(Re)locating sacredness in Shanghai

Abstract

Shanghai is a metropolis that sees itself as the cradle of Chinese ‘modernity’, the birthplace of the revolutionary movement, and a hub of cultural and religious diversity – a multilayered identity enshrined in a number of ‘sacred spaces’. This article focuses on the way sacredness continues to be engineered in today’s Shanghai, mapping the religious landscape through the exploration of four dimensions – namely, ‘landmarks’, ‘compounds’, ‘privacy’, and ‘waterways’. The article assesses the role played by churches, temples, and mosques, by home and working spaces, by waterways and virtual networks, in the shaping of an urban sacred space satisfying a variety of needs and traditions while being symbolically organized into a consistent territory. In the context of a religiously vibrant global city, locating ‘sacredness’ means understanding it as a process of ceaseless dislocation and relocation.

Rituals, Spacetime and Family in a “Native” Community of North Shanghai

“…Jiaren Chen has conducted observation and interviews on the site from 2015 to 2019 continuously. Benoît Vermander has accompanied this research during the same period while conducting fieldwork in adjacent parts of Shanghai and developing questions and tools that led to the publication of (Hingley et al 2016 andVermander et al 2018) prior to the present article. 7 Rudolph (2008) offers an excellent study on the way so-called "retraditionalizing" rituals can be read as an adaptative strategy devised by members of groups subject to rapid and challenging transformations.…”

Introduction

“…Au niveau conceptuel, elle souligne que les deux univers interagissent, se chevauchent, entrent en conflit sur le sens et l’usage de l’espace et qu’il est temps de rendre compte de cette mutabilité. Dans ses travaux sur les rituels, en particulier ceux de la religion chinoise (Kiong et Kong, 2000 : 31, 35, 38), elle montre comment le religieux a dû s’adapter à la modernité, en repensant et en réinventant l’espace sacré des rites funéraires traditionnels en ville, et le rôle que l’État a joué dans ce processus (voir aussi Hingley et al, 2016).…”

“…On the conceptual level, she stressed that the two universes interacted, overlapped and entered into conflict on the sense and use of space and that it was time to provide an account of that mutability. In her work on rituals, particularly those of Chinese religion (Kiong and Kong, 2000: 31, 35, 38), she showed how the religious has had to adapt itself to modernity, in rethinking and reinventing the sacred space of traditional funerary rites in the city, and the role the State played in that process (see also Hingley et al, 2016).…”