Morality, Gift and Market: Communal Temple Restoration in Southwest China

Abstract

This paper analyses a temple restoration initiative during a state-funded project to attract scattered villagers back to their old village centre in southwest China. While state agents who implemented the project created a public space to bring ‘civilisation’ to the ‘backward’ peasants, the villagers appropriated the project by restoring an old temple, which immediately became the venue for a variety of communal events. The paper argues that the temple restoration manifested the grassroots idea of moral life, which rests upon proper reciprocities between humans and the gods, as well as among humans in reference to the gods. This emphasis on gift relations explains why villagers prefer the temple for public events over the space of civilisation created by the state in its developmentalist project.

Keywords:

• Temple Restoration
• Gift Relation
• Religious Market Theory
• Southwest China

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Adam Chau, Stephan Feuchtwang, Michael Feener, Aga Zuoshi and two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Funding

This work was supported by Chinese Universities Scientific Fund (grant number 2012RC027).

Notes

[1] For a critical assessment of rational choice theory and religious market model, see Peter van der Veer (2012).

[2] The parents of a new couple experience intense pressure to build a new house for them. The big-family ideal, Francis Hsu (1948) argues, has long given way to an individualisation desire in contemporary China (Yan 2009).

[3] Thanks to Adam Chau for this translation.

[4] Literally, it means ‘human feelings and moral rules’.

Additional information

Funding

Funding: This work was supported by Chinese Universities Scientific Fund (grant number 2012RC027).