Alison Denton Jones is a Fellow in Sociology at Harvard University for
2019-2020 while on a book sabbatical. Her research interests include
cultural and organizational sociology, religion, social movements, civil
society, urban studies, China and East Asia, and research methodology,
especially qualitative methods. Jones’ research engages with
long-standing questions in sociology regarding the role of religion in a
modern society, especially in cities, and with the diffusion and
adaptation of Western conceptual and organizational models in other
“modernizing” societies. She primarily focuses on urban religion and
organizations in Chinese and North American societies.
Her current book project, “Blood Drives, Bodhisattvas, and Blogs: Doing
Buddhism in China’s 21st Century Urban Middle Class,” offers the first
picture of an overlooked piece of China’s urban religious landscape: the
vast number of white collar urbanites who practice Buddhism. The book
shows how cosmopolitan urban Buddhists seek to create authentic and
useful Buddhist practices, organizations, and narratives about
religion’s place in society, while negotiating pressures for legitimacy
with the state, from skeptics of religion among their peers, and the
ubiquitous pressures of daily urban life.