Events

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Kenneth Dean, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

In the late Qing and early Republican periods, various cosmopolitan ideals were widely and continuously discussed and advocated in China. The ancient Chinese idea of Datong 大同 or Great Unity was revived and debated with renewed vigour and reference to the changes of the times, often incorporating the cosmopolitan ideals of religious, social and ideological movements from the West and elsewhere in Asia. This is a story that overlaps with, at times converges with and at times diverges from the rise of nationalism. In this talk, I will present the case of the Bahá’í religion (known in Chinese as Datong jiao 大同教) in Republican China (1912–1949), as a form of religious cosmopolitanism that originated in Iran, whose spread to China can be traced to links with the Ottoman Empire, British Palestine, the United States and Japan. By tracking the individuals, connections and events through which knowledge of the Bahá’í movement spread in China, the study reveals an overlapping nexus of networks that shared cosmopolitan ideals: anarchists, intellectual reformers, liberal Christians, Esperantists, Theosophists, Confucian modernizers, redemptive society activists, and socialists. The Bahá’í connections serve as a thread that sheds light on a unique ‘cosmopolitan moment’ in Republican China. My talk will also briefly discuss connections with Vietnam during the same period, as well as with Malaysia and Singapore during the early post-colonial era, to argue that the sociology of cosmopolitanism should attend to non-secular and non-state movements advocating utopian visions of cosmopolitanism, map the circulations that form a nexus of such groups, and identify the contextual dynamics that produce ‘cosmopolitan moments’ at specific historical junctures and locations. Through a transnational, interactive, religious and historical focus, we can begin to correct the primarily Western-centred and purely secular narratives and theories of cosmopolitanism that lack historical depth and continue to influence much academic and public debate.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

David A Palmer (PhD, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris) is Professor jointly appointed by the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of Sociology of the University of Hong Kong. His award-winning books include Qigong Fever: Body, Science and Religion in China (Columbia University Press), The Religious Question in Modern China (University of Chicago Press, co-authored with V. Goossaert) and Dream Trippers: Global Daoism and the Predicament of Modern Spirituality (University of Chicago Press, co-authored with E. Siegler). His articles have been published in journals such as Journal of Asian Studies, Modern Asian Studies, Current Anthropology, American Anthropologist and Economy and Society. He leads the Asian Religious Connections research cluster at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

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.