Religion Matters: Movable Hearth, Continuing Past: The Dynamics of Community and Heritage in Macau’s Belief and Customs of Tou-Tei (Earth God) 

Since the turn of the millennium, discussions of heritage have shifted beyond understanding the term as historically and aesthetically valuable objects, sites and events, to analysing it as being in constant construction, taking into account iterative meaning-making, discoursing and bodily performance. From this perspective, heritage is a process that entails aspects of the past, whether of ancient or contemporary origin, emerging into the ever-present and continuously practised by the people. Nonetheless, how is heritage a “process”, given the intense mobility of populations and constant politico-economic development nowadays? 

In this lecture, we will look into the practice of the belief of Tou-Tei (Earth God) in Macau, an age-old, diffused yet evolving belief system that entails multiple material and event-related manifestations. Drawing on archival reading and ethnographic research, we will expose the often-overlooked assumption in heritage studies: that a certain community is linked with a certain heritage, without scrutinising what the community is constituted of or what heritage means to its practising people. Instead, the continuity of heritage depends on the recurrent convergence of people for a materially compatible and communally meaningful practice across time. Between these double dynamics, micro-processes such as the communication of memory, grassroots cooperation and valorisation, and creative place-based actions drive the ongoing construction of community and, through it, heritage. Proposing to comprehend heritage in its “verb” form–“to inherit”, we will conclude by stressing human agency in this process of heritage, which, in turn, sustains people’s repeated meaning-making and participation.  

The Speaker

Ka Yin Caspar Chan is a PhD researcher at the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society at the University of Groningen. Drawing on critical heritage studies, memory studies and visual ethnography, and analysing cases from Macau, his current research examines the dynamic relationship between cultural heritage and communities’ memory. He also has expertise in East Asian heritage and Macau’s colonial history, with particular attention to the flow and sedimentation of populations, ideas and practices across cultures.