Ever since the “Battle of Seattle” halted the World Trade Organization meeting in November of 1999, social movement scholars have debated whether the transnational activists who protested in Seattle and in subsequent international summits constitute a unified global movement with a shared identity, values and goals, or if they are an ad hoc, heterogeneous collection of people from separate movements. This study suggests that it may be useful to distinguish between a “negative” –or reactive –and a “positive” –or proactive –convergence. Studies that focus on the negative convergence see participants as protestors who are simply resisting market-

driven forces. In contrast, in a positive convergence approach, participants are seen as sharing common values and working together to build an alternative future.

This study focuses on the Alter-Globalization Movement to investigate whether there is an empirical basis for the positive convergence approach. Most of the research done on the Alter-Globalization Movement has focused on the participants at protest sites, which tends to overemphasize individual grievances at the expense of finding a shared common vision. I employ an alternative methodology by carrying out fieldwork across sixteen disparate communities in both the global North and South. Only by studying community practices in day to day life can we state whether a shared identity really exists. Following Karl Polanyi’s “double movement theory”, I look at how these communities are decommodifying man and nature by employing Standing’s formula of decomodification. Specifically, I analyze how Social Income increases by increasing Self Production and Community Benefits.

I find that all the communities and organizations studied employ most of the following decomodification practices: subsistence farming, organic agriculture, composting, seed saving, Fair Trade, Community Supported Agriculture, sharing goods and services and community currencies. I argue that these decomodification practices produce a new lifestyle that removes the self from the artificiality of consumer culture, creating a new self. The ecological identity of the new self, centers on relationships rather than acquisition, constructing a new world of meaning and a social imaginary that may be more powerful than political movements in bringing about large scale social change.

As an authoritarian state, the Chinese government has a vested interest in maintaining its legitimacy in the eyes of its people as well as their adherence to its directives. At the same time, China has spent the last few decades successfully integrating itself into the global economy. Correspondingly, Chinese individuals have increased access to global cultural and information flows, which might include ideas that challenge the government’s authority. This dissertation details how the government uses its educational system, in particular, to promote itself relative to global political alternatives. The dissertation further evaluates the extent to which the curriculum succeeds in its goals in ensuring students’ belief in government legitimacy and their adherence to government mandates.

This project draws on fieldwork done at a Chinese university over the course of one year. During that time, I analyzed government-published textbooks; attended the political classes required for all Chinese university students; interviewed teachers and students; and administered surveys to the students. I find that the impact of the curriculum is limited. It succeeds when its discourse matches what students already believe, such as the broadly-shared perspective that other countries persecute China. Those beliefs are not solely due to government influence. Yet the curriculum fails when its discourse conflicts with global perspectives that the students have already adopted, such as what the practice of science entails. Nonetheless, the structure of the university ensures that students adhere to institutional and political authority even in the absence of trust in the government, and the structure additionally limits exposure to foreign individuals and culture that might further modify student perspectives regarding the political status quo. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of the impact of studying abroad on student perspectives. While the more direct foreign exposure may improve student opinions on other countries, I draw on additional fieldwork at an American university to show how the Chinese government can use its affiliated Chinese Student and Scholar Association to mitigate the impact of foreign exposure and reinforce government authority from a distance.

This dissertation explores the connection between China's rapid socio-economic change in the past thirty years and new patterns of dating, marriage, and migration that have emerged. Specifically, I examine the phenomenon of internet-mediated, commercially arranged cross-border marriage between women from China and men from English-speaking Western countries such as the U.S. or Canada. I analyze why Chinese women seek foreign husbands (despite China's 34 million male-female gender gap) and how their marriage brokers facilitate their courtship. The couples in my study do not speak each other's language and rely on translators at their dating agencies to facilitate their email exchanges, online instant messaging, and web-cam meetings for months before they meet in person. I explore the commodification of intimacy in China's post-reform era and examine its effect on race, class, and gender across cultural and geographical borders.

This qualitative research focuses on one Buddhist temple in urban Shanghai from the ground up to better understand the contours of lay practice oriented toward and inspired by Buddhism in contemporary China. It helps fill an important gap in the scholarship on contemporary Chinese Buddhism which has tended toward top-down investigations of elite temples and practitioners, textual traditions, and state influence. A religious ecology framework emphasizing the relationships between elements is used to describe the temple community and contribute to conceptualizing a spectrum of lay Buddhist practice in China today.

The temple has two clear groups of practitioners; a core group of regularly participating lay Buddhists and a wider, more numerous, group whose practices are rooted in popular religious culture. Each has clear in-group similarity and practices based on a distinct religious foundation. However, participants of both groups share a place of worship, cultural heritage, and certain values. I outline a temple ecology built on interdependence and, at times, ambivalence between the groups. The temple promotes a generalized culture that allows for both groups to fulfill their aims and the community to thrive. Comprehensive analysis of participant practices also allows for conceptualizing the ecology of lay practice oriented toward Buddhism more broadly in a way that draws out the important connections between the lay Buddhist and popular practices found at the temple. A theoretically grounded defining feature of practicing lay Buddhism is proposed that can effectively account for the breadth and distinctiveness of temple practices and contribute to describing a spectrum of lay Buddhist practice in urban China today.

Finally, the findings about lay practice on the ground challenge the extent which efforts to modernize, contain, and control Buddhism have been successful in purifying Buddhism of its popular elements. At this local temple, instead, both groups are accepted and supported which is necessary for its survival and success. The temple is also an important venue for the spread of Buddhism and renewal of shared values in the community. These findings about the complexities of urban temple Buddhism in China should encourage additional reflection about the forces shaping Chinese Buddhism today.

Although the climate scientists of the IPCC and the UC posit that religion may be helpful in persuading world populations to adopt the sustainable lifestyles necessary to mitigating climate change, the academic literature does not necessarily support this contention. One exception seems to be the case of Taiwan where two humanistic Buddhist groups have influenced the majority of Buddhists on the island to adopt important aspects of sustainable lifestyles. This multi-sited ethnographic study uses participant observation with formal and informal interviews to research these two groups—the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation and Dharma Drum Mountain—in the two different social contexts of Taiwan and California. A comparative analysis of the results finds that the believers’ adoption of pro-environmental lifestyle changes is strongly influenced by their membership in a strong moral community, by sensing the material and social, or “terrestrial,” strain of environmental degradation coupled with a feeling that the government and other official institutions are not doing enough, and by integrated religious teachings, which include theory and praxis, from authoritative figures who model the desired behaviors. Moreover, this study shows the power of the sacred to inspire behavioral change, which, in the context of Buddhism, is cultivation of the bodhisattva ethic on the path to attaining enlightenment. The biggest difference between the two social contexts is that Taiwan’s Confucian cultural roots produced a relationship-based society, while American society is more institutional. This difference creates challenges for the groups in America; nevertheless, they have enjoyed some success among immigrants and people who resonate with them and appreciate their help. These Buddhists’ success in the U.S. and Taiwan shows that religion’s “power of the sacred” can have a positive effect in contemporary, post-modern society, when religious groups effectively reflect the immediate concerns of their local communities. Hence, the process by which these groups responded to the strain of environmental degradation by integrating pro-environmental teachings, practices, and behavioral norms into their spiritual cultivation and their deployment of local cultural symbols to facilitate adoption of those norms may serve as a pattern to other religious groups responding to environmental degradation in other communities.