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Urban Temples and Ritual Affects: Communal Festivals, Local Gods, and Development Plans in Modern Xiamen

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Urban Temples and Ritual Affects: Communal Festivals, Local Gods, and Development Plans in Modern Xiamen URBAN TEMPLES AND RITUAL AFFECTS: COMMUNAL FESTIVALS, LOCAL GODS, AND DEVELOPMENT PLANS IN MODERN XIAMEN by Daniel M. Murray A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy McGill University Department of East Asian Studies Montreal, Quebec, Canada September 2019 Copyright © Daniel M. Murray, 2019 Abstract This dissertation presents the first comprehensive study of communal religion in urban China based on fieldwork conducted in and around Xiamen city, a Special Economic Zone in Fujian province in the southeast of the country. The project analyzes the modern historic development in the city in relation to temples and urban infrastructure and considers the ways in which contemporary ritual events and temple organizing influence city life through different forms of spatial organization and bodily sensation. It shows the complex interaction between urban temple devotees, Daoist priests, Buddhist monastics, opera performers, and a variety of other religious performers who circulate throughout the region. Despite the destructive role urban development had on temples throughout the twentieth century, in the past thirty years the reconstruction of temples has allowed neighborhoods to organize development projects and charitable works throughout the city that would otherwise not have existed. These projects are closely connected to the perception of a god’s spiritual efficacy and the experience of ritual events, which I analyze in terms of the collective affective atmospheres, individual emotional experiences, and conscious perceptions in order to present ritual as a productive social force. Rather than suggesting a decline in religious practice due to urban development and the increasing role of global capital in everyday life, I argue that rituals, as bodily and largely communal practices, hold affective capacities that have the potential to influence how people act, think, and live in the city Following the first introductory chapter, the second chapter presents the wider religious landscape of the city. Chapter three then gives a historical analysis of spatial development and infrastructure in modern Xiamen, focusing on the changing roles that temples have played in city life since the 1920s. Chapter four moves to the contemporary period to discuss different forms of neighborhoods and the relation between local organizing of charitable and infrastructure projects and the spiritual efficacy of their temple. Chapter five presents a model for conceiving of Chinese religions in terms of the circulation of ritual technologies as a way to consider the multiplicity of practices that arrange in the formation of ritual events. Chapter six analyzes the movements of urban temple devotees to the founding temples of cults in rural areas and the atmospheres of three major ritual celebrations. Finally, chapter seven addresses how people think religion more consciously and the changing language used to present local rituals, with an emphasis on the category of “intangible cultural heritage, to consider the relationship between such discourses and ritual practice. Résumé Cette dissertation présente la première étude approfondie de la religion communale dans la Chine urbaine basée sur un travail sur le terrain effectué à l’intérieur et autour de la ville de Xiamen, une zone économique spéciale de la province du Fujian au sud-ouest du pays. Le projet analyse le développement historique moderne dans la ville en lien avec les temples et les infrastructures urbaines et considère de quelles manières les événements rituels contemporains et l’organization des temples influencent la vie urbaine au travers de différentes formes d’organization spatiales et de sensations corporelles. Au lieu de suggérer un déclin dans la pratique religieuse dû au développement planifié par l’état et au rôle grandissant des capitaux mondiaux dans la vie de tous les jours, je soutiens que les rituels, en tant que pratiques largement ii communautaires et corporelles, contiennent des capacités affectives qui détiennent le potentiel d’influencer comment les gens agissent, pensent et vivent dans la ville. Suivant l’introduction du premier chapitre, le deuxième chapitre présente le paysage religieux au sens large de la ville. Le troisième chapitre présente une analyse historique du développement spatial et des infrastructures dans le Xiamen moderne, plus précisément sur le rôle changeant que les temples ont joués dans la vie urbaine depuis les années 1920. Le quatrième chapitre se déplace vers la période contemporaine afin de discuter des différentes formes de quartiers et de la relation entre l’organization locale de charités, des projets d’infrastructures et de l’efficacité spirituelle de leur temples. Le cinquième chapitre présente un modèle pour concevoir les religions chinoises en termes de circulation de technologies rituelles comme façon d’envisager la multiplicité des pratiques qui organisent la formation des événements rituels. Le chapitre six analyse le mouvement des dévots des temples urbains vers les temples fondateurs de cultes dans les régions rurales et l’atmosphère de trois célébrations rituelles majeures. Finalement, le septième chapitre aborde comment les gens pensent la religion de manière plus consciente et le langage utilisé pour présenter les rituels locaux, avec une emphase sur la catégorie de “l’intangible héritage culturel,” afin de considérer la relation entre ces discours et la pratique rituelle. iii Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the kindness and generosity of the people I met in southern Fujian. I am indebted to them for sharing their time and experiences with me and inviting me to join in their traditions. I am also grateful for the guidance and support of my supervisor Kenneth Dean, as well as my defence committee members and external reviewer: Tom Lamarre, Robin Yates, Sarah Moser, Rongdao Lai, and Gareth Fisher. I also thank my other professors during my time at McGill: Andrea Pinkney, Victor Hori, and Kristin Norget. James Miller, my MA supervisor, also deserves credit for his numerous reference letters and continued encouragement, as well as Lee Dian Rainey, my undergraduate professor, for telling me to go to Taiwan and study Chinese in the first place. My many wonderful Chinese teachers at National Taiwan Normal University and Sichuan University will likely never read this, but I am forever indebted to them for their efforts. During my time in China, I was hosted by the history department at Xiamen University and thank Profs. Liu Yonghua, Zheng Zhenman, and Zheng Li for their assistance while there. Zhang Lijuan and Lin Guopin at Fujian Normal University were also supportive and invited me to participate in a workshop on Daoist and local culture during my research. Huang Zhiyi and Li Zhiyong from The Xiamen Folklore Society were very helpful contacts from outside the academic world who invited me to participate in a workshop on Gulangyu local culture. I received helpful and detailed feedback on parts of this dissertation from Shen Yang at Boston University and am lucky to know someone willing to read often messy early drafts. Thanks to Annie Harrisson for translating the abstract into French. I also must thank all my colleagues and friends who read my various scholarship and conference proposals, chapter drafts, organized conference panels together, discussed research, received my boxes of books from China, or just shared their insights, aspirations, and frustrations with me: Avi Darshani, Huang Wenyi, Joseph Carew, Memo Ruiz Stovel, Jack Bandy, Jacob Tischer, Ronald Po, Xie Shengjin, Nhu Truong, and Kevin Buckelew. Thanks also to my parents who managed to visit me in Xiamen during fieldwork and have always been supportive of whatever I’m doing. Some theoretical ideas that I develop further in chapter five were first presented at the 2017 Daoist Studies conference at the University of Paris at Nanterre (thanks to Wang Huayan, Guillaume Dutournier, Lei Yang, and Vincent Goossaert for allowing me to join their "Urban temples between Daoism and local cults" panel at the conference) and published as “The City God Returns: Organised and Contagious Networks at the Xiamen City God Temple" in the Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology (2018). Thanks also of the board of the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions for inviting me to participate in the emerging scholarship roundtable during the 2017 meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Boston and accepting the panel, “What is a Temple,” that I was apart of for the 2018 American Academy of Religion in Denver. I received funding from the McGill Graduate Excellence Award, Confucius New China Studies Joint Research PhD Fellowship, and Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarships Program Doctoral Scholarships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 767-2014-1552]. iv Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................ viii List of Tables ...............................................................................................................................................
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