• Gauthier François

• Gauthier François

Modern China is an extreme example of social experimentation on a scale never before seen in history. In the 1970s, travelers through China marveled at what they saw as a massively atheistic society in which temples had been destroyed and there were virtually no visible signs of religion. Mao died in 1976, ending the Cultural Revolution and setting the stage for a dramatic shift in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping moved China from a planned economy to a market economy. What followed was an extraordinary transformation in which the economy soared, consumerism became the dominant cultural and social ethos, and... religion made an unexpected and massive "comeback," contradicting the association by secularization theory of instrumental rationality with the decline of magic and religion. 

This course examines modern Chinese history in the light of the thesis of the transition from a nation-state regime to a global market regime. This perspective allows us to give an important place to popular religion and its surprising manifestations since the neoliberal turn of 1978: temple reconstruction, return of festivals and processions, return of ancestor worship, qigong craze, Chinese medicine, martial arts, return of Confucianism, fengshui craze, divination, etc. 

No previous knowledge of China is required, historical and sociological basics will be part of the course. 

Connaissances historiques, sociales, culturelles, religieuses. Capacité d'analyse. Examen final écrit au terme de la session.

Examen écrit en présentiel dans la salle G140

Examen écrit en présentiel dans la salle G230 (PER)

Documentation non électronique permise 

examen écrit en présentiel