Those Who Sell the Sacred Sites: The Economic Development of Contemporary Tibet and Popular Religious Spaces
This article considers the popular spaces of religious practice that have formed at the sacred sites of Buddhism in contemporary Tibet during the rapid modernization that has taken place under Communist Party rule and will pay special attention to the commercialization of those religious sites. Trad...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Japanese Association for Religious Studies
2020
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| In: |
Religious studies in Japan
Year: 2020, Volume: 5, Pages: 3-27 |
| Further subjects: | B
contemporary Tibet
B supply and demand B sacred site business B Pilgrims B commercialization |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article considers the popular spaces of religious practice that have formed at the sacred sites of Buddhism in contemporary Tibet during the rapid modernization that has taken place under Communist Party rule and will pay special attention to the commercialization of those religious sites. Traditionally, research on sacred sites, undertaken mostly by Western scholars, has been based in an understanding of cosmology as rooted in the Buddhist scriptures and has been most concerned with the kind of ritual correspondence built between the natural environment at sacred sites and pilgrims. The diversification of the religious environment of the sacred site is rarely taken into account. I argue that the religiosity of sacred sites established through the replacement of "natural space" with "pure land space" has been influenced by the diversification of monastic economies and the penetration of outside commercial actors. I will demonstrate that this religiosity is, in fact, the target for those seeking to acquire economic profits on the level of individual sacred sites, which are the actual locations of religious practice. As a result, within the sacred sites of contemporary Tibet, which are exposed to the intense pressures of development, a commercial space based on the relationship of economic supply and demand operates in parallel to a value system based on pure land cosmology. I conclude that it is time to revise the traditional understanding of the preceding literature. |
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| ISSN: | 2186-9952 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religious studies in Japan
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