State-building encounters popular religion : Pingxiang, 1912-1978

Abstract

This thesis studies state-building in the local religious context of modern China. I seek to explore the dynamic interaction between the state and popular religion based on a single locale, Pingxiang county, Jiangxi province. Pingxiang is a major site of China’s revolutionary tradition (Perry, 2012). It also has a strong and lively religious culture that consistently resisted state expansion, survived waves of revolutionary campaigns, and revived between the cracks of state power. This thesis draws on original materials in local archives, oral history interviews, ethnography, and other documents such as government reports, county and village gazetteers, newspapers, genealogy books, memoirs and personal diaries to reconstruct the tension between state expansion and popular religion in the context of state-building throughout the period from 1912 to 1978.

The thesis takes a critical engagement with Joel Migdal’s anthropology of the state (1988, 1994, 2001) as its theoretical framework. Migdal, the most important scholar in state-building studies of the Third World, argued that in developing countries, the key to state success or failure was the state’s struggles with social organizations, because in Third World societies, social control within the state’s claimed territory was not monopolized by the state but dispersed among social organizations. Because of this dispersed pattern of power, leaders of certain Third World countries failed to build an overpowering state. Following Migdal’s argument, this study focuses on struggles between the state and its rivals throughout the process of state expansion in China.

In contrast to Migdal’s findings, the study shows that in China, rather than social organizations, popular religion was a more recalcitrant counterpart of the state, a larger challenge to state policies, and a tougher obstacle to state control over people. Here I focus specifically on what C. K. Yang (1961) has called diffused religion in China, which does not have a formal institution. I stress the rhizomatic nature of this diffused religion, consisting of networks of interconnected beliefs and practices, embodied in people’s habitus, guiding people’s outlooks, modes of thought, dispositions, sentiments, and behavior. In contrast to domination by an identifiable organization or the state, popular religion could be said to dominate people without a dominator. As such, it was an invisible but formidable power that was in tension with state ideology, ran counter to modern governance, and provided legitimacy to popular resistance to the state. The dissertation explores the consequences when an expanding state encountered the diffused religion in the case of Pingxiang.

By examining state expansion in a religious society, I seek to introduce a new dimension of analysis to existing state-building theories, which to date have ignored the diffused forces of religion. At the same time, examining the transformation of popular religion under the circumstances of state-building enriches our knowledge of popular religion as well. Finally, I argue that the theory developed from this research can help to explain the challenges and failures of state-building in certain Third World societies, in which state builders overlooked the diffused power of religion. Without an understanding of the rhizomatic nature of diffused religion that operates at a deeper level than visible institutions or organizations, state policies and institutions might not achieve their anticipated effects. No matter how well state policies and institutions are designed, they could be undermined by the rhizomatic forces during implementation.