Belt-and-Road Buddhists

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-119
Author(s):  
Thomas Borchert
Keyword(s):  
Minority Group ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Theravada Buddhism ◽  
Reform Era ◽  
Reform Period ◽  
Belt And Road

Although religious institutions and communities have grown significantly in China since the early 1980s, the recent past has seen difficult conditions for the practice of religion, with increased surveillance and oppressive acts by the Chinese government. Changes to government policies and priorities make it difficult to generalize about the conditions of religious practice over the course of the Reform period. This paper examines the monastic institutions of the Dai-lue people of Sipsongpannā (Xishuangbanna 西双版纳) in Yunnan province. The Dai-lue are a minority group that practices Theravada Buddhism. Their religious institutions have expanded significantly in the last four decades, but they have done so in the midst of radical change in the economic and governing structures of the region. The paper looks at this development both across the forty years of the Reform era, and in the context of a promotion and international conference sponsored by the sangha of Sipsongpannā. I argue that the changes to the monastic institutions of the Dai-lue need to be seen in light of changes to “religion-making from above,” the policies, rules, and structures that the Chinese state establishes to manage religious communities, as well as “religion-making from below,” the responses of the Dai-lue to these changes.

Educating Monks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Borchert
Keyword(s):  
High Schools ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Junior High Schools ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Theravada Buddhism ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Reform Era ◽  
And Training

Educating Monks examines the education and training of novices and young Buddhist monks of a Tai minority group on China’s Southwest border. The Buddhists of this region, the Dai-lue, are Chinese citizens but practice Theravada Buddhism and have long-standing ties to the Theravāda communities of Southeast Asia. The book shows how Dai-lue Buddhists train their young men in village temples, monastic junior high schools and in transnational monastic educational institutions, as well as the political context of redeveloping Buddhism during the Reform era in China. While the book focuses on the educational settings in which these young boys are trained, it also argues that in order to understand how a monk is made, it is necessary to examine local agenda, national politics and transnational Buddhist networks.

Jewish religious communities in Kuban and Terek regions at the second half of the XIX - the beginning of the XX centuries

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10) ◽  
pp. 165-178
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Norkina
Keyword(s):  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
Small Communities ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
History Of

The article is devoted to the history of the formation and features of the functioning of Jewish religious institutions outside the Pale of Settlement in the second half of the XIXth — early XXth centuries. The study is based on the materials of the Kuban and Terek regions, which had a somewhat different administrative and political structure from most other regions. Historically, the peculiarities of these areas influenced the policy of the authorities in towards the Jews, which influenced the activities of rabbis and synagogues. Despite the fact that the activities of rabbis and synagogues were constantly interrupted due to a number of external circumstances, members of local Jewish societies actively engaged in dialogue with the authorities and sought to revive religious buildings to life. Even small communities of Kuban and Terek tried to support their religious institutions and preserve the traditions of Judaism.

Butinage: The Art of Religious Mobility

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yonatan N Gez ◽  
Yvan Droz ◽  
Jeanne Rey ◽  
Edio Soares
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Foraging Activity ◽  
French Word ◽  
Pollinating Insects ◽  
Shed Light

Based on comparative ethnographic research in four countries and three continents, Butinage: The Art of Religious Mobility explores the notion of "religious butinage" as a conceptual framework intended to shed light on the dynamics of everyday religious practice. Derived from the French word butiner, which refers to the foraging activity of bees and other pollinating insects, this term is employed by the authors metaphorically to refer to the "to-ing and fro-ing" of believers between religious institutions.

scholarly journals A Sense of Presence: Mediating an American Apocalypse

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Rachel Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sense Of Presence ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come

Here I build upon Robert Orsi’s work by arguing that we can see presence—and the longing for it—at work beyond the obvious spaces of religious practice. Presence, I propose, is alive and well in mediated apocalypticism, in the intense imagination of the future that preoccupies those who consume its narratives in film, games, and role plays. Presence is a way of bringing worlds beyond into tangible form, of touching them and letting them touch you. It is, in this sense, that Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward observe the “re-emergence” of religion with a “new visibility” that is much more than “simple re-emergence of something that has been in decline in the past but is now manifesting itself once more.” I propose that the “new awareness of religion” they posit includes the mediated worlds that enchant and empower us via deeply immersive fandoms. Whereas religious institutions today may be suspicious of presence, it lives on in the thick of media fandoms and their material manifestations, especially those forms that make ultimate promises about the world to come.

They Lived Under That Rule as Do Those Who Have Succeeded Them: Simultaneity and Conflict in the Foundation Narratives of a French Women’s Convent (10th–18th Centuries)

2021 ◽  
Vol 139 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-97
Author(s):  
Steven Vanderputten
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Women Religious ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Eastern Region ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Memory Culture

While foundation accounts of medieval religious institutions have been the focus of intense scholarly interest for decades, so far there has been comparatively little interest in how successive versions related to each other in the perception of medieval and early modern observers. This essay considers that question via a case study of three such narratives about the 930s creation of Bouxières Abbey, a convent of women religious in France’s eastern region of Lorraine. At the heart of its argument stands the hypothesis that these conflicting narratives of origins were allowed to coexist in the memory culture of this small convent because they related to different arguments in its identity narrative. As such, it hopes to contribute to an ill-understood aspect of foundation narratives as a literary genre and a memorial practice in religious communities, with particular attention to long-term developments.

China's Macroeconomy in Transition

1995 ◽  
Vol 144 ◽  
pp. 1083-1104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Naughton
Keyword(s):  
Inflation Rate ◽  
Chinese Economy ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Soft Landing ◽  
Successive Cycle ◽  
Reform Era ◽  
Inflationary Phase ◽  
Boom And Bust ◽  
Boom And Bust Cycles ◽  
Austerity Policy

Is macroeconomic stability the Achilles heel of the Chinese economy? Recurrent bouts of inflationary disorder lead some observers to worry that the Chinese government is unable to control the economy. Macroeconomic difficulties show up in a pattern of repeated boom and bust cycles, in which each boom is accompanied by an acute inflationary phase and significant disruption. Moreover, since the reform era began, the peak annual inflation rate of each successive cycle has been higher than that of the preceding one. The most recent attempts to cool off the economy have only led to additional questions. An austerity policy was decreed at the end of June 1993, yet inflation actually accelerated in 1994, and it was not until mid-1995 that it dropped to the levels of mid-1993. The Chinese government was engaged in a quest for an economic “soft landing” for two years without a net reduction in the inflation rate!

scholarly journals Sisters and Brothers Abroad: Gender, Race, Empire and Anglican Missionary Reformism in Hawai‘i and the Pacific, 1858–75

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 328-344
Author(s):  
Steven S. Maughan
Keyword(s):  
East Africa ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Continued Use ◽  
High Church

British Anglo-Catholic and high church Anglicans promoted a new set of foreign missionary initiatives in the Pacific and South and East Africa in the 1860s. Theorizing new indigenizing models for mission inspired by Tractarian medievalism, the initiatives envisioned a different and better engagement with ‘native’ cultures. Despite setbacks, the continued use of Anglican sisters in Hawai‘i and brothers in Melanesia, Africa and India created a potent new imaginative space for missionary endeavour, but one problematized by the uneven reach of empire: from contested, as in the Pacific, to normal and pervasive, as in India. Of particular relevance was the Sandwich Islands mission, invited by the Hawaiian crown, where Bishop T. N. Staley arrived in 1862, followed by Anglican missionary sisters in 1864. Immensely controversial in Britain and America, where among evangelicals in particular suspicion of ‘popish’ religious practice ran high, Anglo-Catholic methods and religious communities mobilized discussion, denunciation and reaction. Particularly in the contested imperial space of an independent indigenous monarchy, Anglo-Catholics criticized what they styled the cruel austerities of evangelical American ‘puritanism’ and the ambitions of American imperialists; in the process they catalyzed a reconceptualized imperial reformism with important implications for the shape of the late Victorian British empire.

scholarly journals Litigating the Limits of Religion: Minority and Majority Concerns about Institutional Religious Liberty in India

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 400
Author(s):  
Chad M. Bauman
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Considerable Effort

Western religious liberty advocates tend to focus on restrictions placed on minority religious communities, particularly when advocating abroad, that is, outside of the country in which they reside. In all contemporary democracies, however, adherents of religious majorities also express concerns about religious liberty. For this reason, the article considers both minority and majority concerns about institutional religious freedom in India. This essay provides an overview of religious freedom issues, with a particular focus on institutions, though, as I acknowledge, it is not always simple to distinguish individual from institutional matters of religious freedom. After describing various minority and majority concerns about institutional religious freedom in India, and demonstrating that many of them are related to the Indian government’s distinctive approach to managing religion and religious institutions, I make the argument that while some cross-cutting issues provide the possibility of interreligious understanding and solidarity in matters of religious liberty advocacy, such solidarity will not emerge without considerable effort because of the fact that debates about religious liberty in India often fundamentally involve debates about the very nature of religion itself, and these debates tend to divide rather than unite India’s majority and minority religious communities.

Demystifying the Belt and Road Initiative: China’s domestic and non-strategic policy?

2021 ◽  
pp. 205789112110388
Author(s):  
Yuan Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Global Strategy ◽  
Chinese Economy ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Xi Jinping ◽  
One Belt One Road ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Strategic Policy ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Belt And Road

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a central policy of the Chinese government. The initiative is directly associated with President Xi Jinping, who first put forward the BRI in Kazakhstan and Indonesia in 2013, initially as One Belt One Road. Different from repetitive literature that concludes the BRI as China's global strategy, this article makes a contribution to argue that the BRI is China's domestic and non-strategic policy. To justify this argument, this article analyses how the BRI has been embedded into aspects of Chinese domestic policy by revealing its nexuses with Chinese domestic economy, politics and ideology. To deepen the understanding of the BRI's connection with the Chinese economy, this article explores the link between the BRI and China's supply-side structural reform. Meanwhile, this research demystifies the BRI as a global strategy and the difference between joining and rejecting the BRI to prove the BRI's non-strategic essence. In the end, this article discusses the BRI's far-reaching geopolitical influence.

We Should Push Countries along “Belt and Road Initiative” to Build Green Supply Chain

2018 ◽  
Vol 01 (01) ◽  
pp. 1850006
Author(s):  
Jingyan Fu
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
International Cooperation ◽  
Green Supply Chain ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Ecological Benefits ◽  
The People ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
The Belt And Road

Building a green supply chain in the countries along the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) route will not only generate huge economic and ecological benefits, it will also profit people in these countries and encourage the people in these countries to identify with the BRI as well as advance the development of this Initiative. Therefore, this research suggests the Chinese government taking the lead in jointly building a green supply chain with countries along BRI after the “Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation” in July 2017.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document