In recent years, the study of modern Chinese religions has developed into a highly innovative yet challenging field. One of the main reasons for this involves an ongoing (and largely unresolved) debate regarding what methods and theories are appropriate for analyzing the wide range of beliefs and practices we encounter.

This series of three volumes is based on the conviction that, in this critical period of research on modern Chinese religions, it is time for scholars to review the development of our field, reconsider its present state of theories and analytical models, and open a new chapter in the understanding of methodologies we employ. Our research is grounded on the need to re-evaluate concepts and practices that inform both the religious sphere and contemporary scholarship, including endogenous Chinese concepts and exogenous ideas from the West and Japan that have been foundational in shaping our knowledge of the Chinese religious landscape.

In this third volume of our series, we examine a variety of key concepts through their praxis in modern Chinese lived religions.

• Preface 6
• Acknowledgments 8
• Contents 10
• List of Figures and Tables 12
• List of Contributors 14
• Note on Chinese Names, Terms and Transliteration 18
• Introduction 20
• On the Judicial Continuum and the Study of Chinese Legal Culture 30
• Moral Integration or Social Segregation? Vegetarianism and Vegetarian Religious Communities in Chinese Religious Life 56
• Food Fellowship and the Making of a Chinese Church: Cases from Contemporary China and Taiwan 84
• Buddhist Activism and Animal Protection in Republican China 110
• Charismatic Communications: The Intimate Publics of Chinese Buddhism 132
• Gender as a Useful Category of Analysis in Chinese Religions – With Two Case Studies from the Republican Period 152
• Ritual Practices and Networks of Zhuang Shamans 198
• Actors, Spaces, and Norms in Chinese Transnational Religious Networks: A Case Study of Wenzhou Migrants in France 228