13.05.2024

[Lecture Series:] Patterns of Social Protests in Post-Mao China (Prof. Dingxin Zhao) // Popular Religion in Post-Mao China: The Urban-Rural Divide and Other Transformations (Prof. Yanfei Sun)

Thursday, 6 June 2024, 16.00 - 18.30 CET

On 6 June, 16.00 - 18.00 CET in room 101 (Wilhelmstr. 36; Institut für Soziologie & via Zoom), Prof. Dingxin Zhao (Zhejiang University, China) and Prof. Yanfei Sun (Zhejiang University, China) will each give a talk as part of the G-TURN lecture series "Urbanities in a Global Perspective: Crises, Change, and Continuity". 

Click here to download the poster

Prof. Dingxin Zhao will give a talk on "Patterns of Social Protests in Post-Mao China". 

This talk discusses the kind of political tensions that emerged during the process of China's reform, urban expansion, and rapid  economic  deve-lopment. It delineates a four-stage development of the nature of Chinese society in post-Mao China, highlighting the tensions between the state and society at each stage and the underlying logic of this developmental pattern. This discussion leads to an understanding of the rise of the new kind of the Chinese state and society as we see today.

Bio: Dingxin Zhao is the director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Humanities at Zhejiang University and Max Palevsky Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Chicago. His research covers historical sociology, methodology, political sociology, social movements, social change and economic development. His current research project is on the epistemological and ontological aspects of social science methodologies. He is author of award-winning books The Power of Tiananmen (2001) and The Confucian-Legalist State (2015) in English, and several other books in Chinese including Social and Political Movement, Limits of Democracy, Politics of Legitimacy, and What is Sociology. His work also appears in
journals such as American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, American Behavioral Scientist, Social Forces, Mobilization, and Sociology.

Prof. Yanfei Sun (Zheijang University, China) will give a talk on "Popular Religion in Post-Mao China: The Urban-Rural Divide and Other Transformations". 

This presentation examines the situation of popular religion in post-Mao China, focusing on a major form of popular religion, the territorial cult. It shows that the urban and rural experiences in the resurgence of territorial cults have been hugely different. It also shows that the religion has undergone major transformations in the process of being revived. The presentation goes on to explain the structural forces driving these transformations. The talk ends with a discussion on the impact of the Chinese government's promotion of traditional Chinese culture on the religion in the past decade.

Bio: Yanfei Sun is currently associate professor of sociology at Zhejiang University. She graduated from University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in sociology in 2010. She was a Mellon Research Fellow of Columbia University Society of Fellows (2010-2013), a visiting associate professor at Harvard University, and a lecturer at the University of Chicago. Her research mainly concerns the intersection between religion and politics, particularly religious changes, religious toleration, secularism, and religious nationalism. From September 2023 to July 2024, she is a fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin).