The blissful enterprise: Buddhist cultural turns in the workplace in contemporary Shanghai

Abstract

While most scholarship argues that contemporary Chinese cities are secular, national, and capitalist projects, this research wil present an alternative view to that offered by secular modernity by presenting an ethnography on the development of religious communities in manufacturing plants started by capital-linked immigrant entrepreneurs since 1990s. It examines Buddhist practices in the workplace as a new way of understanding the changes of morality in contemporary China.