In Re-enchanting Modernity Mayfair Yang examines the resurgence of religious and ritual life after decades of enforced secularization in the coastal area of Wenzhou, China. Drawing on twenty-five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Yang shows how the local practices of popular religion, Daoism, and Buddhism are based in community-oriented grassroots organizations that create spaces for relative local autonomy and self-governance. Central to Wenzhou's religious civil society is what Yang calls a "ritual economy," in which an ethos of generosity is expressed through donations to temples, clerics, ritual events, and charities in exchange for spiritual gain. With these investments in transcendent realms, Yang adopts Georges Bataille's notion of "ritual expenditures" to challenge the idea that rural Wenzhou's economic development can be described in terms of Max Weber's notion of a "Protestant Ethic". Instead, Yang suggests that Wenzhou's ritual economy forges an alternate path to capitalist modernity.

"An engaging, diachronic portrayal of recent religious developments… I strongly recommend it to readers interested in these topics, and I would also recommend sections of it for certain graduate and advanced undergraduate classes on Buddhism." - H-Buddhism, H-Net Reviews

"Re-enchanting Modernity clearly deserves recognition for its presentation of salient ethnographic data combined with innovated inquires, all of which calls our attention to the resilience of Chinese religious beliefs and practices while adapting to the challenges of the modern era. . . . Yang's findings should inspire future generations of scholars to undertake further ethnographic research on this vitally important topic." - Review of Religion and Chinese Society

"Re-enchanting Modernity is a terrific study of the relationship between religion, state, and civil society in post-Mao China. . . . A must-read." - China Review International

"Re-enchanting Modernity presents a very intriguing and in-depth ethnographic investigation of religion and ritual in modern China." - Journal of Anthropological Research

"Yang’s book is an excellent contribution to a growing body of scholarship examining post-Mao China’s religious resurgences and the broader conditions under which modernity brings about the (re)production of new and older forms of enchantment. I also find the book highly relevant and refreshing in providing insight into some of the complexities of rural China’s emerging religious civil society in ways that defy and push back against the current resurgence of Orientalism in the 'liberal' West with respect to 'illiberal' China." - Anthropos

"This book contains some of the most compelling analyses of Chinese society I have read, and it will continue to nourish future debates. As Yang powerfully suggests, pluralized discussions of civil society and the ritual economy may help bring alternative visions of society and economy into being." - Pacific Affairs