ANTH2601 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Southeast Asia, Maoism, Anti-Clericalism
13 Dec 2018
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Document Summary
China had to modernize quickly and this had to be done by promoting education and by getting rid of religious supersti- tion. Religion can be regarded as part of national culture, but in secularist states students are taught to reject that part of cul- ture, see it as a historical aberration, and become atheist. Clerics in china were also seen as inherently violent, since their ascetic disciplines and martial arts that inflict violence on their own bodies can be turned against others for criminal of rebellious purposes. Second, how do we explain the failure of a century of system- atic destruction of. One answer lies in the millenarian nature of maoism itself. The party absorbed quite a lot of the social energy that is available in religious movements. As i already indicated secularity is well established in china in daily life as well as in people"s self-understanding. Secularism as repression of religion is also widely tolerated if a movement.
