Secularity and Urban Gentrification: A Spatial Analysis of Downtown Buddhist Temples in Shanghai

Abstract

This essay examines the process of revival of Han Buddhist communities since 1978 under the state-planned acceleration of urban gentrification in Shanghai. After examining data from 120 temples together with ethnographic research in two downtown temples, the author finds two key changes in urban Buddhism: First, political constructions cause an increasing divide between the city center and suburban areas in the religious spaces of Buddhism. The mainstreaming of Buddhism in the downtown areas has appeared under a new drive of economic and cultural gentrification that has generated different physical and social neighborhoods. Second, not confined to being iconized as tourist sites, temple-centered Buddhism led by abbots is engaged in “niche-switching” between attracting commuters and visitors and attending to temple-based devotees, thereby negotiating their social positions in the commercial zones. The results indicate how the neighborhood has become less important once temples extend their membership’s non-geographic ties.