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Ke-hsien Huang

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Location: Göttingen

Institution: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity

Contact: E-Mail

I am currently working in the MPI for the study of religious diversity as postdoctoral fellow, after receiving a PhD degree from Sociology Department of Northwestern University, U.S.A.

My dissertation, Cultural Intermediary and Globalization: Transforming Pentecostalism in Post-Mao China, is based on ethnographic work and interviews conducted on the True Jesus Church, a long, widespread, still vigorous yet understudied Pentecostal church, in seventeen Chinese provinces. The findings demonstrate that this religion, which used to be stigmatized as superstitious, has been reformed as a more rationalized, more institutionalized and less self-closured group. This “civilizing” process is argued to be enacted, negotiated, and resisted through several encounters in the era of globalizing among different groups. Since coastal urban church elites are equipped with granted political opportunities, economic resources and cultural competence, they play a remarkable role in this process.

To furthering the dissertational findings, I am is currently working on specific issues about changing church-state relationships in China, the possibility of Christian contributions to civil society, rural migrants’ religiosity, and the evolving governing technologies of the state in regulating religion. My research interests include sociology of religion, sociology of culture, globe Pentecostalism, microsociology, qualitative methods, and cultural phenomena in China.