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During the transition period from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, Chinese society witnessed the emergence of many "spheres": women's sphere, political sphere, business sphere, education sphere, ideological sphere, religious sphere, etc. These spheres became a pattern for social forces to govern themselves and actively participate in the governance of society, and they soon merged with the national political system to varying degrees. More importantly, these spheres participated in the construction of China's nation-state in the modern sense. Because each sphere is an "imagined community" like the nation-state, the imaginary boundaries of each sphere coincide with the imaginary boundaries of the country. The formation and development of each sphere echoed with other spheres, so that the society as a whole formed a chimera of spheres, spheres with society, and spheres with political systems. This process of "sphereization" underwent another transformation and deepening in China during the reform and opening up period, making "sphere" an indispensable keyword in the study of Chinese politics and society.

Speaker：
Professor Adam Yuet Chau is Ph.D. of anthropology at Stanford University. He came to the UK in 2005 and taught at Oxford University (Chinese Studies) and SOAS (anthropology) respectively before coming to Cambridge University in 2008. His research interests includes Chinese religions, especially their social aspects; ritual theory; hosting as an idiom of social practice in Chinese religion and politics; forms of powerful writing; subjectification; social and cultural transformations in contemporary China; the Indonesian Chinese returnees (yin'ni guiqiao 印尼歸僑) in China and Hong Kong. He had published Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in Contemporary China (2006) and Religion in China: Ties That Bind (2009); also edited Religion in Contemporary China: Revitalization and Innovation (2011) and Chinese Religious Culture in 100 Objects (projected).