ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the ways in which Chinese temple community groups still contribute an independent voice of a local public sphere—perhaps not a civil society, but an alternative vehicle for social capital and political transformation. It shows how religion has evolved under the different modernities of Taiwan and China, creating still further permutations of civil association. In the area of religion, at least, these cases suggest that women play a pivotal role in the creation of new kinds of local social networks outside the state, seeing and occupying areas of free space that are not available to men. The combination of gender bias and authoritarian politics puts these women at the forefront of developing a social world apart from the state, an informal civil world. The various facets of this split market culture have different implications for the sorts of civil organizations that can serve as reservoirs of social capital.
