Vajra Brother, Vajra Sister: Renunciation, Individualism and the Household in Tibetan Buddhist Monasticism

This article challenges two connected notions in the study of Tibetan Buddhism: that Buddhist monasticism is characterized by a pronounced move towards individualism, systematically detaching monks from relational social life; and that Tibetan Buddhist doctrines of karma represent an alternative mode of identity to those constructed within household life. By comparing the ritual practices and inheritance patterns associated with household groups in Ladakh with tantric ritual forms in local Buddhist (Gelukpa) monasteries, it is argued that they demonstrate pronounced structural similarities, centred on the shared symbolic construct of the household/temple as the source of socialized agency. An analysis of the meditative disciplines of Gelukpa monasticism is used to show how such training serves not to renounce kinship and household values, but to transform them into modes of religious authority, essential to the social position of monks ( trapa ) and incarnate lamas ( tulku ) in Tibetan Buddhism.     

Corrective conversion: unsettling citizens and the politics of inclusion in Israel

Gauri Viswanathan's notion of religious conversion as an ‘unsettling’ political event has recently figured prominently in the scholarship on conversion. However, although numerous scholars have productively applied Viswanathan's understanding in their work, primarily in the context of conversion to religious minorities within the nation‐state, to focus too heavily on conversion's unsettling effects risks overlooking political constellations in which it might have rather settling effects. In contrast to the scholarly focus on conversion's disruptive qualities, this article offers an ethnographic account of the ‘settling’ ambitions and logics that underwrite the state politics of Jewish conversion (giur) in contemporary Israel. By looking ethnographically into the mundane discursive, pedagogic, and bureaucratic processes through which the Jewish state converts non‐Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, I demonstrate how religious conversion works to restore the bureaucratic logic of Israeli nationalism, thereby reinstating unambiguous forms of Jewish belonging. Religious conversion can also be an act of taxonomic repair.     

Historicising the Cosmogony: Naming the Asala Perahara in Buddhist Sri Lanka

This article offers a novel interpretation of Sri Lanka's great ceremonial procession for the Buddha, the Asala Perahara. By conceptualizing the name, ‘Asala’ as a chronotope (Bakhtin 1981), and giving emphasis to its authorisation by Buddhist monks, the interpretation reveals that this ritual commemorates the origins of Buddhism in relation to the island of Sri Lanka, thus constituting it as a unique ‘quality space’ (Fernandez 1986) for its Buddhist inhabitants. The interpretation demonstrates that the distinction between mythic time and everyday time, as espoused by Lévi-Strauss (1972) is not only arbitrary, but spurious in this context. Furthermore, contra Seneviratne (1978), it shows that far from being an anachronism in contemporary society, the Asala Perahara in fact enacts its cosmic premise and is politically powerful precisely because it defines reality in religious terms.     

Anger Regulation in Traumatized Cambodian Refugees: The Perspectives of Buddhist Monks

Recent research has highlighted the importance of traditional methods of healing in relation to the treatment of psychological distress in non-Western populations. This pilot study, conducted in Massachusetts, investigates what Buddhist Cambodian monks consider to be the causes, phenomenology and appropriate intervention strategies for anger among Cambodian refugees. Six monks were interviewed at four major temples in Massachusetts. Findings suggested that anger was common in the Cambodian community, was frequently triggered by marital discord, and commonly resulted in verbal and physical violence and, sometimes, suicidality. Buddhist-based anger management strategies identified as useful by the monks included education about Buddhist doctrines, mindfulness meditation practices, and the use of herbal medication and holy water. These anger regulation strategies and treatments are discussed in the context of Buddhist beliefs and Western psychological interventions.     

Volunteering,Dana, and the Cultivation of ‘Good People’ in Thailand

The article explores a popular volunteer movement in Thailand and its connection to Buddhist morality and contemporary Thai politics. The article argues that volunteering in Thailand is often conceived of as a gift in various ways: as a form of dana or selfless giving; a gift from ‘good people’ to those defined as ‘in need’ in society and a gift to the Thai nation as a whole. Indeed, when volunteering is said to be a gift to the Thai nation, it is not necessarily because of its ability to redistribute resources, but because of its perceived ability to cultivate moral values and ‘good people’ for the Thai nation. The paper explores the implications that stem from presenting volunteering as a gift, with a strong emphasis on morality and ‘good people’, and how this popular discourse on volunteering may contribute to the maintenance of political status quo in Thailand, particularly in the context of the ongoing political struggles in recent years.     

A moderate Buddhist animal research ethics

Though there is a burgeoning interest in applied Buddhist ethics, Buddhist animal research ethics remains an underdeveloped area. In this paper I will explore how some central Buddhist ethical considerations can usefully engage our use of other animals (henceforth, animals) in science. As the scientific use of animals is broad, I will narrow my focus to laboratory science. I will show that, though a Buddhist abolitionism would not be unmotivated, it is possible to reject it. While doing so, it will be important to resist emphasizing elements of Buddhist thought that merely provide reasons to adopt the dominant ethical framework governing laboratory animal research ethics, known as the 3Rs. Though I will suggest how a Buddhist animal research ethics can sometimes permit the use of animals in harmful research, it will also require ethical constraints that resonate with some of the more progressive elements in ‘Western’ bioethics.     

Portraiture and Proximity: ‘Official’ Artists and the State-ization of the Market in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan

This article traces the production and circulation of state officials' portraits in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, as visual artists engaged in the cultivation of an art market after the dismantling of socialist-era state sponsorship. I argue that these portraits of the president and other high-ranking officials should be considered as an instance of commercialisation of art. Portraiture invoked proximity of artists to their powerful sitters, government officials, and consequently made artists' work more attractive to a particular kind of domestic buyer. Furthermore, I argue that these practices of commodification enable an understanding of how socialist-era legacies of state sponsorship have converted into the logics of proximity to power. The Soviet-era personalistic connections to bureaucrats have transformed into the means for representation of artwork's market value in contemporary Kazakhstan. As such, Soviet legacies of clientelism have rendered state icons as significant authenticators of commercial value and therefore central to the emerging market.     

Paperwork,patronage, and citizenship: the materiality of everyday interactions with bureaucracy in Tamil Nadu,India

This article explores the material practices through which lower-caste and poor villagers engage with bureaucracy in contemporary India. We take documents and paperwork – such as ration cards and community certificates – as a ‘lens’ through which to explore how paper materiality is infused with the politics of power, patronage, and identity. The article brings ethnography from rural Tamil Nadu, South India, in conversation with two bodies of literature: one on the materiality of bureaucracy and one on the nature of political mediation in contemporary India. We demonstrate how everyday engagements with paperwork as well as processes of applying, form filling, and securing recommendations are constitutive of social and political relationships and, ultimately, of citizenship itself. Political mediation around paperwork and bureaucracy generates a hierarchy of citizens rather than equal citizenship for all, yet ordinary villagers transpire as anything but passive. Drawing on patronage networks, engaging in affective performances, and navigating a politics of identity, they actively negotiate access to the state in an attempt to claim their rights as citizens.     

Contesting the Politics of Culture, Rewriting the Boundaries of Inclusion: Working for Social Justice with Muslim and Arab Communities

This article calls on anthropologists of education to assert a more public voice attacking the ideological purposes to which the concept of "culture" has been deployed following the September 11 attacks. We must support schools, communities, and the media to address the power and politics of race and religion in contemporary social and political contexts, rather than focus primarily on multicultural education about Islamic and Arab "culture." Finally, this article urges us to expand our knowledge of the processes of social incorporation for Muslim and Arab immigrant youth to include a deeper understanding of how global politics contribute to young people's sense of emerging identities.     

Tribal hands and minority votes: ethnicity,regionalism and elections in Iran

Ethnic politics is a serious domestic challenge in Iran. Non-Persian communities are mobilizing to claim their rights and to demand representation in a system that activists claim is biased against minorities and the peripheral regions. Yet the inner workings of contemporary Iranian ethnic politics are largely understudied. This article explores recent evolutions in the role that ethnicity, regionalism and tribalism plays in Iranian domestic politics. It focuses on how these interconnected factors figured in the 2013 presidential and local council elections in Iran in a particular province that has a history of ethnic tensions. Incidentally, these elections brought Hassan Rouhani, a moderate cleric, to power as president. Among his electoral promises was to end the securitization of the minority issue. This article illustrates some of the barriers to a transformative ethnic politics – barriers that political leaders will have to overcome to enact real change.     

Control,Change, and Suffering: The Messages of Shan Buddhist Sermons

Shan villagers are Buddhists, but their main access to Buddhist ideology is through the sermons the local monks preach. We describe the content of a number of sermons. These outline a system where lack of control causes change which causes suffering. The sermons teach about the acquisition of knowledge where the objective is not to control but to escape from the system. Power, gained through withdrawal or relationships with powerful beings, gives more control, consequently less change, and less suffering. One can convert impermanent material wealth into changeless merit by offering it to the monks or temple. Offerings to non-reciprocating monks are competitive and define a hierarchy of both power and prestige. The ideology so outlined is one aspect of the Shan world view based on morally neutral power and is related to Shan political and economic forms. The monks serve state power not only by defining this ideology and receiving offerings but also by preaching about the benefits of making offerings and the importance of people behaving properly in their positions in the hierarchy.     

Editor's Note

As readers of Soviet Psychology are aware, it has been my policy over the years to present historical materials that are pertinent to understanding contemporary Soviet and world psychology. By and large, I have come upon such materials through discussions with Soviet scholars or by following the lead in relevant articles. When I first read Jaan Valsiner's lucid and informative book Developmental Psychology in the Soviet Union, I was immediately struck by the gold mine of materials to which Professor Valsiner had succeeded in gaining access. First among these was the work of Mikhail Basov, to whom Valsiner devoted an especially illuminating chapter in his monograph.     

Declarations of dependence: labour,personhood, and welfare in southern Africa

Dependence on others has often figured, in liberal thought, as the opposite of freedom. But the political anthropology of southern Africa has long recognized relations of social dependence as the very foundation of polities and persons alike. Reflecting on a long regional history of dependence ‘as a mode of action’ allows a new perspective on certain contemporary practices that appear to what we may call ‘the emancipatory liberal mind’ simply as lamentable manifestations of a reactionary and retrograde yearning for paternalism and inequality. Instead, this article argues that such practices are an entirely contemporary response to the historically novel emergence of a social world where people, long understood (under both pre‐capitalist and early capitalist social systems) as scarce and valuable, have instead become seen as lacking value, and in surplus. Implications are drawn for contemporary politics and policy, in a world where both labour and forms of social membership based upon it are of diminishing value, and where social assistance and the various cash transfers associated with it are of increasing significance.     

The pleasures of ambiguity: pedagogy and musical apprenticeship in an Istanbul art studio

‘Dealing with ambiguity’ has become a pressing concern in many spheres of contemporary life, often presented as a ‘survival skill’ in an uncertain world. Working with ambiguity also plays a crucial role in the musical pedagogy of the Ottoman-Turkish ney (Sufi reed flute), the playing of which I discuss in this article. Rather than a constraint or deficiency to be resolved, in the context of ney apprenticeship, ambiguity emerges as a desired pedagogical force not only valued but also deliberately amplified. My aim is to show how ambiguity is embraced here as a productive condition that maximizes possibilities for artistic exploration, freedom of discernment, and aesthetic pleasures.     

Ethnocentrism and ideology*

Ethnic politics is a paradoxical phenomenon in France. While predominant French ideologies and institutional arrangements reinforce a ‘no ethnic politics’ model, there have been substantive challenges to this traditional model, including changes in state practices, and the political emergence of Franco‐Maghrebis and the immigrant association movement. Using the affaire des foulards [headscarves affair] of 1989 as a case‐study, the article seeks to clarify the ethnic politics paradox in France. I argue that the emergence and configuration of ethnic politics in France are being shaped by a series of constraints. These constraints are reflected in the ways in which the headscarves affair was created, defined, and managed. I suggest that the constraints are rooted not only in French ideologies and institutional arrangements, but also in the ‘nationalist logic’ of contemporary French immigration politics, the integrationist strategies of Franco‐Maghrebi groups, and the immigré perspective of the state and political community.     

Modelling emotion,perfecting heart: disassembling technologies of affect with an android bodhisattva in Japan

As part of a surge in technologies with so-called ‘artificial emotional intelligence’, robotics engineers and Buddhist monks in Japan have developed an android bodhisattva to deliver teachings at a popular Zen temple. Like many recent robots in Japan, the android is designed to impact visitors’ feelings. For this reason, it can be called a ‘technology of affect’. In order to communicate how new affective technologies are facilitating intimacy in human-machine relations in Japan, we employ the concept of ‘disassembling’. By conceptually disassembling technologies of affect and placing them in performative contexts, we show how technologies of affect also disassemble established associations between artificial agents and the feelings they evoke in popular imaginaries. We argue that identifying these disassembling processes helps demonstrate how emerging AI technologies can engender social change at the level of affect through evocative depictions of machine emotion.     

Changes in blood pressure, body weight and urinary catecholamines during austerities

More than one hundred monks belonging to Nichirenshu, a major Buddhist sect in Japan, participated in the annual hundred days austerities during the winter. Cold water bathing, insufficient sleep, hunger and emotional impact are considered to be the major stressors experienced by the monks subjected to these austere regimes. This study was conducted to evaluate the endocrinological and physiological changes in twenty newcomer monks during the first four weeks of the austerities. The urinary concentration of noradrenaline (NOR) increased significantly during the first four weeks but not that of adrenaline (ADR). The changes in urinary concentration of ADR and NOR indicated the main stressors possibly to be low ambient temperature and hunger. NOR is thus probably a better indicator than ADR for evaluating stress under austere conditions. Blood pressure (BP) did not rise but the concentration of NOR was noted to increase. NOR may possibly be excreted in excessive amounts to maintain normal BP against hypotensive factors such as loss of body weight due to low calorie intake.