neither to the cultural revolution
nor to the People's Republic of China.
Folk religion is often stigmatized,
considered both a waste of time and money and a hurdle in China's development.
The Chinese state, in all its forms, has been deeply suspicious of popular
religion in general and deity worship in particular. It is used to essentialize
rural areas as "backwards". The Republican and Warlord eras saw many
local and spiritual spaces repurposed as schools and barracks, (Chau 2006) and
the late imperial state was often ambivalent and suspicious in its treatment of
most non-Confucian religious activity, then conceptualized as heterodoxy.
(Brook 2009) Many scholars see contemporary religious policy as echoing late
imperial attempts to regulate, register and contain heterodoxy that cannot be
banned outright. (Brook 2009, Yang 2004)
To
avoid state sponsored harm to the popular religious space, either through
destruction or prevention of reestablishment, local activists will often label
it as a historical, cultural, or archeological relic, thereby appropriating
state approved discourse for their own goals. For example, the destruction of
the Wang lineage ancestor hall in Yongchang Township was prevented by the
locals labeling it as an "archeological relic". (Yang 2004: 734) In
Xiamen municipality, in Fujian, the restoration of the Baosheng Dadi Ciji temple
at Green Reef, known as the Eastern temple, was allowed "in the name of
renovating 'cultural relics' ". (Qu 2020: 447)
This is
an initial and quick form of state deterritorialization. The internal logic of
spiritual or ancestral patronage, which conditions the revelation, possession,
and divine efficacy which characterize many temple reestablishment efforts, is protected
by a cover of a modern-seeming discourse of historical conservation. While this
particular event does not constitute a very deep or intense
deterritorialization, it does affect the relationship between the state and these
spaces and may entail further deterritorialization and reappropriation of the
space. In Xiamen, the aforementioned Eastern Temple is promoted by the state
over other local Baosheng Dadi Ciji temples partially due to it having more
cultural relics and historical importance. (Qu 2020: 442) In Zhejiang, the Wang
lineage hall operates under the pretense of a museum, and was consequently, for
a time, used to display Chinese military machinery. (Yang 2004)
This
authorization through historicization occurs across temples which vary in
location, size, and profitability. In terms of gauging state understanding of
modernity and space, this policy informs us that the state does perceive
historical conservation as a legitimate part of modernity. For the post-Maoist
state, historical conservation is one reason to overlook superstitious
activity. With that said, the revenue and social services provided by the
temples are probably more important reasons for overlooking their superstitious
aspects. (Chau 2009, Wang 2004)
Another venue for legal registration of
popular religious sects emerged in 2004: the registration of sites as
"Intangible Cultural Heritage" 朆䈑岒㔯⊾怢䓊. This
was a consequence of the PRC ratifying the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding
of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH).
Popular religious organizations immediately sought recognition from the
state under this new legal category through the Cultural Affairs Bureau. Many
local cults and village deity festivals are registered in this category.
(Gooseart and Palmer 2011: 343)
Out of the different options for legal
registration of popular religious spaces, it initially seemed to me to be the
least deterritorializing, due to the general and vague nature of this category.
However, upon further inspection, the
criteria required to be considered ICH and the regulations imposed on ICH sites
are also quite deterritorializing. That
stems not from the UNESCO convention itself but rather from the PRC law on the
matter, passed in 2005.
This law divided ICH into the following
categories: Oral literature, art, technology, customs, and sports. To better
fit ICH criteria and categorization, folk religions often need to dilute their
spiritual and devotional discourse and emphasize aspects of their tradition
fitting with their ICH categorization. The content, format and method of
transmission are all liable to be changed in order to
be recognized as an ICH site. (Zhu 2020: 102-103) For our purposes, these
are changes to the spatial practices and representations of space in popular
religions to a Beijing approved mold, making it state deterritorialization
through heritagization.
Often
related to heritagization is the registration of popular religious sites as 'scenic
spots', and their consequent use and regulation as tourist sites. Popular
religious spaces can be registered legally as 'scenic spots, a government
approved registry of internal tourist destination. (Brandstater 2013, Zhu 2020,
Nyri 2006) This reframing of popular religious sites as tourist enterprises is
promoted both by the religious organizations themselves and by political cadres
seeking ways to gain political credit through increasing tourism. Moreover, if
a popular religious space is officially recognized as a 'scenic spot', then it
will be subject to regulations relating to tourism. When enforced, these
regulations constitute a change in spatial practices and an administrative
reorientation towards Beijing, I.E., state deterritorialization.
For example, the Heilongdawang (Black
Dragon King) temple complex in Shaanbei describes itself in its official
website as an 'AAAA scenic area', a certification given by the National Tourism
Administration. Following the guidelines of this certification, a certification
used by many popular religious spaces, (Zhu 2020) would require shifting
administrative efforts from "creating a religious atmosphere for
worshipping, to aesthetics, site marketing, visitor interpretation and cultural
events planning." (Zhu 2020: 100) As a 'scenic spot', the Heilongdawang Temple
Complex's website also has a page devoted to describing its compliance with
regional tourist regulations. The website also contains a text justifying the
temple's local dragon deity festival under the auspices of promoting tourism.
The Heilongdawang temple complex changed both
the discourse it produced and its administrative policies as a method of
gaining approval from the state and as part of its compliance with the state's
decrees. In doing so, it changed its spatial practices and modified its
representations of space to fit Beijing's views of proper religion, modernity,
and development. It is not alone in this, as many popular religious temples use
tourism to legitimize themselves in the eyes of state cadres and state organs.
State involvement and attention is
elevated when said 'scenic spots' and other legalized or unregistered spaces of
popular religions are deeply connected with non-PRC Chinese polities. These
spaces are often promoted by the state, ostensibly as operations of
religious tourism, to strengthen relations with overseas Chinese communities.
For example, The Eastern Baosheng Dadi Ciji temple, a 'scenic spot', is promoted
and subject to interference by the state due to its extensive connections to
Taiwan. (Qu 2020)
Many
temples seek registration in the Religious Affairs Bureau as either Daoist or
Buddhist. This registration also means that the temple would be admitted into
the official association of either Daoism or Buddhism, regardless of any actual
historical or doctrinal affiliation with these traditions. For example, the Heilongdawang
temple in Shaanbei eventually received official recognition as a Daoist temple
in 1998, in spite of that region's dragon deities not being historically included
in the Daoist pantheon. (Chau 2009)
This
registration as either Buddhist or Daoist varies in meaning from temple to
temple. For all temples admitted into these associations, this means paying continuous
membership dues to the associations, (Brook 2009, Chau 2009) and participating
in meetings of the associations, the Religious Affairs Bureau, and the United
Front. (Brook 2009, Gooseart and Palmer 2011) For some temples, this could entail
further state intervention and initiate state deterritorialization, as I will discuss
in chapter 3.
While temples are no longer
transformed into farms or schools by official decree, as they were in the
Maoist and Republican eras, (Brook 2009, Yang 2004, Chau 2006) this does not
mean that the state is now pro-religion. Proper or not, religion is definitely
not universally promoted or universally prohibited, but rather it is contained
and limited. This is quite similar to
late imperial approaches to religious regulation. (Brook 2009, Yang 2004) The
main difference is that the late imperial state was critical of religion from a
Confucian position, while the PRC's criticism of religion comes from a
modernist position informed by the postcolonial complex.
The PRC's modernist position
is inherently more hostile to folk religion. The Confucian is encouraged to
maintain a "magic garden of heterodox doctrine". (Weber 1920) In
contrast, the modernist state cadre, party member or intellectual, is more
likely to see this magic garden as an opium field. Popular religion in
particular is consistently stigmatized as fraudulent and indicatory of
backwards thinking. (Chau 2006, Yang 2004, Brook 2009)
As Yang notes, since 1994, the
Religious Affairs Bureau in the State Council started requiring registration
from all religious sites of worship, regardless of whether they belonged to
"proper religions" or not. Recognition by the central government was
conferred only to temples who met certain criteria, and many smaller temples
and shrines did not meet them and were consequently "banned from any
religious activity and their existence was to end." (Yang 2004: 739) Yang
describes these unrecognized temples being padlocked or demolished. With that
said, the reestablishment of pre-cultural-revolution temples in the area has
become notably easier, as local cadre attitudes towards religion have softened
since the mid-1990s. (Sun 2013: 476-477) Conflicting attitudes toward folk
religion by different state actors is a common occurrence, and I inquire deeper
into why and how these differing and somewhat conflicting policies are formed
and enacted in chapter 3.
Ray X.L. Qu, who followed four
folk religion temples in Fujian, describes the threat of demolition or forceful
relocation as looming over the smallest and least visited temple. While this
threat did not come from a registration campaign, and was eventually not
realized, it does show that demolition is not a phenomenon particular to Wenzhou
or Zhejiang. At least, it is not perceived as such. This temple did not manage
to achieve "relic" status or recognition as Daoist/Buddhist and was
therefore not eligible to any official protections. (Qu 2020:460) The treatment
of smaller sites is itself inconsistent; in many cases the state is simply indifferent
to smaller sites. This is exemplified by the Southern Baosheng Dadi temple, who
remains unacknowledged by the state.
This policy of either
indifference or prohibition towards smaller sites is one of the causes for the
focus of religious fervor on larger, regional sites after the cultural
revolution. This is conceptualized by Sun, working in Wenzhou, as
"bifurcation". (Sun 2013) Another expression of this in Qu's work is
the success of the Eastern and Western Baosheng Dadi Ciji Temples, which became
popular pilgrimage sites for worshippers and officials on both sides of the
Taiwan strait, compared to the neighboring Southern and Northern temples which
are far smaller and attract less visitors. (Qu 2020) This phenomenon is not
exclusive to south China either. Chau notes that the Black Dragon temple he
followed, that of the Marquis of Efficacious Response, has effectively replaced
the several dragon-deity temples which existed in the area pre-cultural-revolution.
Focusing on registration
allows a documented glance into the discursive developments in the relations
between the Chinese state and popular religious spaces. From the mid-1990s
onwards the PRC has gone through different phases in regard to popular
religion. While the central state explored the possibility of official
patronage of popular religion, it was never realized. (Gooseart and Palmer
2011) Thus, tolerance was expressed as either indifference or through legally
approving popular religious spaces as some different legal entity.
Chapter 2: State Disciplinary
Gaze
I posit that the threat of forceful
reappropriation by the state creates a state disciplinary gaze. This
gaze is turned towards popular religious spaces. The
presence of this gaze drives these spaces into public projects and public
investment. This gaze also causes the
dilution of the ancestral and spiritual discourse which drives the grassroots
activism at the heart of these spaces. That is especially true if these spaces
house obviously superstitious activities, such as purification, divination, and
the offering of expensive gifts. (Chau 2009, Brook 2009)
The state disciplinary gaze is
the executor of the postcolonial complex, and a consequence of it. The
postcolonial complex explains why the state continues to keep popular religion
in a legal gray area. Local deities with a clear form who can be held
accountable for the material life of their supplicants are too far from the
abstract God, from quasi-universal systems of reason, or from the collective
purpose of dialectic materialism. They have no seminal text, no unified set of
rules which can be used as grounds for argumentation with and regulation of
their clergy, insofar as they even have something equivalent to clergy. These
deities and ancestors are too incongruent with formerly colonial nations'
models of modernity.
A demonstration of state
deterritorialization through the disciplinary gaze is found in Chau's work in
Shaanbei. Chau claims that a reason for the many public projects of the
financially successful Heilongdawang Temple Complex is that a temple with full
coffers may attract the meddling of a financially drained local state. (Chau
2009) So, the temple uses its full coffers, creating a school and an arboretum,
without being officially asked by the state to do so. It thus obfuscates its internal
logic and original sociality to appease the state. It is no longer a venue for
purification and divine efficacy, it is a school and an arboretum.
As an arboretum, it is
recognized by state cadres on the county level, and by international NGOs. The
temple's school teaches kids from a wider region then that of its original temple
community. (Chau 2009) While indirect, this is also a type of state
deterritorialization. It transforms the space from a highly regional deity's
successful temple to a Daoist temple, a historical relic, a school, and an
arboretum. All ostensibly modern and approved (or approvable) by Beijing. The
discourse is modernized to appease the state, and the space is deterritorialized
in the process.
Conversely, there are civil projects
executed, ostensibly, through cooperation between the local state and popular
religious spaces. These are co-legitimating projects; they provide legitimacy
both to local state cadres and to the popular religious spaces. (Yang 2004,
Chau 2009, Sun 2014) Some of these are only co-legitimizing because state
participation was either coerced through the state disciplinary gaze or
mandated through state decree. However, the drained local state itself has
limited power and can be overtaken by the local temple.
Examples of temple authority explicitly overtaking
and criticizing the state are found in Brandstater's work. In Baisha, a village
in Nanjiang, many stone stelae report that the "village government"
was a "junior partner" to the "temple government" in
building the street. (Brandstater 2013: 340) A 'scenic spot' in an undisclosed
part of a "wealthy countryside" has the following inscription below
an image of the Great Emperor of Heaven, Tiangong Dadi: "If our
contemporary society produces the phenomenon of bad officials, Tiangong is
urgently needed to control these bad officials, and turn their wickedness into
goodness". (Brandstater 2013:332) Clearly, the temple has shown that it
has power over the local state, and not the other way around. Brandstater
follows with other examples of temple discourse openly criticizing the state,
overtaking it, and moving into public spheres neglected by it.
Who is the intended audience for these
demonstrations of the power of local popular religion over the local state? The
intended audience could be the village residents, along with former residents
who maintain ties to the village, and non-villagers with family connections to
the village. These are often the main financiers of the associations running
the spaces, and the activists constituting these associations. (Brandstater
2013, Yang 2004, Chau 2009).
Furthermore, demonstrations of
the efficiency of the "temple government" over the local state could
persuade more people from surrounding region to become involved, financially
and as activists, in these spaces of popular religion. The efficiency of
communal action through popular religious institutions is contrasted with state
neglect and inefficiency in a dichotomous manner.
However, this is not the only
intended audience, nor is recruitment the only function of these temples. A lot
of these temples and deities are explicitly local, and their potential for
expansion beyond local villages and their familial ties is thus limited.
intended audience for these demonstrations are cadres from the central state.
It could be a way of gazing back, of establishing a local discourse of
legitimacy that challenges the state instead of seeking its patronage or
integration. It performs a break from state discipline, prompting state
response. To regain its lost legitimacy, the state would have to face the areas
it neglected and face its own corruption.
While local associations
leading popular religious spaces can supersede the local state, they can also
be superseded by it. The disciplinary gaze of the state creates subjects; these
are liberated subjects, however, the sense of that subjectivation and
liberation is determined by their struggle with the state as expressed in
discourse. If they supersede the state, then these subjects created are
liberated in the anti-authoritarian sense and subjects in a reflective sense. If
the state supersedes them, then these subjects are liberated in the sense of
living under the regime established in the Liberation and are subjects in the
sense of being subjected to the will of said regime. Who supersedes who is
expressed in the discourse they produce through their interactions.
In both cases, some
reterritorialization of folk religious spaces is entailed. That is because the
discourses produced by these interactions always utilizes legal and somewhat
secular terms. When temples use terms borrowed from discourses approved and
used by state, even while appropriating them, they dilute the spiritual and
ancestral discourse which drove the temple establishment and continued
existence. However, this appropriation does not constitute a wholesale
reorientation towards Beijing, nor does it recreate the local discourse in a
Beijing-approved image. Therefore, it is not state deterritorialization.
Examining the state's
relationship with spaces of popular religion through policy and discourse alone
is not entirely sufficient. This mode of
examination fails to grasp how state deterritorialization can be initiated
without direct state involvement or decree. While policy and written discourse
are my main pathways into the subject of state-popular religion relations, I
used chapter 2 to supplement these pathways with the idea of state disciplinary
gaze. This idea allows for a more complete understanding of state-popular
religion relations in general and state deterritorialization in particular. It
also provides a possible explanation on how state deterritorialization can
occur without direct state involvement.
Chapter
3: Determining State Deterritorialization
In this chapter, I will discuss how state
deterritorialization occurs through state-popular religion interactions that go
beyond registration. I will stratify the Chinese state to better understand its
actions and present the different ways in which different strata of the state
deterritorialize popular religious spaces. This chapter is a map of the
operations of power in between the state and popular religious spaces.
These are the co-legitimizing projects
mentioned in chapter 2. Some of these involve the state because state
participation was either coerced through the state disciplinary gaze or
mandated through state decree. However, it is also possible that free
cooperation did occur. State intervention is sometimes desired by the temple
community as a means to expand the temple's operations. (Qu 2020) The state
thus utilizes and cooperates with institutions whose main function would be reprehensible
according to its policy to aid in its own legitimacy.
Qu has an appealing
interpretation of this situation. He proposes dividing the state into
"upper level" and "lower level". The upper level consists
of central, provincial, and prefectural/municipal government, and the lower
level consisting of district 区, county 县, and township
镇
governments, as well as the various bureaus. (Qu 2020:47) According to Qu, the
state has differing approaches both towards different temples and on different
"levels". (Qu 2020) This interpretation adds clarity to the sometimes
ambiguous "central"/"local" divide many researchers use.
Having clarified this, I will use central/upper level interchangeably, as well
as local/lower level.
I would like to add a third tier to this
system. The Religious Affairs Bureau (recently renamed as the State
Administration of Religious Affairs) does not seem to fit neatly in either
level. Yang
seems to attribute the Religious Affairs Bureau to the "central"
state, (Yang 2004) which corresponds to the "upper level" in Qu's
division, while Qu and Chau attribute this bureau to the "lower
level" or "local" state. (Qu 2020, Chau 2009) The Religious
Affairs Bureau has organs on all levels of the state. I will analyze its
actions as existing in a "middle level", containing it and the
national associations of the five "proper religions". Relevant state
bodies with a similar structure to the RAB, such as the National Tourism
Administration, are also included in this "middle level". These three
strata allow me to see both the multiple and often conflicting institutions of
the state, without losing track of my research by chasing after which exact
body did which action.
This stratification allows me
to map the different interactions which prompt state deterritorialization.
Using this stratification, I classified the many examples of interaction
between state and folk religious institutions in rural areas to each
"level". I note here (see figure 1) the particular types of actions
who lead state deterritorialization. This stratifying of the state is coherent
with the multi-actor approach that I am trying to implement.
Less coherent with this
multi-actor approach is my insistence that a dichotomy between state and
popular religion is justified. This dichotomy is justified not only due to
popular religion's legal prohibition as feudal superstition, whose most
brutal application occurred in the cultural revolution. After the cultural
revolution, and during both the period of reform and opening up and the current
period of inner centralization and ambivalence towards the west, the state has
continually and consciously decided to maintain the grey legal status on folk
religion, exclude it from constitutional protection and promulgate stereotypes
of it being backwards and exploitative.
Furthermore, I do not want
this stratification of the state to obfuscate how the upper-level state shapes
the state's lower strata. The neglect of the local state by the central is a
condition for the success of the voluntary re-emergence of popular religious
spaces; intentioned or not, the central state created this predicament. Now
that both the stratification of the state and the dichotomy between it and
popular religion have been established, I shall demonstrate through various
examples the manners in which different levels of the state deterritorialize
folk religious spaces.
|
Level of government |
Method of
deterritorialization |
|
Upper - Central,
provincial, and prefectural/municipal governments. |
Anti-superstition campaigns,
corporatization, limited cooperation on shared interests, Recognition as "relic".
|
|
Middle – Religious
Affairs Bureau, the National Tourism Administration, and other similarly
structured bodies. |
Recognition as Daoist
or Buddhist temples, clergy integration, trainings, registration campaigns, and
recognition as 'scenic spots' |
|
Lower – District,
county, and township governments. |
Co-legitimizing projects,
corporatization, and management integration. |
Figure 1
The lower level of the state is
comprised of local cadres who need to acquire proof of political merit in order
to advance in the PRC political ladder, and its treatment of popular religion
is informed by this fact. Moreover, the upper-level state has allowed great
autonomy in the enforcement of the ban on superstitious activity, along with
the previously mentioned neglect of certain rural areas. (Chau 2009, Gooseart
and Palmer 2011) With that said, the postcolonial complex is readily apparent in
the discourses and actions of cadres on both the lower and upper level.
The postcolonial complex is
distinctly expressed in a conversation with township officials described by
Yang. These officials described popular religion as fraudulent, backwards, and
an obstacle for development. (Yang 2004) Qu provides an ambivalent account in
the Township government's involvement in the Eastern Baosheng Dadi Ciji Temple.
A local body was established to reorient temple activity towards the state's
agenda, while occasionally investigating the grassroots leader of the local
temple on its "superstitious" activity.
In spite of the postcolonial complex and the
state disciplinary gaze, patronage or indifference towards popular religious
spaces is common on the lower level of the state. While examples of the state
encouraging the activity of local temples without interfering or deterritorializing
them do exist, they are not the subject of this paper. Patronage, while
ostensibly positive, is not antithetical to deterritorialization and can
sometimes be a condition for it.
Special treatment towards and
bribery of state cadres by the temple community is common in the relationship
between the lower-level state and the temples it chooses to patron. (Chau 2009,
Qu 2020) These interactions constitute state deterritorialization because they
redirect temples resources towards the interests of state cadres. This type of
deterritorialization operates mainly through changes in spatial practices
rather than representations of space. Therefore, it does not directly dilute
ancestral or spiritual discourse.
An example of a temple being deterritorialized
while also being the subject of state patronage is found in the Heilongdawang
Temple Complex in Shaanbei. In the temple's website, under the heading "Dragon
Culture Festival" in the front page, there is a text demonstrating this.
It opens in the following sentence:
" In recent years, due to
the correct guidance of the local government and the careful organization of
the Heilongtan Cultural Management Office, the scale and content of the temple
fair have been enriched and renewed."
How has it been enriched and
renewed? The rest of the text describes a transition from an event focused on
deity worship to " a mass folk gathering integrating culture, tourism,
entertainment, and material exchanges." The dilution of folk religious
discourse is on full display here. In this text alone, several legitimizing
discourses are utilized. While this Daoist temple has some basis in deity
worship, it is now a cultural and economic institution, all thanks to the
"guidance" of the state.
The
local police, who technically have the responsibility to enforce the central
state's ban on superstitious activity, do not typically crack down on the
temple's superstitious activities. Instead, they prefer to mandate their
presence in festivals, while the temple community gives them gifts, honors them
publicly, and donates money to them. (Chau 2009:228) This is also a clear
example of the state's disciplinary gaze; it is the implicit threat of force
due to illicit activity that causes the temple to treat the local police in
such a generous manner.
The middle level of the state deterritorializes
popular religion mainly through Daoist or Buddhist reterritorialization. Some
of those temples who manage to receive recognition as Daoist or Buddhist are
required by the religion's association to give temple positions to Daoist or
Buddhist clergy. (Gooseart and palmer 2011: 347) These interventions can lead
to the transformation of the temple, from being primarily devoted to local
deities and practices to being venues of Daoist or Buddhist lay practice.
(Goossaert and Palmer 2011: 247-248) In these cases, the temples are
deterritorialized from the landscape of local spirits and lineage figures. They
are reterritorialized into either Buddhist or Daoist representational spaces
and representations of space in the very same process.
These
instances of Buddhist and Daoist reterritorializations are a part of state
deterritorialization, as these temples are driven into Buddhist and Daoist
associations by government policy and through the Religious Affairs Bureau.
However, not all Buddhist and Daoist reterritorializations of popular religious
spaces are state deterritorializations. Many temples are subsumed into Daoism
or Buddhism prior to or regardless of their official recognition as Daoist or
Buddhist. The temple of Lord Zhao in Zhejiang, for example, became a venue for
Buddhist worship in a process initiated by the activism of thirty Buddhist
women from the nearby villages. (Sun 2014: 446)
In fact, these cases of state
deterritorialization through Buddhist or Daoist reterritorialization occur only
to a particular subset of popular religious institutions. These are
institutions who have enough money and connections to successfully pursue and
maintain registration with the Religious Affairs Bureau, and with an
organizational structure that allows the temple to be transformed by external
clergy.
The National Tourism
Administration, established in the early period of reform and opening up, has a
domestic travel division which interacts with popular religious spaces by
promoting them as tourist attractions and recognizing them as 'scenic spots'.
As such, 'scenic spots' are subject to national regulations and can become
members in an official scenic spot association. (Nyri 2006) Regulations can
constitute an administrative reorientation towards Beijing, meaning that being
recognized as an official 'scenic spot' does create the possibility of state
deterritorialization. This subject has little attention in professional literature
on popular religion. I put the National Tourism Administration on the same
level as the Religious Affairs Bureau due to their similar trans local nature
and regulatory function.
The upper-level state focuses
on national interest and has a disdain for popular religion which has been a
marker of elite Chinese thought since the late imperial era. The upper-level
state, operating mainly from larger cities, also has far less interaction with
rural spaces of popular religion. Upper-level state intervention is more
indirect and tends to focus on the interests of the central state as opposed to
the merit-building efforts of particular cadres. An example of indirect
upper-level state intervention is found, again, in the Eastern Baosheng Dadi
Ciji temple in Fujian.
In 1999 talks between on the establishment of
the "National-Level Taiwanese Investment Zone" between the PRC and
Taiwan's organizations addressing cross-state relations ceased. Qu connects
this with event with a change that occurred in the district government of Fujian
when the Provincial Taiwan Affairs Office appointed a temporary official as the
deputy district governor of Haiceng. (Qu 2020:452) Following this, several
changes were made in state-temple relations, causing the temple to
administratively orient itself to the goals of the central government. While Qu
analyzes these changes in the state's relationship with the Eastern Baosheng
Dadi Ciji temple as intervention by the lower-level district government, I
think they are better understood as indirect intervention by a provincial,
upper-level body.
Following this change in state
leadership, the temple's leadership was restructured to align with the district
government's interests. Tourism Investment Limited, a company controlled by the
district government, was brought in to manage the tourist operations of the
temple through the establishment of a "Scenic Spot Management
Office". The temple committee's leadership was initially replaced, with
the committee choosing a leader in accordance with the recommendation of a
district official, before being restructured, with the director of Tourism
Investment Limited becoming the head of the committee through appointment by
the district government.
Consequently, significant
changes were made to the temple's spatial practices, including a new festival
designed to appeal to overseas Chinese and new deity processions in Taiwanese
territory. Internally, new regulations changed the focus of day-to-day
operations towards assisting the government in cross strait relations. While
the temple community managed to resist attempts to appropriate and control the
temple's finances, there is an overall process of state deterritorialization,
with local resistance only decreasing the degree of deterritorialization by
delimiting the donations of pilgrims as their own communal property.
These projects differ from the
co-legitimizing projects that characterize the lower-level state because their
purpose isn’t providing services to the citizenry or legitimizing the state or
temple. Rather, their goal was the promotion of cross-strait relations,
promoting the interests of the upper-level state. Moreover, while the
co-legitimizing projects typically occur due to a lack of state resources,
these projects seem to enjoy a wealth of state resources. They are alike,
however, in that they are both used for the merit-building efforts of lower-level
state cadres. In the process of the Eastern temple's corporatization, we see
that the upper-level state created a strong incentive for the lower-level state
to use the temple to promote cross-strait relations. They did so indirectly,
through a small change in the district government's leadership.
The upper-level state
intervenes less frequently and directly than the lower level, but it does so
with more institutional backing and resources. With that said, it could be that
it only seems to me that the upper-level state intervenes less frequently
because the scope of this paper is limited to rural areas, who on the whole
have less reason to interact with the upper-level state.
Some temples have been built
entirely by the decree of state cadres on both the upper and lower level,
attempting arouse a popular religious revival to promote tourism and relations
with other Chinese polities. The most noteworthy and successful religious
revival of this sort occurred in Jinhua municipality in Zhejiang by municipal, I.e.,
upper-level, state cadres. (Sun 2014) These temples were dedicated to a deity
whose worship is widespread in Hong-Kong and was supposedly born in the Jinhua
region.
These state-led attempts at religious revival are
not state deterritorialization. There was not a transformation of a previously
existing spaces or the discourse they produced to a state approved form, and no
administrative reorientation towards Beijing. While this is not state
deterritorialization, this is a case of the state appropriating folk religious
figures to serve its own interests.
The relevant insight to be
gained both from the involvement of the upper-level state in Xiamen and in
Jinhua is that popular religion can be protected and promoted by the central
state as a means of promoting relations with other Chinese polities. It seems
that a reunified China is a more essential part of the vision of modern China
than a superstition-free China is.
The lower-level state and the
upper-level state intervene and deterritorialize in similar ways, focusing on
aligning spatial practices with their interests. The lower-level state
intervenes more frequently and on a larger range of projects. Its limited
resources both propel its appropriation of temples resources and limit the
lower-level state's ability to intervene in temple matters. These interventions
can lead to state deterritorialization, or, when state power proves
insufficient, to the dilution of folk religious discourse without the state's
centrality being reaffirmed in either spatial practices or representations of
space in discourse produced by folk religious spaces.
While state
deterritorialization is not as destructive as republican and Mao-era
reappropriations of space, it has the potential of far deeper and longer
lasting impact. Popular religion is incongruent with the conception of
modernity informed by the post-colonial complex; however, the PRC state has
failed to destroy it. In the face of this failure, the PRC has seemingly
decided to either ignore popular religion or transform it to something modern:
heritage sites, temples of proper religion, tourist destinations, etc. There is
no uniform reaction of popular religious spaces to this policy, however, negotiation
and compromise are common. The state itself also promotes popular religion when
it is used to fill the gaps in the state's resources and abilities – either in
providing services in rural areas or in promoting relations with overseas
Chinese. The PRC's vision of a modern state values unity and efficiency above a
lack of superstition.
Conclusion
The
temple in charge of road construction in Baisha, for example, was not
deterritorialized in spite of its apparent success, because the lower-level
state who interacted with it was not powerful enough to deterritorialize it.
Therefore, the stelae commemorating the roads noted the village government as a
"junior partner" to the temple government. (Brandstater 2013) That is
contrasted with the deterritorialization of the successful Heilongdawang temple
in Shaanbei. This temple provided services and hospitality to lower-level state
cadres and ostensibly complied with regulations enforced by the middle-level
state.
A
concept that reverberated in my mind throughout the writing of this paper was
the mathematical concept of different types of infinities. While there is an
infinity of whole numbers (1,2,3, etc.) there is also an infinity of numbers
between 0 and 1 (1/2, 1/3, 1/4, etc.). A similar phenomenon occurred when
researching state-popular religion relations in China. There seems to be near
infinite research to be had on middle or lower-level state relations with folk
religious temples alone. And, while I chose to focus on the PRC's non-minority
provinces as a whole, a paper just as long and deep could have been written on
this subject in a single province.
Due to the seemingly infinite
breadth of possible research, I had to consciously impose some restrictions on
myself, such as focusing on rural areas and excluding salvationist cults. This
paper also reflects, inevitably, the available professional literature on the
subject, further limiting its possible scope. While there is a lot of
literature on spatial interactions between the PRC state and popular religion,
seemingly none of it is in relation to tourism. However, the literature I came
upon when writing this paper suggests that this subject is prominent in
state-temple relations. The interplay between the promotion of tourism and folk
religion is something that requires further inquiry.
Geertz's words often came to
mind when I tried to find some uniformity in the interactions between state and
popular religion. There was a family resemblance, a series of overlapping
similarities. However, there was no universal set of policies dictating or
being dictated by state interactions with popular religious spaces. There were
two similarities tat overlapped in all state interaction with popular religious
spaces that are not prohibited outright:
1)
The PRC state promotes or patrons popular
religious organizations which fill its own inadequacies.
2)
The PRC state attempts
to transform these popular religious spaces into sites that are more fitting
with the PRC's vision of modernity.
Furthermore, in the cases I
encountered while writing this paper, three factors seemed to inform all state
policy regarding folk religious spaces. These factors are material conditions,
state interests and the postcolonial complex. While each factor is more
prominent in a different level of the state, all are seemingly ever-present. The
postcolonial complex was most apparent in the upper and lower levels of the
state, material conditions clearly informed the drained lower-level state, and
state interests, in particular in regard to relations with other Chinese
polities, most informed the upper-level state. The middle level of the state
could be seen as itself a consequence of the postcolonial complex; an attempt
to create a clearly defined religious sphere, which includes western religions,
as part of a modern society.
Many similarities between state responses
further overlap with what Brook called "the regulatory posture". It
is correct to assert that the regulatory posture has been taken by the state in
regard to the five proper religions, and thereby in regard to any popular
religion temples who were granted membership in official Buddhist or Daoist
associations. The middle level of the state can unequivocally be said to take
the regulatory posture, however, that is because it is comprised of regulatory
bodies. State posture when dealing with popular religion is not universally regulatory.
As Qu rightfully claimed, state posture om popular religion varies between
regulatory, prohibition, patronage, and indifference. It varies both from
temple to temple and between the lower and upper levels of the state. (Qu 2020)
In the above paper, I mapped
the PRC state's relations with spaces of popular religion in the post-Mao eras.
I showed the differences in approach and in policy between the different strata
of the PRC state and recognized the universal threads in this complicated set
of relationships. I continued the conversation started by "Spatial
Struggles" and expanded its temporal and spatial scope while adding
further nuance in my descriptions of state-popular religion relations. I used
state deterritorialization and focused on rural non-minority areas to anchor my
inquiry. I demonstrated how state deterritorialization is used to transform
folk religious sites and promote the goals of state actors through folk
religious sites.
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