Diversity and elite religiosity in modern China

Vincent Goossaert, Ecole pratique des hautes études PhD at EPHE (Ecole pratique des hautes études, 1997), research fellow at CNRS (1998–2012) and currently Professor of Daoism and Chinese religions at EPHE. He has been Visiting Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Geneva University and Renmin University. His research deals with the social history of Chinese religion in late imperial and modern times. He has published books on the Daoist clergy, anticlericalism, Chinese dietary taboos, the production of moral norms, and, with David Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China (Chicago 2011, Levenson Prize 2013). Since 2014 he has served as the dean of the EPHE graduate school.This article looks at religious diversity among late imperial and modern Chinese elites; by contrast with most of the existing literature, which looks at correlations between social class and religiosity, this article adds the dimension of the exercise of personal choice and agency in the context of a vast and variegated religious repertoire. After reviewing existing theoretical models, it argues for the importance of two factors: a level of commitment to religious practices, in both the public and private realms, and knowledge (about the religion of others, whether one engages in such religion or not). It then charts these two factors on a graph onto which individuals can be placed, and thus grouped into types. These types represent a new and fruitful way of thinking about religious diversity