Chapter 12 Modern Individuals in Imagined Communities
An Anthropological Examination of Artist Churches in Songzhuang, Beijing
In: Shades of Gray in the Changing Religious Markets of China
Author:
Mengyin
Mengyin
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Abstract
This chapter presents a case study of churches composed of artists in an eastern suburb of Beijing. It analyzes ways in which these churches maintain their rural characteristics despite the quick urbanization of the city’s suburbs and demonstrates the different methods “modernized” individuals use to construct imagined communities. These imaginations are instrumental for individuals to cope with a life under the pressures of capitalism, a metropolis, and modernity itself.