The Contemporary Religious Marketplace in China and the Role of Rational Choice Theory
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In spite of the state‐sanctioned restrictions on religion following the Cultural Revolution and the relaxed, albeit still limiting, policy in 1979, religion has continued to persist in Chinese culture through inventive practices. Religious adherents partake in a unique religious marketplace, in which choice is curtailed by political bans. However, religiosity has maneuvered through such sanctions, producing an unusual market and suggesting an inherent sociological drive towards forming religious community. Rational choice theory suggests a theory of religious economy in which a supply and demand model determines the success or failure of particular religious traditions. Through access to a religious marketplace in a religiously pluralistic society, religious ‘consumers’ may select religions which fulfill their expectations and spiritual needs. While the model of the religious marketplace is credible in regards to the North American religious situation, rational choice theory in contemporary China requires a more complex model. Due to historical restrictions on Chinese religious practice, a religious market was rendered temporarily invisible, thus creating innovative religious choices and options for Chinese communities. This has resulted in a ‘tripartite religious market’, as described in the work of Fenggang Yang. Through Yang’s work, we can understand China as maintaining a religious marketplace which looks dissimilar to that of North America. By viewing the Chinese market through the lens of rational choice theory, it is clear that religion and religious choice has thrived in China in a new sociological mechanism.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".