Becoming Activists in Global China: Social Movements in the Chinese Diaspora by Andrew Junker (2020)

Reviewed by: Becoming Activists in Global China: Social Movements in the Chinese Diaspora by Andrew Junker Yuting Wang (bio) Andrew Junker. Becoming Activists in Global China: Social Movements in the Chinese Diaspora. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. x, 230 pp. Hardcover $99.99, isbn 978-1-108-48299-8. In her seminal book The Cult as a Social Problem (New York: Routledge, 2010), leading British sociologist of religion Eileen Barker juxtaposed Falun Gong with the early Christians, Muslims, and Methodists, as well as the Church of Scientology, the Nation of Islam, and Al Qaida to problematize the social construction of "wrong" or "bad" religions versus "true" and "good" religions. She notes that all the abovementioned groups have been seen as a threat to [End Page 43] their own followers and the social well-being at certain points in time. Yet, some have been able to establish themselves and grow into well-respected religions, while others are perpetually labeled as "cults" and face severe persecutions. Their different fates are the result of both primary and secondary social constructions that involve the practitioners themselves, the anti-cult coalitions, as well as the social scientists who take a scholarly interest in them. Indeed, these alternative or deviant religious groups often attract substantial media and scholarly attention. Through their portrayal in the media, religious cults and sects present a host of social problems, ranging from advocating heretical beliefs, being involving in child abuse or sexual scandals, engaging in illicit activities, exercising mind control techniques, and instigating anti-government political agendas. In contrast, embracing the principle of value neutrality, many social scientists are reluctant to associate the negative connotations with the members of these religious groups, as they tend to be dehumanizing. They adopted the term "new religious movements" (NRMs) to replace "cults" in the study of nonmajority religious groups that are in tension with the wider society, especially those that emerged after the end of the Second World War in a presumed secular rational society. Although there is considerable debate on what constitutes NRMs exactly, the term has taken a strong foothold in the sociology of religion and set the tone for research on a wide range of phenomena that loosely fall under the banner of NRMs. The lasting interest among sociologists in NRMs is not only a response to the return of religion to the public square since the 1970s, but also creates links between the sociological study of religion and other areas of social sciences. Andrew Junker's book Becoming Activists in Global China: Social Movements in the Chinese Diaspora is an exemplar work that combines a sociological analysis of NRMs with a study of social movements and contentious politics, through a close comparison of Falun Gong and the Overseas Democracy Movement, or Minyun—two of the most visible Chinese diaspora social movements in the reform era. While the title of Junker's book makes no reference to NRMs in general, nor to Falun Gong in particular, the majority of his research revolves around Falun Gong, an "evil cult" that has been banned in China since 1999 but sustains an influence in the global Chinese diaspora much larger than its membership entails. The decision to publish the book under the current title, instead of another title Making Activists in Global China: Transnational Mobilization in Falun Gong and the Chinese Democracy Movement, may be a tactic to avoid unwanted attention. It is also evident that framing the study as a comparative analysis of social movements rather than a study of Falun Gong per se distinguishes Junker's work from the sizable literature on Falun Gong that has emerged over the past two decades, which rarely speaks to the literature on Chinese sectarian groups and pays no attention to the "progressive" or "proto-democratic" characteristics [End Page 44] of Falun Gong mobilization. Indeed, the ingenuity of Junker's work primarily lies in its focus on the "social movement-ness" of Falun Gong. Emerging during the qigong boom in China that began in the 1980s and lasted until 1999, Falun Gong was founded in 1992 by Li Hongzhi, an ordinary person from the northeastern city of Changchun. Combining qigong exercises with ideas borrowed from...