Multiple Liminalities of Lay Buddhism in Contemporary China

In the past decades, various forms of Buddhism have emerged in-between, above, and beyond conventional conceptions of religious and spiritual life in China. This book is a qualitative study exploring manifestations of the massive revival of Buddhism among non-monastic people and communities.

The book wishes to answer the central question: How do Chinese groups and individuals practice Buddhism under the socio-political and cultural circumstances of contemporary China? This inquiry is based on a sample of case studies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (Taiwan, ROC), exploring Buddhist communities, individual practitioners, materials, spaces, practice modalities and relationships. Each chapter examines a significant paradigm that plays a role in the revival of Buddhism in China, highlighting how lay practitioners negotiate their spaces, resources, moral and ethical beliefs, and values, in the face of rapid societal changes.

The research reveals how state policies, economic shifts, local trends, and global developments, such as environmental concerns and technological advances impact and transform older Buddhist traditions. Overall, the author argues for the concept of multiple liminalities as a framework to describe the contemporary predicament of lay Buddhism in Chinese societies. Accordingly, lay Buddhist actors occupy liminal positions or operate across ambiguous boundaries where realms of in-betweenness, serve as avenues for religious responses to the complex challenges Buddhism in China faces.

Kai Shmushko is a Post-doctoral researcher and lecturer in Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. Her academic grounding is China Studies, Religious Studies, and Cultural Sociology with a strong orientation towards ethnographic research, including digital ethnography. Her research stands at the nexus of several primary interests: religion and spirituality among Chinese societies; diasporic Chinese communities; heritage and material culture; cultural production in new media and religion and politics of the Chinese sphere. She completed her doctoral degree at the School of Historical Studies (East Asia focus) of Tel Aviv University and previously held research and teaching positions at Renmin University, Fudan University, National Chengchi University, and Leiden University.