Travelling Theory and Buddhist Sociology
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.31534Keywords:
Sociology, Buddhism, identity, suffering,Abstract
Drawing on the indigenous sociology movement, the paper explores the meaning of Buddhist sociology/social theory, unpacks the persistent binary between East/West that exists within this marriage of ideas and investigates how advocates of Buddhist sociology conceptualize the ‘West’ and ‘Western sociology’. Drawing on representative studies, it will then assess Buddhist sociology’s rejection of the mutilated and threatened sociological self and interrogate the relationship between individual and social suffering within Buddhist sociology. The paper makes three main points: Buddhist sociology homogenizes ‘Western sociology’ in order for it to conform to Buddhist principles, that the relationship between individual and social suffering within Buddhist sociology/social theory is ambiguous and that the appropriation of Buddhism has led to a process of ‘soft’ Othering.References
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Sztompka, Piotr. 2011. Another Sociological Utopia. Contemporary Sociology 40(4): 388-98. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094306111412512
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Young, Robert J.C. 1995. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race. Routledge, London.
Bell, Inge Powell. 1979. Buddhist Sociology: Some Thoughts on the Convergence of Sociology and the Eastern Paths of Liberation. In Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology, edited by Scott G. McNall, 53-68. St Martin Press, New York.
Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. 1995. Modernity, Pluralism and the Crisis of Meaning: The Orientation of Modern Man. Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers, Gütersloh.
Blumberg, Rae Lesser. 1984. A General Theory of Gender Strati?cation. Sociological Theory 2: 23-101. https://doi.org/10.2307/223343
Buckley, Walter. 1958. Social Strati?cation and the Functional Theory of Social Differentiation. American Sociological Review 23(4): 369-75. https://doi.org/10.2307/2088799
Burawoy, Michael. 2011. The Last Positivist. Contemporary Sociology 40(4): 398-404. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094306111412512a
Chakravarti, Uma. 1986. The Social Philosophy of Buddhism and the Problem of Inequality. Social Compass 33(2-3): 199-221. https://doi.org/10.1177/003776868603300206
Ching, Julia. 1985. Paradigms of the Self in Buddhism and Christianity. Buddhist-Christian Studies 4: 31-50. https://doi.org/10.2307/1389935
Clammer, John. 2009. Sociology and Beyond: Towards A Deep Sociology. Asian Journal of Social Science 37: 332-46. https://doi.org/10.1163/156853109X436757
Collett, Alice. 2006. Buddhism and Gender: Reframing and Refocusing the Debate. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 22(2): 55-84. https://doi.org/10.2979/FSR.2006.22.2.55
Connell, Raewyn W. 1985. Theorising Gender. Sociology 19(2): 260-72. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038585019002008
Crossley, Nick. 1996. Intersubjectivity: The Failure of Social Becoming. Sage, London.
Dawe, Alan. 1970. The Two Sociologies. The British Journal of Sociology 21(2): 207-18. https://doi.org/10.2307/588409
Forsdick, Charles. 2001. Travelling Concepts: Postcolonial Approaches to Exoticism.Paragraph 24(3): 12-29. https://doi.org/10.3366/jsp.2001.24.3.12
Glazer, Nathan. 1987. New Perspectives in American Jewish Sociology. The American Jewish Year Book, Special Supplement—The American Jewish Committee 80th Anniversary 87: 3-19.
Hofman, Elwin. 2016. How to Do the History of the Self. History of the Human Sciences 29(3): 1–17. Published online before print. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695116653305
Immergut, Matthew, and Peter Kaufman. 2014. A Sociology of No-Self: Applying Buddhist Social Theory to Symbolic Interaction. Symbolic Interaction 37(2): 264-82.
Jones, Ken. 2003. The New Social Face of Buddhism: A Call to Action. Wisdom Publications, Boston, MA.
King, Richard. 2001. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘the Mystic East’. Routledge, London.
Lee, Matthew T. 2015. North Central Sociological Association Presidential Address. The Mindful Society: Contemplative Sociology, Meta-Mindfulness, and Human Flourishing. Sociological Focus 48(4): 271-99. https://doi.org/10.1080/00380237.2015.1072450
Loy, David. 2003. The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory. Wisdom Publications, Boston, MA.
Loy, David. 2010. Self Transformation, Social Transformation. Tikkun 25(3): 54-78. https://doi.org/10.1215/08879982-2010-3018
Marotta, Vince. 2009. Intercultural Hermeneutics and the Cross-cultural Subject. Journal of Intercultural Studies 30(3): 267-84. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256860903003575
Mathews, Shailer. 1895. Christian Sociology. American Journal of Sociology 1(1): 69-78. https://doi.org/10.1086/210507
Nadarajah, M. 1996. Notes on the Teaching of Sociology. Sociological Bulletin 45(2): 233-53.
Ng, Edwin. 2014. Towards a Dialogue Between Buddhist Social Theory and ‘Affect Studies’ on the Ethico-Political Signi?cance of Mindfulness. Journal of Buddhist Ethics 21: 346-77.
Patel, Sulata. 2014. The Problematic of ‘Indigenous’ and ‘Indigeneity’: South Asian and African Experiences. In Academic Dependency and Professionalization in the South: Perspectives from the Periphery, edited by Ferdnanda Beigel and Hanan Sabea, 55-64. Collection Encuentros, Río de Janeiro.
Rosa, Marcelo C. 2014. Theories of the South: Limits and Perspectives of an Emergent Movement in Social Sciences. Current Sociology 62(6): 851-67. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392114522171
Said, Edward W. 1994. Traveling Theory Reconsidered. In Critical Reconstructions, edited by Robert M. Polhenius and Roger B. Henkle, 251-65. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.
Schipper, Janine. 2012. Toward a Buddhist Sociology: Theories, Methods, and Possibilities. The American Sociologist 43(2): 203-22.
Serajzadeh, Seyed Hossein. 2014. The Possibility of an Islamic Sociology: The Characteristics and Consequences of Culture-Oriented and Ideology-Oriented Approaches. Islamic Perspective 12: 59-68.
Seymour, Lipset. 1955. Jewish Sociologists and Sociologists of the Jews. Jewish Social Studieshttp://search.proquest.com/assets/r20161.5.0-10/core/spacer.gif17: 177.
Slott, Michael. 2011. Can You Be a Buddhist and a Marxist? Contemporary Buddhism 12(2): 347-63. https://doi.org/10.1080/14639947.2011.610640
Sztompka, Piotr. 2011. Another Sociological Utopia. Contemporary Sociology 40(4): 388-98. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094306111412512
Thoits, Peggy A. 2003. Personal Agency in the Accumulation of Multiple Role-Identities. In Advances in Identity Theory and Research,edited byPeter J. Burke, Timothy J. Owens, Richard T. Serpe, and Peggy A. Thoits, 179-94. Kluwer Academic, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9188-1_13
Wright, Theodore P. 1987. The Sociology of Knowledge: Jewish and Muslim Impact on American Social Science. American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 4(1):http://search.proquest.com/assets/r20161.5.0-10/core/spacer.gif89-101.
Young, Robert J.C. 1995. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race. Routledge, London.
Published
2017-04-06
Issue
Section
East West Dialogues in Buddhism
License
Equinox Publishing Ltd.
How to Cite
Marotta, V. (2017). Travelling Theory and Buddhist Sociology. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 29(3), 242-264. https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.31534
