Religions and intellectual life in contemporary China

In an ambiguous context of openness to the world and persistent restrictions on freedom of worship and expression, David Ownby studies the religious movements and original currents of thought that are unfolding in the interstices of the Chinese world.

David Ownby is a historian of popular religions in modern and contemporary China. A professor at the University of Montreal, he studies the development of religion in the context of institutional and social upheavals in XIXe And XXe centuries. He studied secret societies in the Qing dynasty before undertaking a long survey of Falun Gong followers in North America. He is currently engaged in a vast collective project of translation and analysis of Chinese intellectuals of the 2000s, which makes accessible and maps their publications.

He is the author of

– (with Mary Somers Heidhues) Secret societies reconsidered: perspectives on the social history of modern South China and Southeast AsiaArmonk, 1993,

– Brotherhoods and secret societies in early and mid-Qing China: the formation of traditionStanford University Press 1996,

– Falungong and the future of ChinaOxford University Press, 2008,

– (with Vincent Goossaert and Ji Zhe) Making saints in modern ChinaOxford University Press, 2011

– and articles published in particular in China Information, Archives of Social Sciences of Religions, China Perspectives, Sociology and Societies.

What is Falun Gong?