Defining Buddhism(s): A Reader (Critical Categories in the Study of Religion). Edited. By Karen Derris, and Natalie Gummer. . Equinox Publishing, 2007. 342 pages. $27.95.
摘要
Defining Buddhism(s) is a new addition to the series Critical Categories in the Study of Religion edited by the always-provocative Russell T. McCutcheon. This series aims to present pivotal scholarly articles that focus on the development of categories and terminology of scholarship to make clear to readers that cognitive categories are inherited gifts from the past that themselves are constructed and subject to change over time. The editors of Defining Buddhism(s), Karen Derris and Natalie Gummer, have skillfully brought together ten essays by leading scholars of Buddhist formations to illustrate the multiple ways that the mid-eighteenth scholarly artifact “Buddhism” has been defined and constructed by Buddhists and scholars. Derris and Gummer provide an introduction to the volume as well as introductory essays to the sections that comprise the volume. The ten essays selected by Derris and Gummer, all of which are recent critical discourses published between 1991 and 2003, are situated within three sections—Defining Buddhist Histories (16–116), Defining Buddhist Ideologies (118–213), and Defining Buddhist Identities (216–305).
Derris and Gummer introduce the volume with a high degree of self-reflexivity related to the structure and goals of the work, particularly with regards to definition. For Derris and Gummer, “defining” implies an active process rather than a static formulation (1), envisioned as part of an ongoing dialogical process. This process focuses on how scholars and Buddhists have brought multiple and contradictory perspectives to the question of how “Buddhism” might be defined. The editors indicate the multiple ways that Buddhist formations have been defined by placing the term in the plural rather than promoting “Buddhism” in the singular. They …
