Events

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Kenneth Dean, Asia Research Institute, and Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

Beijing is home to more than 80 pilgrimage associations (香会) that organize trips to holy mountains but also are important social groups, with members meeting regularly for a variety of social events, especially anything related to the lost traditions of “old Beijing” (老北京). They are self-organizing, self-funding, and many have complex rules and regulations that date back to the Qing dynasty. But how to view these groups? Is it fruitful to view them as part of the debate over civil society in China–are they examples of it, or too coopted by the government, and does it even make sense to speak of civil society at all in contemporary China? Or it is more productive to think of these organizations as a former of inner emigration, a retreat to a form of nostalgia about the past–what the Lebanese-Australian ethnographer Ghassan Hage, in a different context, refers to the “diasporic condition”? This talk seeks to find a suitable framework for approaching these groups.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Ian Johnson is a visiting fellow at the Asia Research Institute of National University of Singapore. He worked for more than 20 years in China, primarily as a journalist, and is the author of three books of non-fiction. His current project on pilgrimage associations is part of a PhD thesis he is writing at Leipzig University. 

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this webinar has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the webinar.