Coming to Terms with "Engaged Buddhism": Periodizing, Provincializing, and Politicizing the Concept
Whatever happened to "Engaged Buddhism"? Twenty years after a flurry of publication placing this global movement firmly on the map, enthusiasm for the term itself appears to have evaporated. I attempt to reconstruct what happened: scholars turned away from the concept for its reproducing c...
| 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: |
[publisher not identified]
2022
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| In: |
Journal of global buddhism
Year: 2022, Volume: 23, Issue: 1, Pages: 17-31 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Buddhism
/ Social engagement
/ Social movement
/ Science of Religion
/ Trend
/ History 1990-2022
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| IxTheo Classification: | AA Study of religion AD Sociology of religion; religious policy BL Buddhism FD Contextual theology NCC Social ethics RK Charity work TK Recent history |
| Further subjects: | B
Modern Buddhism
B humanistic Buddhism B Engaged Buddhism |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Whatever happened to "Engaged Buddhism"? Twenty years after a flurry of publication placing this global movement firmly on the map, enthusiasm for the term itself appears to have evaporated. I attempt to reconstruct what happened: scholars turned away from the concept for its reproducing colonialist understandings of traditional Buddhism as essentially world-rejecting, and they developed alternate discourses for describing Buddhist actors’ multifarious social and political engagements, especially in contemporary Asia. I describe the specific rise and fall of the term in Anglophone scholarship, in order for scholars to better grasp the evolution of contemporary Western, Anglophone Buddhisms, to better understand what Buddhists in Asia are in fact doing with the term, and to better think through what it might mean politically for us as scholars to deploy the term at all. In particular, I identify "Academic Engaged Buddhism" (1988-2009) as one hegemonic form of Engaged Buddhism, a Western Buddhist practitioner-facing anthological project of Euro-American scholars with potentially powerful but unevenly distributed effects on Buddhist thought and practice around the world. |
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| ISSN: | 1527-6457 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of global buddhism
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.26034/lu.jgb.2022.1991 |