Why have spiritual worlds returned or persisted in post/socialist Asia where people once thought they would disappear? What does religiosity look like in socialist and postsocialist contexts today? According to secularization theorists, religion was destined to fade with the passage of modern progressive time. In Asia and elsewhere, socialist states were known for embracing atheism and curtailing or banishing institutions and practices they deemed religious or superstitious. Yet, engagements with spirited worlds—including those with ghosts and ancestors, spirit mediumship and possession, Buddhism, Daoism, and Abrahamic religions—did not vanish. In this class, we will read social and political theories of communism/socialism, postsocialism, religion, and secularism, alongside contemporary ethnographies of China, Vietnam, Mongolia, and elsewhere, to consider how global communities live out spirited worlds amid post-Cold War geographies
- Subject
- ASRL GU
- Credits (min)
- 4
- Credits (max)
- 4
- Credit unit
- points
- Type
- course
- Edition
- 2026
- Source
- catalog.barnard.edu