Getting Enlightened: A Comparative Study of Buddhist Temples in Mainland China and the US
| dc.contributor.advisor | Ecklund, Elaine Howard | |
| dc.creator | Di, Di | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2019-05-23T19:41:52Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2019-05-23T19:41:52Z | |
| dc.date.created | 2019-08 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2019-05-23 | |
| dc.date.submitted | August 2019 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2019-05-23T19:41:52Z | |
| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation examines the intersection of religion, ethnicity, and gender in two Chinese Mahayana Buddhist temples that are affiliated with the same international Buddhist headquarters, but situated in two distinctive national contexts: mainland China and the US. In particular, I examine the contextualization of global Buddhism. Three research questions guided this study: (1) What are people’s religious experiences in the two Buddhist temples? (2) In what way are religion, gender, and ethnicity constructed in these two faith communities? (3) In what way, and to what extent, is a globalized religion contextualized? The theoretical framework that guided this study is a discussion of the relation between people’s agency and social institutions, which illustrates the way individuals are constrained and enabled by authoritative discourses, also referred to as institutional norms, in the social institutions in which they are situated. This study relied on a 15-month ethnographic study in two Buddhist temples and 80 in-depth interviews (conducted in both Mandarin and English) with ethnic Chinese Buddhist practitioners within the temples. The findings related to the first research question revealed that, although Buddhists in the two temples practice the same type of Buddhism and follow a similar set of authoritative Buddhist discourses, they construct two different types of religious identities actively according to the founding master’s words. Buddhists in the temple in China construct temple-specific Buddhist identities, while their counterparts in the temple in the US construct individual-centered Buddhist identities. The findings that addressed the second research question illustrated that, while monastic leaders in the temples may express gender and ethnicity in somewhat similar ways, their construction differs in the two temples. Based on the findings related to the first two research questions, to address the third research question, I argue that religious people’s agency is the locus to understand the contextualization of global Buddhism. However, in contrast to previous scholars who have focused predominantly on the dialectical relations between individuals—Buddhist practitioners in one case and the social institution of religion in another case, I argue that, when developing their agency, monastic members and religious practitioners evaluate their positions constantly in the broader national context and navigate the religious norms with the cultural resources that are accessible to the broader and even secular national contexts. This navigation process helps practitioners construct a collective form of agency in the Chinese and an individual form in the US temple. Taken together, this dissertation reveals the localization of a seemingly globalized social institution, proposes a novel and contextualized understanding of people’s agency, and offers implications for the sociology of religion, gender, and ethnicity. | |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Di, Di. "Getting Enlightened: A Comparative Study of Buddhist Temples in Mainland China and the US." (2019) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/106042">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/106042</a>. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1911/106042 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | |
| dc.rights | Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder. | |
| dc.subject | Buddhism | |
| dc.subject | China | |
| dc.subject | the US | |
| dc.title | Getting Enlightened: A Comparative Study of Buddhist Temples in Mainland China and the US | |
| dc.type | Thesis | |
| dc.type.material | Text | |
| thesis.degree.department | Sociology | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Social Sciences | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | Rice University | |
| thesis.degree.level | Doctoral | |
| thesis.degree.name | Doctor of Philosophy |
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