Table of Contents
CFP> Call
for Papers for "Bad Buddhism" Special Issue with Journal of Global
Buddhism
by Hannah Gould
Following on from the successful "The good in
'bad Buddhism: beyond ancient wisdom for contemporary woes" panel at ASA2018 Oxford, the convenors are organising a Special
Issue with The Journal of Global Buddhism on the topic of
"Bad Buddhism". We are opening up this Call for Papers outside
of conference panellists to diversify the ethnographic and theoretical
scope of contributions. The Journal of Global Buddhism is an open access, peer reviewed scholarly journal established to promote the study of the globalisation of Buddhism, both historical and contemporary, and its transnational and transcontinental interrelatedness (more here).
The Special Issue will address thequestion, “How do we move on from asking the question ‘is this Buddhist?’ and searching for an answer in text?” It will be broadly organised into three sections: 1) Political Buddhisms; 2) Materialistic Buddhisms; and 3) Moral or "Good Bad Buddhisms" (aka practices not deemed 'Buddhist' but nevertheless valorised).
For more details, please see the original Call for Papers for the conference below:
From global peace icons like the
Dalai Lama, to discourses of anti-materialism and medical studies of the benefits
of meditation, Buddhism has garnered a reputation in global popular culture as
a 'good' religion. Often, this shining image is couched in an imagining of
Buddhism as an "ancient salve" for modern times, free from the
degenerate violence, politics, and consumerism of contemporary (often Western)
society. Inside academia, work on canonical texts similarly fixes 'true'
Buddhism in a long-passed era and diminishes the centrality of transformations
in understanding and practice.
For anthropologists, who are
methodologically primed to resist reproducing orthodoxy, contemporary Buddhism
thus presents a challenge. Some scholars explore divergences as sites of
separation between faith and social processes; others, who assert the lived
nature of contemporary religion, find themselves writing ethnographies of 'bad
Buddhists' and 'bad Buddhism'.
This panel explores how historical
imaginings of Buddhism intersect with contemporary ethnographic experience. We
invite scholars working in all geographical regions to take points of
disconnection between Buddhism's imagining, materiality and sociality as
opportunities for re-thinking the anthropology of religion. Particularly, we
ask them to consider how their work's engagement with Buddhism's consumerism,
violence, or political engagement relates to a 'thing called Buddhism' in both
academia and popular culture. How might we view these phenomena as a part of
Buddhism, rather than responses to social pressures cloaked in religious
symbolism, for efficacy, influence, and popular acceptance? Does speaking of
multiple 'Buddhisms' help us? Or can a re-imagined anthropology offer an escape
from 'bad Buddhism'?
To make a submission, please email the convenors by December
31st 2018 with a title and an abstract of 200-250
words. The deadline for full papers will be March 31st 2019. For
more information about article specifications in the Journal of Global
Buddhism, please see the author submission guidelines. Please note
guidelines on word length and formatting.
If you have any questions, contact:
Hannah Gould, Melbourne University, hannahhg@unimelb.edu.au
Melyn McKay, Oxford University, melyn.mckay@anthro.ox.ac.uk
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