Religious revival or control? Reading the spatial politics of an officially atheist country’s planning of religious scenic areas: Three cases in Shaanxi, China

Abstract

This article re-conceptualizes the secular-religious relationship by examining the ‘secularized’ sacred sites (temples) and the ‘sanctified’ secular places (religious-themed scenic areas built upon the temples). This article begins with acknowledging the dialectical secular-religious relationship and pushes this line of theorization further from a socio-spatial perspective. By using the ‘trialectics of spatiality’ analytical framework, this article examines the production/reproduction of both the secular and the religious spaces that determined and were simultaneously determined by the diversified religion-state relations. Contextualized in the 2000s when the Chinese state held ambivalence towards religions, this article presents a comparative study of the spatial interaction between the local state and the religious personnel respectively around the planning of three state-sponsored religious cultural scenic areas. By delving into the territorial strategy of simulation, this article demonstrates how and why Chinese secular and religious agents deliberately crossed over the socially constructed boundaries between the normatively defined secular and religious domain.