New Technologies and the Production of Religious Texts in China, 19th-21st Century

About the Book

The last of four two-volume sets on the key periods of paradigm shift in Chinese religious and cultural history, this book examines the transformation of values in China since 1850, in the “secular” realms of economics, science, medicine, aesthetics, media, and gender, and in each of the major religions (Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Christianity) as well as in Marxist discourse. The nation and science are the values invoked most frequently, with the market and democracy a distant second. As in previous periods of fundamental change in Chinese history, rationalization and secularization have played central roles, but interiorization nearly disappears as a driving force. Also in continuity with the past, the state insists on an exclusive right to define and adjudicate orthodoxy.

Information & image source: Brill, Link (25 July 2017)

Biographical Note

Prof. PhD Philip Clart (SFB 1199 & Institute of East Asian Studies, Leipzig University, Germany)
After academic way stations in Bonn (Germany), Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada), and Columbia (Missouri, USA), Philip Clart has been working as professor of Chinese culture and history at Leipzig University for the last eight years. His main research areas are history, sociology, and anthropology of Chinese religions, as well as the interactions of religion and literature in late Imperial China. He is co-editor of the monograph series Leipziger Ostasienstudien and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Chinese Religions.