Renegotiating Locality and Morality in a Chinese Religious Diaspora

Wenzhou Christian Merchants in Paris, France

Bibliographic Data

ID2174679
AuthorsNanlai Cao (0000-0001-6315-3555, University of Hong Kong, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume14
Issue1
Pages85-101
Publication date2013-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCanberra Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0314-9099 • E-ISSN: 1740-9314
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14442213.2012.739198
OpenAlexW1964889737
LanguageEN
Citations received19
References cited26

This paper explores the social and economic implications of indigenous Christian discourses and practices in the Wenzhou Chinese diaspora in Paris, France. Popularly known as China's Jerusalem, the coastal Chinese city of Wenzhou is home to thousands of self-started home-grown Protestant churches and a million Protestants. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork, this study provides an ethnographic account of a group of Wenzhou merchants who have formed large Christian communities at home, along with migrant enclaves in Paris. The study shows how these migrant entrepreneurs and traders have brought their version of Christianity from China to France and how they perceive and deal with issues of illegality, moral contingency, native-place based loyalty and national belonging. It highlights the thoroughly intertwined relationship between an indigenised Chinese Christianity and the petty capitalist legacy of coastal southeast China in a secularised, exclusionary European context, and suggests that Christianity provides a form of non-market morality that serves to effectively legitimate Wenzhou's pre-modern household economy in the context of market modernity

Archaeology · China · Christianity · Context (archaeology) · Diaspora · Economics · Economy · Ethnology · Geography · Indigenous · Modernity · Morality · Political science · Protestantism · Sociology · China's Global Influence and Migration · Gender Studies · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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