1. The Buddha’s Wizards: Magic, Protection, and Healing in Burmese Buddhism. By Thomas Nathan Patton. Columbia University Press, 2018. 187 pages. $60.00 (hardcover), $59.99 (e-book).
2. Reviewer Affiliation: University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA
摘要
Anthropological work on Southeast Asia was crucial for developments in Religious Studies in the second half of the twentieth century. Melford Spiro's 1970 Buddhism and Society drew on the example of Burmese Buddhism to define religion more broadly as a complex cultural and psychological system. Clifford Geertz's 1973 feat of thick description, "Deep Play," inspired scholars to read cultural forms as texts with its colorful analysis of Balinese cockfighting. Stanley Tambiah’s 1976 World Conqueror and World Renouncer used the example of the co-dependence of polity and Buddhism in Thailand to argue against Max Weber’s claim that Buddhism was otherworldly. And Buddhism Transformed, Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere’s 1988 examination of Sri Lankan religions, gave us the term "Protestant Buddhism." These studies from the late-Cold War era impressed scholars from multiple disciplines by weaving detailed ethnographic research from politically fraught Southeast Asia into larger theories of religion, culture, and the state.
