Stating the sacred: Religion, China, and the formation of the nation-state

Abstract

and protection, it is unsurprising that these processes, as the authors note, do not frequently feature in the parents’ interview responses. Whilst this could legitimately be construed as a weakness of this study’s research design and thus the resultant findings, again, no study can cover everything, and it will be important for sociologists of religion to consider the findings of this research alongside other studies, where children’s and young people’s voices play a more prominent role. This book sets out to faithfully represent parents’ indepth accounts of religious inter-generational transmission, an area that has been somewhat neglected in previous work in this field, and in this regard, it is highly successful in meeting its aims. Overall, this book makes a very valuable contribution to several fields of social scientific inquiry, including the study of intergenerational religious transmission, the social dynamics of parenting and family life, and the sociology of religion and of culture more generally. It successfully meets its key objectives, helping to fill a gap in the literature by providing a set of important empirical findings and persuasive theoretical arguments. A particular strength is the in-depth, qualitative nature of the research, in a field where quantitative approaches have traditionally been quite dominant. The work is very well written with clear and accessible expression and the rich and abundant interview quotes are a real joy to read. In summary, this book comes as highly recommended.