Wired: The Role of Infrastructure in the Buddhist Revival in Contemporary China and Beoynd

Project Information

WIRED

Grant agreement ID: 842092

DOI

10.3030/842092

Project closed

EC signature date 15 April 2019

Start date 1 September 2019

End date 1 July 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 207 312,00

EU contribution

€ 207 312,00

Coordinated by

KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - WIRED (Wired: The Role of Infrastructure in the Buddhist Revival in Contemporary China and Beoynd)

Reporting period: 2019-09-01 to 2021-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The project attempts to address the role of infrastructural development in religious revivalism by focusing on the recent Buddhist revival in China and in transnational contexts related to China’s infrastructural expansion in the global south. In Post-Mao China, large-scale infrastructural projects are far from being fixed and stable material forms and structures; instead, they represent inherently heterogeneous, unstable, diversified relations and interactions across various life worlds. The project offers powerful empirical evidence for how material forms deeply shape and are shaped by human actions and interactions, and ways of living and believing.

As an anthropological project, it produces invaluable knowledge of people and groups that have been given little previous attention. Drawing from first-hand experiences in China and Namibia (also Madagascar and more), I address how Buddhism is evolving in various countries in Africa, as well as how Chinese spiritual investments are being carried out outside of China and outside of traditional Chinese diasporic societies in Asia. The project also provides empirical evidence about the flows of people, ideas, resources, and money circulating at the transcontinental level. It provides an opportunity to reassess the dichotomous framework of immaterial/material, spirit/matter, and human/nature that have so extensively dominated conventional frameworks of modern scientific inquiries.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project has been carried out in three phases. The total duration of the project was 24 months, but due to the pandemic, I spent 10 of those months as a half-time researcher, making the total length of the project 34 months long. Because I was unable to conduct the essential field research originally proposed, I revised and updated my field sites, while retaining the original aim of the project—which was to address the role of infrastructural development in religious revivalism in China and its transnational contexts. The amended proposal has been approved and both the Ethical Approval of the Research Project and the Data Protection Impact Assessment have been updated and approved by the UCPH.

For the first phase of the project, I conducted intensive fieldwork in China (months 1–4) and later in Namibia (months 24–29, as a half-time researcher). The second part of the field work had to be postponed until the final months of the fellowship because of the pandemic lockdown. (A total of seven months of full-time field research was executed per the Grant Agreement.) The second phase (months 5–23) was dedicated to processing collected data, participating in bi-weekly reading group at CCBS, teaching activities at UCPH, holding a PhD workshop and MA seminars, uploading blog posts, and developing a conceptual framework for a book manuscript and journal articles. The final phase (months 33–34) was devoted to writing up research papers, organizing and hosting a workshop, and finalizing a special issue for an academic journal. The results of the project have been and will continuously be disseminated in various formats such as scholarly publications and blog posts.

Two peer-reviewed articles are forthcoming: one will appear in a special issue of the Journal of Religious Ethics and the other will appear in the Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies. Both articles will also be available as Open Access articles. The EU/MSCA will be acknowledged as the funding body for any publications and dissemination activities related to the project.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Due to the unforeseen pandemic lockdown, the second part of the field work had to be revised, and as a result, some aspects of the original proposal also required alteration. However, the unexpected interruption led to a breakthrough opportunity to expand the scope of my project to look at transcontinental religious and infrastructural projects across Asia and Africa.

Because the second part of the field research was only conducted during the last months of the fellowship, most of the major outcomes of the project will appear in various venues in the next few years to follow. Since the formal end of the fellowship, I have continued with and expanded my field research in Africa—for example, in the months from July to September 2022, I am in Madagascar working as a volunteer in a Chinese Buddhist school—and expect to collect sufficient data for the second book project within a year. Progress on the book proposal and manuscript will be reported in the “continuing report” section in the EU Portal.

The book will provide rich ethnographic data and address the issues of infrastructure, religious revivalism, education, and development in the context of increasing Sino-African relationships. In the long term, I anticipate the book will stimulate further research and discussion regarding the issues of global inequality and racism, as well as neocolonialism.

A Chinese Speaking Competition held in Namibia