Sébastien Billioud
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- August 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197529133
- eISBN:
- 9780197529164
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197529133.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, World Religions
Chapter 6 continues to address the issue of tension, but the focus turns to today’s Hong Kong and the People’s Republic. In Hong Kong, the affirmation of a Confucian identity is useful both to ...
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Chapter 6 continues to address the issue of tension, but the focus turns to today’s Hong Kong and the People’s Republic. In Hong Kong, the affirmation of a Confucian identity is useful both to attract people to Yiguandao’s places of worship (and convert some of them), and to establish links with the authorities. In the People’s Republic, Confucianism is at the core of Yiguandao’s strategy to smoothly re-establish itself and defuse tensions that remain important. Because of the current Confucian revival, the overall context is favorable and interactions are now many, especially in the educational realm, between the Yiguandao and popular Confucian groups. But even more striking is the fact that in some cases Chinese authorities go as far as to cooperate with the Yiguandao for the promotion of traditional (and especially Confucian) culture and values such as filial piety.Less
Chapter 6 continues to address the issue of tension, but the focus turns to today’s Hong Kong and the People’s Republic. In Hong Kong, the affirmation of a Confucian identity is useful both to attract people to Yiguandao’s places of worship (and convert some of them), and to establish links with the authorities. In the People’s Republic, Confucianism is at the core of Yiguandao’s strategy to smoothly re-establish itself and defuse tensions that remain important. Because of the current Confucian revival, the overall context is favorable and interactions are now many, especially in the educational realm, between the Yiguandao and popular Confucian groups. But even more striking is the fact that in some cases Chinese authorities go as far as to cooperate with the Yiguandao for the promotion of traditional (and especially Confucian) culture and values such as filial piety.
Sebastien Billioud and Joel Thoraval
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780190258139
- eISBN:
- 9780190258160
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190258139.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion in the Ancient World
Based on a decade of fieldwork and a cross-disciplinary approach (anthropology, sociology, history), this book studies the popular revival of Confucianism that has taken place in China since the ...
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Based on a decade of fieldwork and a cross-disciplinary approach (anthropology, sociology, history), this book studies the popular revival of Confucianism that has taken place in China since the beginning of the twenty-first century. It does not primarily focus on intellectual or normative discourses but on the reappropriation and reinvention of popular practices in society. After a long twentieth century, during which Confucianism was often considered as ousted from history or confined to philosophical speculations, this book explores the new relations between the sage and the people in realms such as education, self-cultivation, religion, rituals, and politics. Empirically analyzing cases and narratives of activists involved in this “revival,” it attempts to understand their motivations, aspirations, difficulties, and achievements, as well as their ambiguous relation to Chinese politics. The Confucian revival is analyzed within the broader context of emerging challenges to great modernization narratives that prevailed throughout the twentieth century. Finally, by means of a comparison between state cults carried out in both Mainland China and Taiwan, the book discusses the articulation of the political and the religious and, beyond that, the contemporary fate of the Chinese cosmological tradition.Less
Based on a decade of fieldwork and a cross-disciplinary approach (anthropology, sociology, history), this book studies the popular revival of Confucianism that has taken place in China since the beginning of the twenty-first century. It does not primarily focus on intellectual or normative discourses but on the reappropriation and reinvention of popular practices in society. After a long twentieth century, during which Confucianism was often considered as ousted from history or confined to philosophical speculations, this book explores the new relations between the sage and the people in realms such as education, self-cultivation, religion, rituals, and politics. Empirically analyzing cases and narratives of activists involved in this “revival,” it attempts to understand their motivations, aspirations, difficulties, and achievements, as well as their ambiguous relation to Chinese politics. The Confucian revival is analyzed within the broader context of emerging challenges to great modernization narratives that prevailed throughout the twentieth century. Finally, by means of a comparison between state cults carried out in both Mainland China and Taiwan, the book discusses the articulation of the political and the religious and, beyond that, the contemporary fate of the Chinese cosmological tradition.
