Belt-and-Road Buddhists: Religion-Making and the Rebuilding of Minority Buddhism in the Reform Era
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 prioritie...
| 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: |
Brill
[2020]
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| In: |
Review of Religion and Chinese Society
Year: 2020, Volume: 7, Issue: 1, Pages: 92-119 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
China
/ Religious policy
/ Xishuangbanna
/ Lue
/ national minority
/ Theravada
/ Socioeconomic change
/ History 1980-2019
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| RelBib Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AG Religious life; material religion BL Buddhism KBM Asia ZC Politics in general |
| Further subjects: | B
宗教和政治
B Sipsongpannā B 西双版纳 B 中国的少数民族 B Theravada Buddhism B 宗教 B religion-making B Chinese minorities B Religion And Politics B 上座部佛教 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | 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. |
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| ISSN: | 2214-3955 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Review of Religion and Chinese Society
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/22143955-00701005 |