Re-enchanting Modernity

“Mayfair Yang's wonderful ethnography reveals an alternative ‘ritual economy’ under the dizzying churn of market relations in China. It is attuned to giving, reciprocity, and the materialization of a social and spiritual life. While committed to wealth-making, the people of Wenzhou are by the same token committed to the health of their communal lives.” - Prasenjit Duara, Duke University

“Mayfair Yang's compelling account of the re-enchantment of everyday life in Wenzhou, China, reveals lines of flight through which re-ritualization reworks capitalist accumulation to produce new communal relations. A must-read for anyone interested in alternative possibilities for China's future.” - Kenneth Dean, Raffles Professor of Humanities, National University of Singapore

"An engaging, diachronic portrayal of recent religious developments… I strongly recommend it to readers interested in these topics, and I would also recommend sections of it for certain graduate and advanced undergraduate classes on Buddhism." - Douglas Gildow, H-Buddhism, H-Net Reviews

"Re-enchanting Modernity clearly deserves recognition for its presentation of salient ethnographic data combined with innovated inquires, all of which calls our attention to the resilience of Chinese religious beliefs and practices while adapting to the challenges of the modern era. . . . Yang's findings should inspire future generations of scholars to undertake further ethnographic research on this vitally important topic." - Paul R. Katz, Review of Religion and Chinese Society

"Re-enchanting Modernity is a terrific study of the relationship between religion, state, and civil society in post-Mao China. . . . A must-read." - Jules Zhao Liu, China Review International

"Re-enchanting Modernity presents a very intriguing and in-depth ethnographic investigation of religion and ritual in modern China." - Yujie Zhu, Journal of Anthropological Research

"Yang’s book is an excellent contribution to a growing body of scholarship examining post-Mao China’s religious resurgences and the broader conditions under which modernity brings about the (re)production of new and older forms of enchantment. I also find the book highly relevant and refreshing in providing insight into some of the complexities of rural China’s emerging religious civil society in ways that defy and push back against the current resurgence of Orientalism in the 'liberal' West with respect to 'illiberal' China." - Micah F. Morton, Anthropos

"This book contains some of the most compelling analyses of Chinese society I have read, and it will continue to nourish future debates. As Yang powerfully suggests, pluralized discussions of civil society and the ritual economy may help bring alternative visions of society and economy into being." - Jiazhi Fengjiang, Pacific Affairs

"The book is very well organized and provides a clear exposition of the principal theoretical concept of ritual and some highly pertinent ethnographic cases from Wenzhou of lineages, their halls and their ritual activities. . . . The empirical cases are very well chosen and comprehensively presented. Yang is clearly well versed in the anthropology study of Chinese religions and is skillful in navigating the conceptual issues in this field." - Man Guo, The China Quarterly

"Mayfair Yang’s exciting and rich ethnography informed by critical theory stands alone among other books on the restoration of religious traditions in post-Mao China in examining religious and ritual associations and activity as grassroots forms of voluntary association and civil society with value for communities, as economic stimulus, and as brakes on overheated capital accumulation at the heart of unsustainable wealth inequality. This book... is a must-read for anyone interested in alternative trajectories of development and examples of what resilient local cultures look like in practice." - Brian J. Nichols, Journal of Asian Studies