Performative secularism: school-sponsored prayer in China's national college entrance exam
This article examines the role of religion in China’s National College Entrance Exam, the Gaokao. In Chinese schools, religion is officially banned and branded superstition. But some Gaokao-preparatory high schools sponsor pilgrimages to pray for exam success, invite ritualists to exorcize ghosts, a...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Taylor & Francis Group
2022
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| In: |
Critical Asian studies
Year: 2022, Volume: 54, Issue: 3, Pages: 441-469 |
| Further subjects: | B
Pupil
B Laicism B Religious practice B Social behavior B China B Religion B College student B Performance measurement B Religious policy |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article examines the role of religion in China’s National College Entrance Exam, the Gaokao. In Chinese schools, religion is officially banned and branded superstition. But some Gaokao-preparatory high schools sponsor pilgrimages to pray for exam success, invite ritualists to exorcize ghosts, and tolerate discussions of karmic merit, euphemistically termed “character” (renpin). Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in rural and urban schools in Fujian Province, this article argues that such practices help people maintain self-efficacy while revealing secularism to be a performance. Hypercompetition in the post-Mao era (1977–present) has created a perceived disconnect between effort and reward, and to restore that balance, people appeal to local gods and cosmic reciprocity. But elites must pay deference to secular ideals while quietly pursuing local practices in what sociologist Erving Goffman terms the backstage. Such Janus-faced obeisance has analogs in the imperial era. By analyzing secularism as a performance with early modern genealogies, this article advances understanding of Chinese regime legitimacy, adds to ethnographies of secularism’s lived experience in Asia, and helps to account for why popular religion continues to flourish despite more than a century of suppression. (Crit Asian Stud/GIGA) |
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| ISSN: | 1472-6033 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Critical Asian studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/14672715.2022.2099439 |