Ritual and pluralism: Incommensurable values and techniques of commensurability in contemporary urban Chinese funerals

The default funeral in Shanghai today consists of religious variations of a secular socialist civil ritual. Within this ritual, however, is a clear paradox: how can one create religious "variations" of a secular and socialist funeral that explicitly denies any recognition of spirits or the afterlife? How do socialist, religious, Confucian, and even Christian ideas of personhood and death become commensurable in one single ritual? This paper explores the relationships between incommensurable values through commemorations of the dead in Shanghai. This article not only shows how a single ritual can realize multiple seemingly incommensurable values but also details two different techniques for making such incommensurable values commensurable. My findings show that what makes value pluralism possible depends on how people conceptualize rituals. When people see rituals as following social conventions, there is more space for pluralism, but when people treat rituals as making personal testimonies, the possibility for pluralism decreases.