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Handbook of Religion and the Asian CityAspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century$
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Handbook of Religion and the Asian City: Aspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century

Peter van der Veer

Print publication date: 2015

Print ISBN-13: 9780520281226

Published to California Scholarship Online: January 2016

DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520281226.001.0001

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PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of California Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use.date: 02 July 2022

The City and the Pagoda

The City and the Pagoda

Buddhist Spatial Tactics in Shanghai

Chapter:
(p.37) 2 The City and the Pagoda
Source:
Handbook of Religion and the Asian City
Author(s):

Francesca Tarocco

Publisher:
University of California Press
DOI:10.1525/california/9780520281226.003.0002

This chapter explores the multidimensional relationship between exceptional sites and the contexts in which they function by focusing on the emergence of the so-called Shanghai buddhascape of the 1920s and 1930s and its influence on the contemporary urban fabric. It describes Shanghai as a privileged site for understanding Buddhist-inspired self-fashioning and, more generally, the spatial tactics of Buddhist practitioners in the context of colonial modernity as well as global capitalism. It also considers the sensitivities of the urban cultural elite toward Buddhism and its presence in China's modern cityscapes. It argues that ordinary Shanghai urbanites find solace and purpose in Buddhist technologies of salvation.

Keywords:   buddhascape, Shanghai, self-fashioning, spatial tactics, modernity, capitalism, cultural elite, Buddhism, cityscapes, salvation

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