The Workroom: The Vernacular Practice and Theorising of a Religious Group in Contemporary Northeast China

Abstract

This article investigates a religious group in contemporary northeast China. The group is formed by ritual experts and adherents of a traditional folk belief in animal spirits. The group runs as an institution providing aid to those who need psychological treatment, mainly using unorthodox psychological methods and therapies. Most members of this group identify themselves as devout Buddhists. They have developed a series of innovative rituals and generated syncretic teachings combining folk beliefs, vernacular Buddhism, Chinese traditional medicine, and unorthodox psychology.

Based on primary fieldwork materials, this research regards this group as a unique religious phenomenon rooted in the particular sociocultural context of contemporary China. The structure and nature of the group is analysed from a folkloristic perspective, according to which the communicative process is highlighted. Two paradigms of the constitution of the group are examined: the network of interaction, and the community of intra-action. This research finds that the group is constituted in the dialogue of the two paradigms, which are unified by the coherence of the vernacular religion experienced by the members in everyday life.