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Description
Buddhist monastics are part of local communities, are governed through national legal frameworks, and participate in both national and transnational Buddhist networks. Educating Monks makes visible the ways Buddhist communities are shaped by all of the above - collectively and often simultaneously.
For some time now, Thomas Borchert’s sophisticated perspective on Buddhism has been working its way into the province of Buddhist studies through his papers. His long-awaited book—Educating Monks: Minority Buddhism on China’s South- west Border—brings to light the ethnographic background on which he has built this perspective. . . . With his agility in crossing through the various strata of Theravada social life, Borchert reminds us that Theravadin formations everywhere involve a much more complex set up than the local/universal binary. Educating Monks is an important book. Solidly grounded in empirical research, it presents us with a unique ethnography of the lives of ethnic minority monks and novices living in a less well-known corner of China and practicing a minority form of Buddhism. At the same time, it provides a convincing analysis of one way of being a Buddhist in the modern world by showing how such an existence is both anchored in the local as well as it is linked up in multiple different ways with translocal networks. . . . This book is highly recommended to students, researchers, and general readers with an interest in local minority cultures in China and Southeast Asia, in modern Theravāda Buddhism, as well as in Buddhism in general.
Thomas A. Borchert is associate professor of religion at the University of Vermont.
Mark Michael Rowe is associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies, McMaster University.
For some time now, Thomas Borchert’s sophisticated perspective on Buddhism has been working its way into the province of Buddhist studies through his papers. His long-awaited book—Educating Monks: Minority Buddhism on China’s South- west Border—brings to light the ethnographic background on which he has built this perspective. . . . With his agility in crossing through the various strata of Theravada social life, Borchert reminds us that Theravadin formations everywhere involve a much more complex set up than the local/universal binary. Educating Monks is an important book. Solidly grounded in empirical research, it presents us with a unique ethnography of the lives of ethnic minority monks and novices living in a less well-known corner of China and practicing a minority form of Buddhism. At the same time, it provides a convincing analysis of one way of being a Buddhist in the modern world by showing how such an existence is both anchored in the local as well as it is linked up in multiple different ways with translocal networks. . . . This book is highly recommended to students, researchers, and general readers with an interest in local minority cultures in China and Southeast Asia, in modern Theravāda Buddhism, as well as in Buddhism in general.
Thomas A. Borchert is associate professor of religion at the University of Vermont.
Mark Michael Rowe is associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies, McMaster University.