Shanghai, with its population of 24 million, is home to a multitude of religions, from Buddhism and Islam, to Christianity and Baha’ism, to Hinduism and Daoism, and many more. A new book, “Shanghai Sacred: The religious landscape of a global city” explores the spaces, rituals and daily practices that make up the religious landscape of modern-day Shanghai. It offers a new paradigm for the study of Chinese spirituality that reflects the global trends shaping Chinese culture and civil society.
Written by Fr Benoit Vermander SJ, Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Xu-Ricci Dialogue Institute at Fudan University, Shanghai, with ethnographer-anthropologist Liz Hingley and Chinese researcher Liang Zhang, the book is based on years of fieldwork and incorporates both comparative and methodological perspectives that demonstrate how religions are lived, constructed and inscribed into the social imaginary of the metropolis.
Michael Herzfeld, Ernest E Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, described the book as “a rich revelation of spirituality – of the variegated, deeply-rooted, and resilient quotidian piety embedded in the social and material fabric of today’s cosmopolitan megalopolis”.
The evocative photographs by Hingley enrich and interact with the narrative, making the book an innovative contribution to religious visual ethnography.
As Linda Woodhead, Professor of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University, said, the book “offers a mesmerising portrait of sacred practices and places in Shanghai,” adding that “art and scholarship come together in a most original way to charm and illuminate”.
“Shanghai Sacred” is available at the University of Washington Press. Click here to order.
