Religion and Ethnicity at China’s Margins: Contesting the Yellow Dragon

FAIN: RZ-50639-06

Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3815)
Donald Sinclair Sutton (Project Director: November 2005 to August 2009)

Completion of field work in Huanglong, and initial preparation for publication. (12 months)

The project is to complete a study of religious change, ethnic relations and the state in mountainous west China. Our focus is an old pilgrimage site called Huanglong, Yellow Dragon, a UNESCO world heritage site since 1992. Through an ethnographic history, we examine the contestation over the site and its interpretation among pilgrims of different religious faiths and ethnicities, and recently tourists, tracing shifts in cultural meanings and definitions of self; and we study the state’s efforts to manage religion and ethnicity, and balance capitalism, tourism, environmental management. We are applying for a final two months in the field--including off season visits--and to begin the drafting of our book.

Associated Products

Faiths on Display: Religious Revival and Tourism in China (Book)
Title: Faiths on Display: Religious Revival and Tourism in China
Editor: Tim Oakes
Editor: Donald S. Sutton
Abstract: Contains “Making Tourists and Remaking Locals: Religion, Ethnicity and Patriotism in Northern Sichuan” (co-authored by Sutton with Xiaofei Kang), focusing on the impact of tourism on religious practice
Year: 2010
Publisher: Rowman and Littlefield

Transfers of a Ritual at a Northern Sichuan Site: Tibetan and Han Chinese Pilgrims, and Han Chinese Tourists (Book Section)
Title: Transfers of a Ritual at a Northern Sichuan Site: Tibetan and Han Chinese Pilgrims, and Han Chinese Tourists
Author: Donald S. Sutton
Editor: Gita Dharampal-Frick and Robert Langer
Abstract: a study comparing Tibetan and Han Chinese rituals and their mutual influence, concluding with an analysis of tourist rituals
Year: 2010
Publisher: Harrassowitz
Book Title: Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual. Vol. V, I: Transfer and Spaces: Ritual Transfer

---