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Boston University OpenBU http://open.bu.edu Theses & Dissertations Boston University Theses & Dissertations 2020 Sidestepping secularism: performance and imagination in Buddhist temple-scapes in contemporary China https://hdl.handle.net/2144/39865 Boston University BOSTON UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Dissertation SIDESTEPPING SECULARISM: PERFORMANCE AND IMAGINATION IN BUDDHIST TEMPLE-SCAPES IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA by YANG SHEN B.A., Zhejiang University, 2011 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2020 © 2020 by YANG SHEN All rights reserved Approved by First Reader _________________________________________________________ Robert P. Weller, Ph.D. Professor of Anthropology Second Reader _________________________________________________________ Adam B. Seligman, Ph.D. Professor of Religion Third Reader _________________________________________________________ Kimberly Arkin, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Anthropology A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. -Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations Through an adventure filled with hardship and exploration, Xiao Ma discovered time’s most basic truth, one that had been obstructed by his eyes: seeing was not believing. If he had been born blind, or if he had never seen that damned old desk clock, he would never have considered time to be round. The ticks had not been imprisoned, not ever. Not being able to see is a limitation; so is being able to see. - Bi Feiyu, Massage DEDICATION I would like to dedicate this work to my families: mom 张建方 , dad 沈明安, and bro 沈恒毅, for being my anchor in love and life. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The debts I have incurred and the gifts I have received over my years of post- graduate training are astonishing. I am humbled by the realization that the following list is doomed to be inexhaustive; and I must beg time in coming years to adequately respond to all those who have liberally supported and nourished my inquiries. The first person I must thank is my main advisor, Robert Weller. Years ago, before I had any idea of the subjects I would be discussing now, Rob took me into the world of anthropology and opened to me, for the first time in my life, the many universes of Chinese religions. Standing by me—a once-reckless student, he has read and commented on numerous inchoate passages since my first semester in graduate school, while encouraging me to keep faith in the project and to keep pressing it forward. Being an advisor in our discipline commits a teacher to such long-term responsibilities, and I am blessed to have Rob as my mentor. My “rabbi,” Adam Seligman, shaped my quest decisively by welcoming my inquiries and sharing with me his unfathomable insights through seminars, comments, conversations, and numerous small talks at CEDAR (Communities Engaging with Difference and Religion) summer schools – the academy on the road. An engaged social theorist, Adam shows me how thoughts, writings, and actions can build on one another with crystal clarity. I am also extremely grateful for the course that Adam and Rob taught together, the books they wrote together, and their inspiring collaboration over a span of many years. Without their support and guidance, my pursuit of ideas would have been futile. I will always be indebted to them for their vi idea of ritual, their commitment to scholarship, and their generosity in making time and space for students to grow into intellectuals and think within complex histories. I am privileged to have supervision from Kimberly Arkin, who talked me through messy thoughts as I struggled to put them on paper, and who kept me anthropologically oriented and striving for lucidity. A cutting-edge anthropologist, Kimberly changed the trajectory of this thesis by her wise observation, “Why not begin with the ethnographic puzzles that you really don’t understand?” I owe her much gratitude for her patience, her care, and her wise insistence that I stay aligned with questions that I must answer but tend to evade. Parker Shipton and Ayşe Parla likewise are lighthouses for my journey in anthropology. I am most grateful to them for joining my committee as readers. Parker taught my first class in graduate school, and I still return to the notes taken in his classes; pages full of mind-refreshing questions that spring from Parker like a fountain. I am thankful for his willingness to share insightful questions that are life-long gifts and for chairing the committee during my defense. Over the last miles of my graduate education, I was honored by Ayşe’s generosity in giving me the opportunity to benefit from her sharp mind, her empathetic reading, and her lively spirit. I am indebted to her for her trust in me and for her constructive comments which helped me better position my thesis. Thank you, Kimberly, Parker, and Ayşe for helping me prepare the project for the next stage. My graduate study and dissertation research was funded by a Dean’s Fellowship and a Long-term Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship from the Graduate School of Arts at Boston University, Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants (Cultural vii Anthropology) from the National Science Foundation, and a Dissertation Fellowship in the Global Religion Research Initiative (GRRI) from The University of Notre Dame and the Templeton Religion Trust of Nassau. I am most grateful that my Department of Anthropology has harbored me throughout the years (with Kathy, Mark, Martin, Veronica, and Nicholas helping to make life and study simple and easy) and that, during various stages of my study and research, professors Robert Hefner, Matt Cartmill, Kaye Brown, and Merav Shohet shared their scholarship and golden insights with me. In FRED, my department’s dissertation support group, I benefitted greatly from the faculty engagement of Rob Weller, Charles Lindholm, and Adam Kuper, and am honored to have the company of Ekaterina Anderson, Feyza Burak Adli, Michel Chambon, Erica Larson, Martha Lagace, Noha Roushdy, and others who have read and commented extensively on the earliest drafts of the dissertation. Heartfelt thanks also go to my cohorts and fellow graduate students in the department whose friendship has made the journey enjoyable. In particular, I wish to thank Shipeng Guo, and, in the Boston area, Mengqi Wang, Xingyi Wang, and Fangsheng Zhu for helping me survive the early grad school years and for supporting me at almost every transitional juncture in a post- graduate life. Writing a dissertation in the late 2010s is advantaged in terms of long-distance transportation and communication. I am privileged that Gareth Fisher, Peter Van der Veer, Fred Klaits, Der-Ruey Yang, Daniel Murray, Jessica Zu, Alice Yeh, Keping Wu, Noga Ganany, and others took the time to read sections and drafts of the manuscript carefully in spite of my awkward writing during the work-in-progress. Their encouragement and viii criticism improved every aspect of the thesis’s argument and organization. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to them, as well as to friends and colleagues near and far, especially Lucia Liu, Chun-yi Sum, Bin Song, Geng Li, Yves Vendé, Shuting Zhuang, Yukun Zeng, Michael Degani, Jiayi Zhu, Jin Li, Wenjie Zhang, Zhiying Ma, Xiao Ke, Qilin Yang, Christian Engley and others, for their written feedback on my project developments along the way. Jessica Zu has been a comrade and writing partner since we met at AAR. I am thankful for her enormous gift of empathy through our writing exchanges as well as our semi-regular video meetings. Numerous other friends, colleagues, and teachers offered engaging conversations here and there, helping me clarify my project and target. I regret that these occasions are too numerous to enumerate here, but I hope to acknowledge that all were illuminating and many were vital. This includes, for example, a brief meeting with Biao Xiang at the end of my fieldwork, when he instantly spotted a false premise which had been misleading my observation and narrative. I am tremendously grateful to everyone who has given thought to my project. During my writing, I have been fortunate to be surrounded by colleagues, teachers, and friends from many disciplines who broaden my horizons and illuminate the broader relevance of my disciplinary research through lively conversations. I thank the Colloquium on Religion and World Affairs, organized by the Institute on Culture, Religion & World Affairs (CURA) at Boston University, for granting me a fellowship to exchange research with fellows working on cutting-edge topics in religion. At the University of Chicago, the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge greatly nourished my work by sponsoring me with a visiting affiliation and a working space in ix the institute, and by bringing me into proximity with brilliant minds pursuing innovative projects in diverse fields. Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer and Macol Cerda lent their wisdom and perspicacity to this project in far-reaching ways. I cannot say enough thank you for their trust and support. In Chicago, special thanks also go to Angie Heo for introducing me to the Religion and the Human Sciences workshop at the University of Chicago Divinity School, to Alireza Doostdar for kindly engaging with my paper in the workshop, and to William Mazzarella for connecting me to the anthropology department’s events. Informal peer study groups were animating; in particular, I would like to thank Yu Ji for organizing bi-weekly cross-disciplinary salons and Lixin Zheng for co-organizing a Chinese Religions reading group. In her capacity as a rising Chinese Religions chaplain, Lixin led HUI (Human Undefined Initiatives, pronounced “huì” in Mandarin) and helped re-position me, as an anthropologist of religion, to consider and explore new arenas for relating academic expertise to social services.

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