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Free keywords:
anthropology of Buddhism, Buddhist ritual, comparison, Mahāyāna Bud-dhism, reflexivity, religious field, tantric Buddhism, Theravāda Buddhism
Abstract:
The anthropology of Buddhism may give the impression of already having a well-established lineage. However, understood as a collective endeavor bringing together specialists from different parts of the Buddhist world in a comparative spirit, it remains very much an emerging project. We outline in this introduction some of the striking fea-tures of the beginnings of this subfield, such as how it has undergone a process of emanci-pation from textualist interpretations of Buddhism, and survey some of its main thematic and analytic orientations, pointing in particular to its most substantial ‘long conversation’, on the structure and dynamics of Buddhist religious fields. Throughout, we focus primar-ily on the period following an assessment of the subfield made by David Gellner in 1990. Finally, we stress the importance and highlight the promise of a comparative anthropol-ogy of Buddhism that builds on a critical, reflexive examination of its central concepts.
