Elder masters and new generations of religious specialists in China today : ethnographic fieldwork on daily life and anthropology of social change – SHIFU

The aim of this project is to gather and analyse the testimonies and life experiences of old masters belonging to different Chinese religions with, as a background, Chinese religious history in the 20th century and the major changes experienced by the different orders. It also aims to provide a corpus of knowledge and know-how that they have learnt from their predecessors and passed on in turn to the younger generations. The methodological and epistemological line of this study is to place the ethnographic survey at the forefront, whilst still promoting interdisciplinarity. The main technical hindrance could have been the difficulty in contacting these religious people, who are not always easily located or understood, and above all, difficult to be accepted by. The old masters often speak in local dialects which are difficult to master. Old and respected figures, their community often protects them and they are impossible to approach without a long period of familiarization. To do so, this project intends to gather a team of experts, specialists on China and its different religions, each of whom has carried out in-depth field research and in the past, led lengthy surveys amongst religious specialists and integrated into communities that are not always easy to penetrate. To question what “makes” a Daoist master, a Buddhist monk, a geomancer, a diviner, a spirit-medium, a bimo, a ritual musician, etc., one of the lines of investigation will be to provide a detailed and realistic description of some of their practices by highlighting concrete cases and the way they take on and solve them. This approach enables of to understand, through examples, the expectations of the layman towards them and the responses (notably the ritual procedures) that they bring.

The main trails of research consist of examining the way religious specialists perpetuated their art and very often a singular way of life throughout the campaigns against religions during the 20th century and the accelerated “modernisation” during the beginning of the 21st century. It’s then about asking ourselves who are the men and women born in the era when religions were forbidden but chose to become monks or officiants in the years between 1980-90, some of whom went to find the old masters to learn from. Finally to understand what marks out these generations. The comparison of a series of ethnographies will enable distinct religious worlds to be described, most of which are still quite unknown. In a larger sense, this study will invite us to question the signification and reason of being of these religious masters in China today.

Beyond an anthropological contribution to the understanding and preservation of specific knowledge, the idea of this project is to advance in the knowledge of the contemporary Chinese religious landscape and of its mutations. The issue of the Chinese religious renewal is at stake. To approach it through religious specialists – often in charge of the fundamental rituals of the society – allows understanding of its concrete modalities. It also enables the more general questioning of the peculiar virtuosity that characterizes them in the Chinese context, and of the way they combine going out of the world (for a certain self-refinement) and presence in the world (when they accomplish diverse ritual and daily activities). Besides the writing of an academic book and journal articles, and the creation of archives, one of the intentions of this program is to broadcast a part of the results to a wider audience, because of the contribution of these masters to the Chinese intangible heritage and of the interest they arouse in the West. The setting up of an audiovisual archive — photographs, audio recordings, video sequences and documentary movies showing interviews with elder or younger masters, rituals and their musics, and practice of different traditional arts and techniques— will be an important output for this program.

Conference by Adeline Herrou, “Elder masters and new generations of religious specialists in China today. Ethnographic fieldwork on daily life and anthropology of social change, ” the 11th of April 2013, The Research Center on Modern and Contemporary China, EHESS. cecmc.hypotheses.org/11067
Conference by Georges Favraud, «The practices of Daoist hermits of the Southern Peak today (Hunan, China)”, the 17th of May 2013, China Workshop, Centre for Ethnology and Comparative Sociology (LESC, Nanterre).

This research project is concerned with the daily lives of Chinese religious specialists today, in a context where the roles of religious dignitaries, and in a larger sense the religious landscape itself, have undergone massive changes. This program will take as its subject different aspects of what are commonly called Chinese religions – Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, local religions – and compare them in their current forms. Focus will be placed on the old masters of these diverse traditions who entered the religious life before the Cultural Revolution or even prior to the Liberation (1949). Witnesses of these periods of great turbulence of the 20th century, these senior masters are today able to narrate these events from their own points of view. Most importantly, the remaining few who are still alive today are the only ones capable of providing information on their methods of performing specific rituals and ascetic techniques, as well as explaining how they used to manage their daily tasks and responsibilities. In the 1980s, it was often these old masters who perpetuated the transmissions that had been interrupted during the long period of prohibition.
Today, they are the last heirs of specific knowledge and practices that are on their way to extinction. Paying particular attention to their oral accounts, our goal is to understand – through their own memories, and those of their forebears and disciples – what changes have occurred between the last generations of religious specialists. By drawing their ethnographic portraits and considering, in great detail, their life narratives and their actual activities, the team members will be able to describe several facets of today’s Chinese religious world, and to better understand the historical ruptures of the second half of the twentieth century. The enterprise of restoring temples began in the 1980s, along with the opening-up policy. Since then, religious practices have been re-authorized within a new, official framework prescribed by the State. While transmission was traditionally based on master-disciple relations, the responsibility of training clergy has been entrusted to newly-made academies. On this basis, contemporary religious communities reorganized themselves sometimes by adapting to the new framework, and sometimes by escaping it. The pivotal generation of the “elders” has already passed the torch to new generations. Thus, the time seems appropriate to study the manner in which these local Chinese traditions have been perpetuated, and on which bases the religious renewal, characterized by deep changes and reinvention, has been accomplished. A team of sinologists has been gathered in order to question what, from now on, “makes” the Daoist master, the Buddhist monk, the geomancer, the diviner, the spirit-medium, the Yi nationality bimo, the ritual musician…. Most of them are ethnologists and sociologists with a long history of fieldwork experience, enabling them to make contact with elder masters of these traditions and to compile a new corpus of first-hand materials. The idea is to document their daily life and their life experiences within the current religious context, which is both inherited from, and in conflict with, their knowledge.
The several local ethnographies that this research project will provide will describe specific religious worlds, most of which are currently quite unknown. In a larger sense, this comparative and interdisciplinary project will invite us to question the raison d’être of these different religious masters in China today, and to understand the peculiar virtuosity that characterizes them in such a changing context.