Cosmologies of Credit: Transnational Mobility and the Politics of Destination in China by Julie Y. Chu (review)

Book Reviews 103 have derived its “military persona” from the largely southern Daoist tradition of the twelfth century and after? What was the persona of this god of the northern temples in the eleventh century? Is it possible that this Zhenwu derived his “military persona” from the classical tradition—from, that is, 1) its name/epithet, Xuanwu, the “Dark Warrior”; 2) its representation as a turtle or turtle/snake hybrid, whose shell symbolizes “protection”; and 3) its exclusive identification with the north? In the classical tradition, therefore, Zhenwu, a.k.a. Xuanwu, was the martial guardian of the north, and it might be this “classical” identity that recommended him to Northern Song emperors and soldiers alike, both of whom were preoccupied with the defense of the north against the Khitan and Tangut during the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. NED DAVIS, University of Hawai‘i Cosmologies of Credit: Transnational Mobility and the Politics of Destination in China JULIE Y. CHU. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010. xi, 343 pages. ISBN 978-0-8223-4806-1. US$24.95 paper. Post-Mao liberalizations have contributed to both a dramatic revival of popular religious expressions and, in the last few decades, mass emigration to developed countries. Much research on religion and Chinese migrants has focused on the religious practices of Chinese migrants in destination countries by examining how religion affects immigrant adaptation and assimilation, as well as how migrant religious institutions are shaped by their encounter with the new society. Julie Y. Chu’s book represents one of the first attempts to systematically investigate the intertwining of contemporary Chinese migration and religious practices in the sending society. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted in Longyan 龍岩, a coastal village near Fuzhou City 福州市, Chu ethnographically links the story of illegal Fuzhounese migration to the world of Chinese popular religion by exploring the social and cultural processes that have made local residents consistently desire international mobility despite the massive debts and emotional costs incurred by undocumented migration and transnational separation. 104 Journal of Chinese Religions Fuzhounese have made headlines worldwide for their involvement in illegal migration to the West, especially North America and Europe. Framed by the question of what propelled rural Fuzhounese to emigrate on such a large scale, Chu considers the contemporary phenomenon of aspiring Chinese peasants turning rurality into cosmopolitan modernity through pursuing spatial mobility, or in her words, the politics of destination. The book is divided into three parts. Part I provides a sketch of how transnational mobility is desired, imagined, and experienced by differentially positioned people in Longyan. Part II focuses on various unconventional and often illegal routes to crossing national borders and achieving international mobility. Part III depicts and analyzes Longyan people’s participation in both a rationalized market modernity and a deep-rooted ritual economy, and I believe this part will be of particular interest to scholars of Chinese religion. While other scholars have addressed the relationship between religion and transnational migration, Cosmologies of Credit provides a far more nuanced picture of how locally embedded religious practices have become an integral part of efforts by Chinese to remake themselves so as to become mobile and cosmopolitan subjects. By talking about the politics of destination in Longyan’s emigrant community, Chu shows how rural Chinese subjects, not unlike Max Weber’s Protestants in connecting religious ethic to the capitalist reality, enact their beliefs and values in the context of China’s globalization and modernization, in which spatial mobility has become central to the formation of the modern Chinese subject. Specifically, she highlights the processes in which the Fuzhounese negotiate with divine authorities (gods, ghosts, ancestors) in seeking to become mobile subjects, thus defying the hegemonic forces of the Chinese state project of modernity and a globalizing economy. In this regard, renqing (人情 human feeling) and karmic relations feature prominently in local Longyan residents’ struggles and desire for transnational mobility, their maintaining and transmitting such an intense desire, and their fulfilling moral obligations to the family, children, and community left behind. The rich ethnographic vignettes repeatedly remind the reader that it is “a cosmology of value and value transformation” (p. 12), rather than purely rational economic calculation that has profoundly shaped...