ausblenden:
Schlagwörter:
bureaucratization, China, governance, legibility, new technology, religion,secularism, standardization, surveillance, urbanization
Zusammenfassung:
This article explores critical shifts in the governance of religion amid massive urbanizationand technological advances in contemporary China. Since the turn of the millennium,along with rapid urban transformation, the Chinese state has greatly expanded itsreach into and surveillance of religious communities. At the same time, tensionsbetween state initiatives and religious communities have come to the forefront of publicattention. So far, scholarly attention has mostly focused on the repression of religious com-munities, especially Christians. The goal of this article is to highlight broader transitionsin the ways religion is governed in China and to reflect on how these transitions should beunderstood alongside the government’s social and political agendas. The advancement oftechnologies and the extension of the bureaucratic system to maintain control of a rapidlyurbanizing society, I argue, have brought about a“technological turn”of secularism inChina, which will have a far-reaching impact on religious life.
