CiNii Books - Monks, money, and morality : the balancing act of contemporary Buddhism

Vibrantly engaging contemporary Buddhist lives, this book focuses on the material and financial relations of contemporary monks, temples, and laypeople. It shows that rather than being peripheral, economic exchanges are key to religious debate in Buddhist societies. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in countries ranging from India to Japan, including all three major Buddhist traditions, the book addresses the flows of goods and services between clergy and laity, the management of resources, the treatment of money, and the role of the state in temple economies. Along with documenting ritual and economic practices, these accounts deal with the moral challenges that Buddhist adherents are facing today, thereby bringing lived experience to the study of an often-romanticized religion.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Balancing Sangha Economies, Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko, Christoph Brumann and Beata Switek Part I: Reciprocity, Money and Trust 1. Economic Agency and the Spirit of Donation: The Commercialization of Buddhist Services in Japan, Beata Switek (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) 2. Merit, "Corruption," and Economy in the Contemporary Thai Sangha, Thomas Borchert (University of Vermont, USA) 3. Ritual Virtuosity, Large-Scale Priest-Patron Networks and the Ethics of Remunerated Ritual Services in Northeast Tibet, Nicolas Sihle (Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, CNRS, France) 4. 'Bad' Monks and Unworthy Donors: Money, (Mis)Trust and the Disruption of Sangha-Laity Relations in Shangri-La, Hannah Rosa Klepeis (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany) Part II: Beyond Reciprocity 5. Donations Inversed: Material Flows from Sangha to Laity in Post-Soviet Buryatia, Kristina Jonutyte (University of Vilnius, Lithuania) 6. Exorcising Mauss' Ghost in the Western Himalayas: Buddhist Giving as Collective Work, Martin Mills (University of Aberdeen, UK) Part III: Managing Temples and Monasteries 7. Monks and the Morality of Exchange: Reflections on a Village Temple Case in Southwest China, Roger Casas (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria) 8. Wealthy Mendicants: The Balancing Act of Sri Lankan Forest Monks, Prabhath Sirisena (University of Colombo, Sri Lanka) 9. Monastic Business Expansion in Post-Mao Tibet: Risk, Trust and Perception, Jane Caple (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) Part IV: Capitalism, Decline and Rebirth 10. Regeneration and the Age of Decline: Purification and Rebirth in Mongolian Buddhist Economies, Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) 11. Saintly Entrepreneurialism and Political Aspirations of Theravadin Saints in Mainland Southeast Asia, Alexander Horstmann (University of Tallinn, Estonia) Bibliography Index

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Monks, money, and morality : the balancing act of contemporary Buddhism

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