Global Grassroots: Transnational Yiguandao Networks and South Africa as a ‘Typical’ Case

Naomi Fastovsky, Ph.D. Candidate, Committee on the Study of Religion, Harvard University

Abstract: For many branches of the Chinese religious group, Yiguandao 一貫道, the twenty-first century has been characterized by propagation efforts around the world. One location in particular—South Africa— stands out for throwing in sharp relief dynamics that can be found in all locations around the world. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in and around Johannesburg South Africa, this project looks at the transmission of Yiguandao to South Africa since its inception in the latter half of the twentieth century until now. It shows that while encounters across difference in Yiguandao transmission have often been characterized by ideas of border crossings, be they national, cultural, or religious, it is in fact more accurate to understand practitioners as embedded within complex, layered, and power-laden transnational networks—what I am calling the global grassroots. In service of this argument, I discuss three borders, present in all propagation locations but standing out starkly in South Africa: 1. branch and tradition, 2. the Taiwan Strait, and 3. the foreign-local divide. At the sight of each border crossing, rich images of multivalent, networked relationality emerge. Yiguandao practitioners’ networked relationality—the global grassroots—punches will above its weight, offering insights relevant to such important topics as south-south relations, the China-Africa relationship, and global modernity writ large.