More than Inheritance: Traditional Ritual Revival in a Plural Ritual Field in Contemporary China

• In Event: Places and Performances as Cultural Objects

Abstract

Existing ritual studies typically analyze a given ritual as already established within social life and internally coherent, thus examining its symbolic meanings and social effects. Such approaches implicitly treat ritual efficacy as an analytical assumption rather than an empirical object that social actors themselves, in addition to ritual participants, can evaluate. Drawing on a grassroots-led revival of traditional Chinese rituals in contemporary China, in a context where multiple ritual forms coexist, the article shifts attention to how ritual agents actively reflect on the social significance of different ritual forms. Based on interviews and participant observation, I find that ritual revivalists do not legitimate their revival through claims of national authenticity based on traditionality or the superiority of “traditional morality.” Instead, they frame ritual value in terms of its capacity to cultivate participants. They criticize existing ritual forms not because they fail to declare social relations but because they fail to shape participants morally. Specifically, revivalists assert that the traditional rituals they revive exhibit internal symbolic coherence, articulate moral content of social roles and relations, and generate participants’ sentiments, which are more likely to achieve participants’ moral transformation in contemporary settings. By analyzing how social actors diagnose the limitations of existing ritual forms and articulate alternative criteria of ritual efficacy, the article argues that ritual efficacy is not an intrinsic property of ritual but is itself contested, which shapes how ritual is explained, redesigned, and performed. I also explain why efficacy rather than traditionality constitutes the primary basis of legitimation for this revival, situating it within contemporary Chinese social situations and the legacy of Confucian ritual thought. I also explore why revivalists attribute greater efficacy to traditional rituals under modern conditions that are thought to undermine ritual authority.

Author

• Shining Wang, University of Virginia