Digital Reconfigurations of the Religious Imaginary in China
Discover the winning 2026 project "Digital Reconfigurations of the Religious Imaginary in China: An Ethnography of Online Supernatural Horror Films and Series" from the Louis Dumont Fund, which supports research in social anthropology.
"This project examines how popular culture contributes to the digital reconfiguration of religious imaginaries in China through the rapid rise of online supernatural horror films and series (web films, web series, serialized and short-form formats). Rather than approaching religion primarily through institutional or doctrinal frameworks, the study considers religious imaginaries as cultural and symbolic formations, co-produced within digital ecologies where the audiovisual industry, platforms, state governance, and networked audiences interact.
Drawing on repertoires associated with Chinese popular religion – spirits and ancestors, taboo places, ritual efficacy, moral causality – the project analyzes how the sacred is (re)shaped: aesthetically articulated through narrative and visual devices; affectively mobilized (fear, empathy, fascination, irony); and socially negotiated through mechanisms of circulation, regulation, and commentary (audiences, criticism, demystification, moral and cosmological interpretations).
The ethnography focuses on actors involved in production, distribution, and regulation (creative teams, producers, platforms, intermediaries), while also incorporating an online audience-observation component (remote interviews, contextual analysis of comments, and practices of appropriation). The aim is to demonstrate how the hierarchies of authority, visibility, and credibility that structure the contemporary experience of the supernatural are being reconfigured in and through digital media."
Shanshan Zheng
Holding a PhD in anthropology from Université Lumière Lyon 2, Shanshan Zheng is currently a lecturer in Chinese studies at Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 and an associate researcher at LARHRA. Her research focuses on religious and cultural dynamics in contemporary China, particularly popular religion, heritage-making processes, transnational circulations, and digital forms of the religious imaginary. She is also a translator specializing in the humanities and social sciences, and was a finalist for the Prix Fu Lei in 2024.
