Peter van der Veer | Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (original) (raw)
Phone: +49 (551) 4956 - 226
Address: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity
Hermann-Föge-Weg 11
37073 Göttingen
less
Uploads
Papers by Peter van der Veer
This is the introduction to The Modern Spirit of Asia. The Spiritual and the Secular in China and... more This is the introduction to The Modern Spirit of Asia. The
Spiritual and the Secular in China and India by Peter van
der Veer (Princeton University Press 2014).
Cultural Diversity in China, 2014
The widespread notion that the city is secular and that therefore society's future is secular is ... more The widespread notion that the city is secular and that therefore society's future is secular is in need of serious reconsideration. This paper argues that religion does not melt away but rather morphs into modern forms of aspiration, speculation, and contention. Religion is therefore crucial to social inquiry into the nature of the urban. The paper argues that in Asia the Christian modern is close to the secular modern with fragments of rational planning and calculation in constant interplay with fragments of the magic of speculative modernity. Both communism and market capitalism are ideological cousins of Christian millenarianism. In a comparison of India, China, and Singapore it argues that the Christian form of modernity has been much better able to penetrate and coalesce with Sinic civilizational traditions than with Indic civilizational traditions.
In most places in the world one can follow courses in Yoga and Qigong. These forms of Indian and ... more In most places in the world one can follow courses in Yoga and Qigong. These forms of Indian and Chinese spirituality have gone global, but are still connected to national identities. This article juxtaposes and compares contemporary Indian and Chinese spiritual movements after sketching the extent to which they are the product of the imperial encounter with the West.
the origins of modern spirituality are, in my view, to be found in the nineteenth century and in ... more the origins of modern spirituality are, in my view, to be found in the nineteenth century and in the West. One can, obviously, find deep histories of spirituality in mysticism, gnosticism, hermeticism, and in a whole range of traditions from antiquity, but modern spirituality is something that is, indeed, modern. It is part of modernity and thus of a wide-ranging nineteenth-century transformation, a historical rupture. Spirituality is notoriously hard to define, and I want to suggest that its very vagueness as the opposite of materiality, as distinctive from the body, as distinctive from both the religious and the secular, has made it productive as a concept that bridges various discursive traditions across the globe.
This paper argues that religious and political practice in the modern word is in important ways s... more This paper argues that religious and political practice in the modern word is in important ways shaped and framed by nationalism. This argument qualifies the general critique of methodological nationalism that is a feature of current literature on transnationalism. It first analyzes the general features of the relation between religion and nationalism. Through a comparison of the development of nationalism in India and China it further argues that while the relation between religion and nationalism in these societies shows some of the general features that have been laid out in the previous section, there are also significant differences that can be understood through an anthropological understanding of the generality of the nation-form and the specificity of its historical articulation. Finally, it exemplifies the argument at the level of practice by showing how secular nationalism has framed ritual and political practice in Singapore without being able to entirely control it.
This is the introduction to The Modern Spirit of Asia. The Spiritual and the Secular in China and... more This is the introduction to The Modern Spirit of Asia. The
Spiritual and the Secular in China and India by Peter van
der Veer (Princeton University Press 2014).
Cultural Diversity in China, 2014
The widespread notion that the city is secular and that therefore society's future is secular is ... more The widespread notion that the city is secular and that therefore society's future is secular is in need of serious reconsideration. This paper argues that religion does not melt away but rather morphs into modern forms of aspiration, speculation, and contention. Religion is therefore crucial to social inquiry into the nature of the urban. The paper argues that in Asia the Christian modern is close to the secular modern with fragments of rational planning and calculation in constant interplay with fragments of the magic of speculative modernity. Both communism and market capitalism are ideological cousins of Christian millenarianism. In a comparison of India, China, and Singapore it argues that the Christian form of modernity has been much better able to penetrate and coalesce with Sinic civilizational traditions than with Indic civilizational traditions.
In most places in the world one can follow courses in Yoga and Qigong. These forms of Indian and ... more In most places in the world one can follow courses in Yoga and Qigong. These forms of Indian and Chinese spirituality have gone global, but are still connected to national identities. This article juxtaposes and compares contemporary Indian and Chinese spiritual movements after sketching the extent to which they are the product of the imperial encounter with the West.
the origins of modern spirituality are, in my view, to be found in the nineteenth century and in ... more the origins of modern spirituality are, in my view, to be found in the nineteenth century and in the West. One can, obviously, find deep histories of spirituality in mysticism, gnosticism, hermeticism, and in a whole range of traditions from antiquity, but modern spirituality is something that is, indeed, modern. It is part of modernity and thus of a wide-ranging nineteenth-century transformation, a historical rupture. Spirituality is notoriously hard to define, and I want to suggest that its very vagueness as the opposite of materiality, as distinctive from the body, as distinctive from both the religious and the secular, has made it productive as a concept that bridges various discursive traditions across the globe.
This paper argues that religious and political practice in the modern word is in important ways s... more This paper argues that religious and political practice in the modern word is in important ways shaped and framed by nationalism. This argument qualifies the general critique of methodological nationalism that is a feature of current literature on transnationalism. It first analyzes the general features of the relation between religion and nationalism. Through a comparison of the development of nationalism in India and China it further argues that while the relation between religion and nationalism in these societies shows some of the general features that have been laid out in the previous section, there are also significant differences that can be understood through an anthropological understanding of the generality of the nation-form and the specificity of its historical articulation. Finally, it exemplifies the argument at the level of practice by showing how secular nationalism has framed ritual and political practice in Singapore without being able to entirely control it.
This book sheds light on the social imagination of nature and environment in contemporary China. ... more This book sheds light on the social imagination of nature and environment in contemporary China. It demonstrates how the urgent debate on how to create an ecologically sustainable future for the world’s most populous country is shaped by its complex engagement with religious traditions, competing visions of modernity and globalization, and by engagement with minority nationalities who live in areas of outstanding natural beauty on China’s physical and social margins. The book develops a comprehensive understanding of contemporary China that goes beyond the tradition/ modernity dichotomy, and illuminates the diversity of narratives and worldviews that inform contemporary Chinese understandings of and engagements with nature and environment.