Site mapAbout usConsultative CommitteeAsk LibrarianContributionCopyrightCitation GuidelineDonationHome        

CatalogAuthor AuthorityGoogle
Search engineFulltextScripturesLanguage LessonsLinks
 


Extra service
Tools
Export
Colors of the Robe: Religion, Identity, and Difference
Author Abeysekara, Ananda
Date2002.11
Pages288
PublisherUniversity of South Carolina Press
LocationColumbia, SC, US [哥倫比亞, 南卡羅來納州, 美國]
Content type書籍=Book
Language英文=English
Keyword斯里蘭卡佛教=Sri Lankan Buddhism; 南傳佛教=Theravada Buddhism;
AbstractPoised to spark debate among scholars of religious studies and other disciplines, Colors of the Robe sheds new light on the Sri Lankan Buddhist universe of ethics and politics and, more important, suggests innovative directions for the global study of religion, identity, culture, politics, and violence. In a volume that surpasses other studies in tracking, identifying, and locating Sri Lankan Buddhism in its sectarian, ethnic, cultural, social, and political constructions, Ananda Abeysekara lays down a challenge to postcolonial and postmodern theory. He argues that although criticisms have undermined the orientalist constructions of culture, they cannot help us understand, let alone theorize, the emergence of contemporary authoritative discourses that define distinctions involving religion and violence, identity and difference. Supplanting that aim, Abeysekara illuminates the shifting configurations that characterize the relations connected with postcolonial religious identity and culture.

Drawing on extensive field research in Sri Lanka, Abeysekara illustrates how differing meanings of such religious and national concepts come into central view and then fade, denying them fixity. Proposing an alternative, he develops the concept of "minute conjunctures of contingency" and places it in modest opposition to the work of Michel Foucault and other leading postmodern thinkers.

Abeysekara attends to these minute conjunctures of contingency to understand such categories as religion and difference, Buddhism and politics, civilization and terror. He thereby resists today's antiessentialist arguments without falling back on yesterday's foundationalist claims. Viewing religion through this lens, Abeysekara contends, has profound political implications for how we might more generally think about and begin to disrupt entrenched presumptions of postcolonial cultural difference. (Amazon.com)
ISBN1570034672
Related reviews
  1. Book Review: Colors of the Robe: Religion, Identity, and Difference by Ananda Abeysekara / Rogers, John D. (評論)
Hits433
Created date2004.02.20



Best viewed with Chrome, Firefox, Safari(Mac) but not supported IE

Notice

You are leaving our website for The full text resources provided by the above database or electronic journals may not be displayed due to the domain restrictions or fee-charging download problems.

Record correction

Please delete and correct directly in the form below, and click "Apply" at the bottom.
(When receiving your information, we will check and correct the mistake as soon as possible.)

Serial No.
301066

Search History (Only show 10 bibliography limited)
Search Criteria Field Codes
Search CriteriaBrowse