Infernal Affect: Christianity, Urbanization, and Economic Anxiety in China
This article examines the making of uneasy relationships between Protestant Christianity, capitalist reform, and urbanization in China. Drawing on analysis of Chinese Christian media sources as well as ethnographic research conducted in the city of Nanjing, I demonstrate how religious communities be...
| Published in: | Journal of the American Academy of Religion |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2021
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| In: |
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Year: 2021, Volume: 89, Issue: 3, Pages: 956-977 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article examines the making of uneasy relationships between Protestant Christianity, capitalist reform, and urbanization in China. Drawing on analysis of Chinese Christian media sources as well as ethnographic research conducted in the city of Nanjing, I demonstrate how religious communities become attuned to the excesses of urban life—specifically the anxiety, discontent, and mania surrounding housing ownership—and respond to tensions between spiritual feelings and economic activities. These tensions, I argue, in turn generate new vectors of desire and possibilities for collective life. In a heterogenous Chinese Christian landscape, I situate this affective reorientation in the emerging Reformed urban church movement, which has inspired a separatist ethos among underground “house churches.” In doing so, this article illuminates how religious groups work as affective communities in critically orienting to consumer culture and neoliberal individualism. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4585 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American Academy of Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfab077 |