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Saving Buddhism explores the dissonance between the goals of the colonial state and the Buddhist worldview that animated Burmese Buddhism at the turn of the twentieth century. For many Burmese, the salient and ordering discourse was not nation or modernity but sāsana, the life of the Buddha’s teachings. Burmese Buddhists interpreted the political and social changes between 1890 and 1920 as signs that the Buddha’s sāsana was deteriorating. This fear of decline drove waves of activity and organizing to prevent the loss of the Buddha’s teachings. Burmese set out to save Buddhism, but achieved much more: they took advantage of the indeterminacy of the moment to challenge the colonial frameworks that were beginning to shape their world. Author Alicia Turner has examined thousands of rarely used sources-- newspapers and Buddhist journals, donation lists, and colonial reports—to trace three discourses set in motion by the colonial encounter: the evolving understanding of sāsana as an orienting framework for change, the adaptive modes of identity made possible in the moral community, and the ongoing definition of religion as a site of conflict and negotiation of autonomy. Beginning from an understanding that defining and redefining the boundaries of religion operated as a key technique of colonial power—shaping subjects through European categories and authorizing projects of colonial governmentality—she explores how Burmese Buddhists became actively engaged in defining and inflecting religion to shape their colonial situation and forward their own local projects. Saving Buddhism intervenes not just in scholarly conversations about religion and colonialism, but in theoretical work in religious studies on the categories of “religion” and “secular.” It contributes to ongoing studies of colonialism, nation, and identity in Southeast Asian studies by working to denaturalize nationalist histories. It also engages conversations on millennialism and the construction of identity in Buddhist studies by tracing the fluid nature of sāsana as a discourse. The layers of Buddhist history that emerge challenge us to see multiple modes of identity in colonial modernity and offer insights into the instabilities of categories we too often take for granted.
Nothing lasts forever. This common experience is the source of much anxiety but also hope. The concept of impermanence or continuous change opens up a range of timely questions and discussions that speak to globally shared experiences of transformation and concerns for the future. Impermanence engages with an emergent body of social theory emphasizing flux and transformation, and brings this into a dialogue with other traditions of thought and practice, notably Buddhism that has sustained a long-lasting and sophisticated meditation on impermanence. In cases drawn from all over the world, this volume investigates the significance of impermanence in such diverse contexts as social death, atheism, alcoholism, migration, ritual, fashion, oncology, museums, cultural heritage and art. The authors draw on a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, art history, Buddhist studies, cultural geography and museology. This volume also includes numerous photographs, artworks and poems that evocatively communicate notions and experiences of impermanence.
Collecting is usually understood as an activity that bestows permanence, unity, and meaning on otherwise scattered and ephemeral objects. In The Redemption of Things, Samuel Frederick emphasizes that to collect things, however, always entails displacing, immobilizing, and potentially disfiguring them, too. He argues that the dispersal of objects, seemingly antithetical to the collector's task, is essential to the logic of gathering and preservation. Through analyses of collecting as a dialectical process of preservation and loss, The Redemption of Things illustrates this paradox by focusing on objects that challenge notions of collectability: ephemera, detritus, and trivialities such as moss, junk, paper scraps, dust, scent, and the transitory moment. In meticulous close readings of works by Gotthelf, Stifter, Keller, Rilke, Glauser, and Frisch, and by examining an experimental film by Oskar Fischinger, Frederick reveals how the difficulties posed by these fleeting, fragile, and forsaken objects help to reconceptualize collecting as a poetic activity that makes the world of scattered things uniquely palpable and knowable.
While considerable research and on-ground project work focuses on the interface between Indigenous/local people and nature conservation in the Asia-Pacific region, the interface between these people and cultural heritage conservation has not received the same attention. This collection brings together papers on the current mechanisms in place in the region to conserve cultural heritage values. It will provide an overview of the extent to which local communities have been engaged in assessing the significance of this heritage and conserving it. It will address the extent to which management regimes have variously allowed, facilitated or obstructed continuing cultural engagement with heritage places and landscapes, and discuss the problems agencies experience with protection and management of cultural heritage places.
Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies offers succinct, easily accessible analyses of the disciplinary debates, intellectual legacies, and practical innovations that have led to understandings of heritage value today. Through a diverse collection of expert voices, this volume invites readers to embark on their own journeys through appropriate methodologies for research and public engagement. Readers can draw on analyses of key problem areas and argumentative interventions to create a roadmap for the many disciplinary approaches that converge on heritage studies. Oriented specifically towards learning and teaching heritage across archaeology, anthropology, history, and geography, this textbook is designed to support critical, ethical heritage students, researchers, and practitioners. Praise for Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies 'This excellent volume fills a substantial gap for those looking for a single course book with which to teach a range of interdisciplinary methods to both undergraduate and postgraduate heritage studies students and should be seen as the ‘go to’ on heritage research methodologies for students, teachers and professionals alike. It will have a significant impact in shaping the field of critical heritage studies for years to come.' Rodney Harrison, Professor of Heritage Studies, UCL 'This textbook gathers a group of experienced specialists to discuss transformations of the field over time and present the latest trends and innovative debates, based on their own experiences in various international contexts. This volume will be of great interest for teachers, students and for the general public.' Andrés Zarankin, Professor of Archaeology, Federal University of Minas Gerais
Large-scale disasters mobilize heritage professionals to a narrative of heritage-at-risk and a standardized set of processes to counter that risk. Trinidad Rico’s critical ethnography analyses heritage practices in the aftermath of the tsunami that swamped Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in 2004 and the post-destruction narratives that accompanied it, showing the sociocultural, historical, and political agendas these discourses raise. Countering the typical Western ideology and practice of ameliorating heritage-at-risk were local, post-colonial trajectories that permitted the community to construct its own meaning of heritage. This book documents the emergence of local heritage places, practices, and debates countering the globalized versions embraced by the heritage professions offering a critical paradigm for post-destruction planning and practice that incorporates alternative models of heritage. Constructing Deconstruction will be of value to scholars, professionals, and advanced students in Heritage Studies, Anthropology, Geography, and Disaster Studies.
This Handbook sets out the key issues and debates in the theory and practice of wetland archaeology which has played a crucial role in studies of our past. Due to the high quantity of preserved organic materials found in humid environments, the study of wetlands has allowed archaeologists to reconstruct people's everyday lives in great detail.
Archaeological heritage conservation is all too often highly conflicted. Economic interests are often at the forefront of management decision-making with heritage values given lesser, if any, consideration, but when heritage places are managed with international principles in mind the sites stand out as evidencing superior outcomes.
During the first half of the twentieth century, a group of collectors and creators dedicated themselves to documenting the history of African American life. At a time when dominant institutions cast doubt on the value or even the idea of Black history, these bibliophiles, scrapbookers, and librarians created an enduring set of African diasporic archives. In building these institutions and amassing abundant archival material, they also reshaped Black public culture, animating inquiry into the nature and meaning of Black history. Scattered and Fugitive Things tells the stories of these Black collectors, traveling from the parlors of the urban north to HBCU reading rooms and branch libraries in the Jim Crow south. Laura E. Helton chronicles the work of six key figures: bibliophile Arturo Schomburg, scrapbook maker Alexander Gumby, librarians Virginia Lee and Vivian Harsh, curator Dorothy Porter, and historian L. D. Reddick. Drawing on overlooked sources such as book lists and card catalogs, she reveals the risks collectors took to create Black archives. This book also explores the social life of collecting, highlighting the communities that used these collections from the South Side of Chicago to Roanoke, Virginia. In each case, Helton argues, archiving was alive in the present, a site of intellectual experiment, creative abundance, and political possibility. Offering new ways to understand Black intellectual and literary history, Scattered and Fugitive Things reveals Black collecting as a radical critical tradition that reimagines past, present, and future.