Commodifying Mount Putuo: State nationalism, religious tourism, and Buddhist revival

This dissertation investigates the effects of religious tourism development on the commodification of China's sacred Buddhist mountain, Putuoshan. Previous literature shows that in tourism, the sacred and the profane are increasingly amalgamated in the activities of pilgrims and tourists, so that what results are many diverse socio-economic contexts through which the consumption of religious sites occurs. Scholars of Chinese Buddhism have contended that the development of tourism in the past 30 years has resulted in a de-sacralization regarding China's sacred mountains. In the process of commodification, Mount Putuo has been sold as a secular commodity representing state constructions of nationalism and not as a religious commodity representing Buddhism more strictly. This dissertation details how such commodification of the mountain has taken place following China's post-1978 economic reforms, but it argues that in the process of commodifying Mount Putuo, religious revival has also occurred. Cultural nationalists have reclaimed China's traditional religions, and in religious tourism, have encouraged activity that emphasizes Chinese Buddhist heritage and culture. Such activity not only promotes religious revival, it also counteracts state-generated projects that rebrand Mount Putuo with CCP geo-politically-based ideals. Using socio-economic theories, I analyze how cultural nationalists have successfully shifted the power dynamics of Mount Putuo's networks of economic exchange, and I further propose that in religious tourism, individual actors are increasingly accomplishing such power shifts contribute to a revival of the mountain's religiosity. This occurs in borderless identity constructions of Chinese nationalism that further diversify the ways in which China's Buddhist mountains are consumed. This last finding suggests a subversion of state-initiated secularization. The broadening of Mount Putuo's socio-economic field has resulted in diverse networks of exchange through which growing numbers of visitors consume the mountain for its overall sacredness, unique connections to the Bodhisattva Guanyin, and/or its specifically Buddhist culture.