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The Global Repositioning of Japanese Religions: An Integrated Approach explores how Japanese religions respond to the relativizing effects of globalization, thereby repositioning themselves as global players. Organized around concrete case studies focusing on the engagement of Japanese Buddhism, Shinto, and several new religious movements in areas such as ecology, inter-religious dialogue, and politics, this book shows that the globalization of Japanese religions cannot be explained simply in terms of worldwide institutional expansion. Rather, it is a complex phenomenon conditioned by a set of pervasive factors: changes in consciousness, the perception of affinities and resonances at the sys...
This book analyzes the variety of ways through which Japanese religions (Buddhism, Shintō, and new religious movements) contribute to the dynamics of accelerated globalization in recent decades. It looks at how Japanese religions provide material to cultural global flows, thus acting as carriers of globalization, and how they respond to these flows by shaping new glocal identities. The book highlights how, paradoxically, these processes of religious hybridization may be closely intertwined with the promotion of cultural chauvinism. It shows how on the one hand religion in Japan is engaged in border negotiation with global subsystems such as politics, secular education, and science, and how on the other hand, it tries to find new legitimation by addressing pressing global problems such as war, the environmental crisis, and economic disparities left unsolved by the dominant subsystems. A significant contribution to advancing an understanding of modern Japanese religious life, this book is of interest to academics working in the fields of Japanese Studies, Asian history and religion and the sociology of religion.
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of figures -- Acknowledgments -- Author's note -- Introduction -- 1 Approaching religion under globalization -- 2 Religious others at the door: inclusivism and pluralism as forms of global repositioning -- 3 Glocal environmentalism: unpacking the greening of religion in Japan -- 4 Meditation à la carte: glocal change in Hawaiian Jōdo Shinshū -- 5 Global repositionings: Risshō Kōseikai, Japan, and the world at large -- 6 Toward an integrated approach: the Global Repositioning model -- Conclusion -- List of Japanese terms -- Bibliography -- Index
This book analyzes social aspects of Shin Buddhism (J?do Shinsh?), a mainstream Japanese religious tradition. The contributions collected here especially focus on the intersection between Shin Buddhism, politics, education, social movements, economy, culture and the media, gender, and globalization.
Contemporary Shin Buddhism is characterized by the simultaneous presence of an almost radical aversion to a normative approach to ethics, a rich and multifaceted debate on ethical issues, and an interesting amount of social activism. Ethics and Society in Contemporary Shin Buddhism focuses on such aspects of this influential tradition of Japanese Buddhism, which can be traced back to the thought of Shinran (1173-1262), and on its interplay with Japanese society over the last few decades, with particular reference to its two major branches (Honganji-ha and Otani-ha). In addition, the ethical implications of the responses being given by these institutions and their followers to the ongoing process of globalization, together with the contradictions embedded therein, are analysed and compared with other reactions found in different religious traditions.
Based on the assumption that existing epistemic and social structures shape the way in which Western concepts of secularism were appropriated, the contributions in this volume inquire into the historical conditions for the development of a Japanese form of secularity.
This diverse anthology of original Buddhist texts in translation provides a historical and conceptual framework that will transform contemporary scholarship on Pure Land Buddhism and instigate its recognition as an essential field of Buddhist studies. Traditional and contemporary primary sources carefully selected from Buddhist cultures across historical, geopolitical, and literary boundaries are organized by genre rather than chronologically, geographically, or by religious lineage—a novel juxtaposition that reveals their wider importance in fresh contexts. Together these fundamental texts from different Asian traditions, expertly translated by eminent and up-and-coming scholars, illustra...
Discourse-based approaches to studying organizations have grown in significance over the last 25 years. This accessible and insightful book exemplifies how to use a discursive approach to study organizations. By drawing on her own empirical research, Cynthia Hardy aligns key theoretical assumptions with a range of case studies to demonstrate the value and adaptability of a discursive approach.
Pure Land was one of the main fields of mythopoesis and discourse among the Asian Buddhist traditions, and in Japan of central cultural importance from the Heian period right up to the present. The pieces reproduced in this set have been chosen as linchpin works accentuating the diversity and evolution of Pure Land Buddhism. These selections of previously published articles will serve as an essential starting-point for anyone interested in this perhaps underestimated area of Buddhist studies.
Mindfulness, yoga, Tantra, Zen, martial arts, karma, feng shui, Ayurveda. Eastern ideas and practices associated with Asian religions and spirituality have been accommodated to a global setting as both a spiritual/religious and a broader cultural phenomenon. ‘Eastern spirituality’ is present in organized religions, the spiritual New Age market, arts, literature, media, therapy, and health care but also in public institutions such as schools and prisons. Eastspirit: Transnational Spirituality and Religious Circulation in East and West describes and analyses such concepts, practices and traditions in their new ‘Western’ and global contexts as well as in their transformed expressions and reappropriations in religious traditions and individualized spiritualities ‘back in the East’ within the framework of mutual interaction and circulation, regionally and globally.