Abstract
By many reckonings, the Theravāda Buddhist sangha, or community of monks, enjoys the greatest longevity of any existing voluntary human society. Yet, the sociological understanding of the sangha, including its relations with the Buddhist laity, has remained relatively undeveloped compared to other fields of religious sociology. Part of this may be the result of an undue respect for the formative thoughts of scholarly ‘ancestors’ in the field. Max Weber was among the first to apply systematic sociological perspectives to the study of the sangha. In doing so, however, he set the terms of the debate in ways which may have limited rather than expanded inquiry. Even scholars who have written their own chapters in the sociology of Theravāda still perpetuate some of the same unexamined perspectives first introduced by Weber and others. It is time to examine some of these classical assumptions which have guided our scholarship about the Buddhist sangha.
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Notes
Michael Carrithers, Reply to Letters of S. E. G. Kemper, Man 15 (1980): 195f. See also Carrithers’ reply to ‘On Generalized Exchange and the Domestication of the Sangha’, Man 19 (1984): 321–2.
Stanley J. Tambiah, World Conqueror and World Renouncer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 6f.
Kitsiri Malalgoda, Buddhism in Sinhalese Society: 1750–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 11f.
Cf. Max Weber, The Religion of India (New York: Free Press, 1958), 233f.
Louis Dumont, ‘World Renunciation in India Religions’, Religion, Politics, and History in India (Paris: Mouton, 1970): Ch. 3.
Max Weber, The Religion of India (New York: Free Press, 1958), 243f.
Stanley J. Tambiah, Buddhism and the Spirit Cults of North-East Thailand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 68f.
Jane Bunnag, Buddhist Monk, Buddhist Layman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).
Michael Carrithers, ‘The Modern Ascetics of Lanka and the Pattern of Change in Buddhism’, Man 14 (1979): 298f;
Kitsiri Malalgoda, Buddhism in Sinhalese Society 1750–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 26f.
Stanley J. Tambiah, ‘Buddhism and This-Worldly Activity’, Modern Asian Studies 7 (1973): 19f.
R. A. L. H. Gunawardana, Robe and Plow: Monasticism and Economic Interest in Early Medieval Sri Lanka (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1979), 340–50.
Malagoda, Buddhism in Sinhalese Society, 18–20f.; Walpola Rahula, A History of Buddhism in Ceylon: the Anuradhapura Period — 10th Century A.C. (Colombo: Gunasena, 1956), 158f.
Garrett Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science 162 (1968): 1243–8.
Charles C. Prebish, Buddhist Monastic Discipline (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1975).
Michael Ames, ‘Ritual Prestations and the Structure of the Sinhalese Pantheon’, Anthropological Studies in Theravada Buddhism (New Haven: South East Asia Studies, 1966), 32f.
Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), Ch. 4.
Peter Ekeh, Social Exchange Theory: Two Traditions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974).
Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Boston: Beacon, 1969).
George MacCormack, ‘Reciprocity’, Man 11 (1975), 89–103.
Frederick Damon, ‘The Kula and Generalized Exchange: Considering Some Unconsidered Aspects of the Elementary Structures of Kinship’, Man 15 (1980): 267–92.
Debiprasad Chattopadhayaya, ‘Some Problems of Early Buddhism’, Buddhism: the Marxist Approach (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1973).
Stanley J. Tambiah, Buddhism and the Spirit Cults of North-East Thailand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 68f. But compare 213f, where Tambiah affirms reciprocity behind the ‘double negation’ of it!
Melford E. Spiro, Buddhism and Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 280, 410f.
S. Dutt, Buddhist Monasteries of India (London: Allen and Unwin, 1962), 26 n1.
Dennis Twitchett, ‘Monastic Estates in T’ang China’, Asia Major 5: 123–45 (1956), ‘Monasteries in China’s Economy in Medieval Times’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 19 (1957): 526–49;
Arthur F. Wright, ‘The Economic Role of Buddhism in China’, Journal of Asian Studies 16 (1957): 408–14.
Richard Gombrich, Precept and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 226f.
However, Spiro reduces sacrifice to the psychological act of a donor’s ‘genuine deprivation’ (Melford E. Spiro, Buddhism and Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 107f); while Tambiah takes sacrifice merely to be non-reciprocal giving (Tambiah, Buddhism and the Spirit Cults of North-East Thailand, 213f.). Thus, Spiro’s remarks avoid the sociological and cultural dimensions of sacrifice, while Tambiah’s fail to locate sacrificial giving within the wider context of exchange in general.
Michael Aung Thwin, ‘The Role of Sasana Reform in Burmese History: Economic Dimensions of a Religious Purification’, Journal of Asian Studies 38 (1979): 671–88.
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© 1993 Ivan Strenski
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Strenski, I. (1993). On Generalized Exchange and the Domestication of the Sangha . In: Religion in Relation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11866-3_8
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