Imagining Buddhist modernism: the shared religious categories of scholars and American Buddhists
Scholarship on religion has often centered on the gaps between academic analysis and the self-understanding of religious people. In the study of Buddhism in America, however, many scholars and practitioners share cultural histories, material circumstances, and textual space. This article examines th...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge
[2020]
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| In: |
Religion
Year: 2020, Volume: 50, Issue: 4, Pages: 529-549 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
USA
/ Buddhism
/ Modernism
/ Scientific observation
/ Buddhist
/ Self-representation
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| IxTheo Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AG Religious life; material religion BL Buddhism |
| Further subjects: | B
Buddhism
B Buddhist Studies B current debates in religious studies B American Religion B Modernism B theory and method |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Summary: | Scholarship on religion has often centered on the gaps between academic analysis and the self-understanding of religious people. In the study of Buddhism in America, however, many scholars and practitioners share cultural histories, material circumstances, and textual space. This article examines the nature of the relationship between particular academics and particular convert Buddhists to argue that they share a way of thinking about religion: perceiving a strong dichotomy between modernity and tradition, and a resulting willingness to take Buddhist modernist narratives at face value as descriptions of religious life. This normative modernism, along with reactions against it, leads to the collapse of descriptive and prescriptive discourse on American Buddhism. By contrast, scholarship that does not participate in the dichotomy between modern and traditional religion reveals a much richer, messier, and more accurate picture of Buddhism in America, and the Buddhists whose practices and self-representations exceed the boundaries of modernism. |
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| ISSN: | 1096-1151 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/0048721X.2019.1664674 |