Download or read book Charismatic Monks of Lanna Buddhism written by Paul T. Cohen and published by Nias Studies in Asian Topics. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In association with the Center for Ethnic Studies and Development (CESD), Chiang Mai University."
Download or read book Charismatic Monks of Lanna Buddhism written by Paul T. Cohen and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Unequal Thailand written by Pasuk Phongpaichit and published by NUS Press. This book was released on 2015-11-05 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extreme inequalities in income,wealth and power lie behind Thailand’s political turmoil. What are the sources of this inequality? Why does it persist, or even increase when the economy grows? How can it be addressed? The contributors to this important study—Thai scholars, reformers and civil servants—shed light on the many dimensions of inequality in Thailand, looking beyond simple income measures to consider land ownership, education, finance, business structures and politics. The contributors propose a series of reforms in taxation, spending and institutional reform that can address growing inequality. Inequality is among the biggest threats to social stability in Southeast Asia, and this close study of a key Southeast Asian country will be relevant to regional policy-makers, economists and business decision-makers, as well as students of oligarchy and inequality more generally.
Download or read book Thai Legal History written by Andrew Harding and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-17 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to provide a broad coverage of Thai legal history in the English language.
Download or read book The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets written by Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1984-06-29 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central actors in this book are some reclusive forest-dwelling ascetic meditation masters who have been acclaimed as 'saints' in contemporary Thailand. These saints originally pursued their salvation quest among the isolated villages of the country's periphery, but once recognized as holy men endowed with charisma, they became the radiating centres of a country-wide cult of amulets. The amulets, blessed by the saints, are avidly sought by royalty, ruling generals, intelligentsia and common folk alike for their alleged powers to influence the success of worldly transactions, whether political, economic, martial or romantic.
Download or read book The Art of Not Being Governed written by James C. Scott and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author and scholar James C. Scott, the compelling tale of Asian peoples who until recently have stemmed the vast tide of state-making to live at arm’s length from any organized state society For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an “anarchist history,” is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states. In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of “internal colonialism.” This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott’s work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.
Download or read book Buddhist Revivalist Movements written by Alan Robert Lopez and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-11-14 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text provides a comparative investigation of the affinities and differences of two of the most dynamic currents in World Buddhism: Zen Buddhism and the Thai Forest Movement. Defying differences in denomination, culture, and historical epochs, these schools revived an unfettered quest for enlightenment and proceeded to independently forge like practices and doctrines. The author examines the teaching gambits and tactics, the methods of practice, the place and story line of teacher biography, and the nature and role of the awakening experience, revealing similar forms deriving from an uncompromising pursuit of awaking, the insistence on self-cultivation, and the preeminent role of the charismatic master. Offering a pertinent review of their encounters with modernism, the book provides a new coherence to these seemingly disparate movements, opening up new avenues for scholars and possibilities for practitioners.
Download or read book Conceptions written by Aditya Bharadwaj and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016-08-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Infertility and assisted reproductive technologies in India lie at the confluence of multiple cultural conceptions. These ‘conceptions’ are key to understanding the burgeoning spread of assisted reproductive technologies and the social implications of infertility and childlessness in India. This longitudinal study is situated in a number of diverse locales which, when taken together, unravel the complex nature of infertility and assisted conception in contemporary India.
Download or read book Monks Money and Morality written by Christoph Brumann and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vibrantly engaging contemporary Buddhist lives, this book focuses on the material and financial relations of contemporary monks, temples, and laypeople. It shows that rather than being peripheral, economic exchanges are key to religious debate in Buddhist societies. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in countries ranging from India to Japan, including all three major Buddhist traditions, the book addresses the flows of goods and services between clergy and laity, the management of resources, the treatment of money, and the role of the state in temple economies. Along with documenting ritual and economic practices, these accounts deal with the moral challenges that Buddhist adherents are facing today, thereby bringing lived experience to the study of an often-romanticized religion.
Download or read book Buddhist Monastic Life written by Môhan Wijayaratna and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1990-11-30 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1991 book provides a brief yet detailed account of the ideal way of life prescribed for Buddhist monks and nuns in the Pali texts of the Theravada school of Buddhism. The author describes the way in which the Buddha's disciples institutionalized his teachings about such things as food, dress, money, chastity, solitude and discipleship. This tradition represents an ideal of religious life that has been followed in South and Southeast Asia for over two thousand years. In previous writing on the early period of Buddhist monasticism, scholars have usually tried to give an historical account of the evolution of the monastic order, and so have seen the extant Vinaya texts as coming from distinct historical periods. This book takes a different approach by presenting a synchronic account, which allows the author to show that sources are in fact predominantly consistent and coherent.
Download or read book Brunei written by Marie-Sybille de Vienne and published by NUS Press. This book was released on 2015-03-09 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now an energy-rich sultanate, for centuries a important trading port in the South China Sea, Brunei has taken a different direction than its Persian Gulf peers. Immigration is restricted, and Brunei’s hydrocarbon wealth is invested conservatively, mostly outside the country. Today home to some 393,000 inhabitants and comprising 5,765 square kilometers in area, Brunei first appears in the historical record at the end of the 10th century. After the Spanish attack of 1578, Brunei struggled to regain and expand its control on coastal West Borneo and to remain within the trading networks of the South China Sea. It later fell under British sway, and a residency was established in 1906, but it took the discovery of oil in Seria in 1929 before the colonial power began to establish the bases of a modern state. Governed by an absolute monarchy, Bruneians today nonetheless enjoy a high level of social protection and rule of law. Ranking second (after Singapore) in Southeast Asia in terms of standards of living, the sultanate is implementing an Islamic penal code for the first time of its history. Focusing on Brunei’s political economy, history and geography, this book aims to understand the forces behind Brunei’s to-and-fro of tradition and modernisation.
Download or read book The Culture of Giving in Myanmar written by Hiroko Kawanami and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-11 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can people living in one of the poorest countries in the world be among the most charitable? In this book, Hiroko Kawanami examines the culture of giving in Myanmar, and explores the pivotal role that Buddhist monastic members occupy in creating a platform for civil society. Despite having at one time been listed as one of the poorest countries in the world in GNP terms, Myanmar has topped a global generosity list for the past four years with more than 90 percent of the population engaged in 'giving' activities. This book explores the close relationship that Buddhists share with the monastic community in Myanmar, extending observations of this relationship into an understanding of wider Buddhist cultures. It then examines how deeply the reciprocal transactions of giving and receiving in society – or interdependent living – are implicated in the Buddhist faith. The Culture of Giving in Myanmar fills a gap in research on Buddhist offerings in Myanmar, and is an important contribution to the growing field of Myanmar studies and anthropology of Buddhism.
Download or read book Tracks and Traces written by Philip Hirsch and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume traces the threads that tie together an understanding of Thailand as a dynamic and rapidly changing society, through an examination of the work of one major scholar of the country, Andrew Turton. Turton's anthropological studies of Thailand cover a wide spectrum from politics and economy to ritual and culture, and have been crucial in shaping evolving understandings of Thai society. In this collection, ten leading specialists on Thailand from a variety of disciplines critically consider aspects of Turton's work in relation to the changing nature of different aspects of Thai society. The book tracks the links between past and present scholarship, examines the contextuality of scholarship in its times, and sheds light on the current situation in Thailand.
Download or read book Sacred Sites of Burma written by Donald Martin Stadtner and published by River Books Press Dist A C. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book covers the most significant old and new sacred sites in Yangon, Pagan, the Mandalay area, and within the Shan, Rakhine and Mon states.
Download or read book Esoteric Theravada written by Kate Crosby and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2020-12-22 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking exploration of a practice tradition that was nearly lost to history. Theravada Buddhism, often understood as the school that most carefully preserved the practices taught by the Buddha, has undergone tremendous change over time. Prior to Western colonialism in Asia—which brought Western and modernist intellectual concerns, such as the separation of science and religion, to bear on Buddhism—there existed a tradition of embodied, esoteric, and culturally regional Theravada meditation practices. This once-dominant traditional meditation system, known as borān kammatthāna, is related to—yet remarkably distinct from—Vipassana and other Buddhist and secular mindfulness practices that would become the hallmark of Theravada Buddhism in the twentieth century. Drawing on a quarter century of research, scholar Kate Crosby offers the first holistic discussion of borān kammatthāna, illuminating the historical events and cultural processes by which the practice has been marginalized in the modern era.
Download or read book Very Thai written by Philip Cornwel-Smith and published by River Books Press Dist A C. This book was released on 2005 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering insight into contemporary Thai folk culture delves beyond the traditional Thai icons to reveal the casual, everyday expressions of Thainess that so delight and puzzle. From floral truck bolts and taxi altars to buffalo cart furniture and
Download or read book Legal Traditions in Asia written by Janos Jany and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-08 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a comparative analysis of traditional Asian legal systems. It combines methods from legal history, legal anthropology, legal philosophy, and substantive law, pursuing a comprehensive approach that offers readers a broad perspective on the topic. The geographic regions covered include the Near East, Middle East, Central Asia, India, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. For each region, the book first provides historical and political context. Next, it discusses major milestones in the region’s legal history and political institutions, as well as its forms of government. Readers are then presented with fundamental principles and terms needed to understand the legal arguments discussed. The book begins with the Ancient Near East and important topics such as Jewish law. The next part considers Islamic law, while also exploring modern issues. The third part focuses on Hindu and Buddhist law, while the fourth part covers China and Japan. The book’s closing section examines tribal societies, e.g. Mongols, Pashtuns and Malays. Topics covered include the interaction of legal systems within a legal circle, inter-systemic interactions, reasons for the failure and success of legal modernization, legal pluralism, and its effects on Asian societies. Family law, law of obligation, criminal law, and procedural law are also explored.
