Doctoral Dissertation Research: Moral and Ethical Resilience in Response to Institutional Secularization

世俗条件和宗教愿望之间的争论是当代许多政治冲突和争端的核心。本项目研究宗教认同和宗教习俗如何受到新的制度世俗化形式的影响并适应这种形式。通常情况下，研究人员得出的结论是，世俗主义需要对宗教生活进行法律和行政干预。这个项目培训一名研究生如何进行严格的、有经验的科学实地考察，该项目的问题是，在世俗治理异常强大的背景下，是否还有其他形式的制度和个人韧性。这也有助于我们了解世界上一个在政治和经济上对美国至关重要的地区的社会和宗教变化。杨慎将在波士顿大学的罗伯特·韦勒的指导下，探索制度世俗化和宗教认同之间的联系，以及那些被描述为弃绝者的人如何将他们的修行与他们的宗教认同调和起来。该项目将确定构成佛教寺院作为当代现象的关键参照点的文化假设、社会结构和关系以及历史进程，并研究佛教寺院如何为公众提供构建另类生活世界的词汇和空间。这项研究是基于对东中国同一地点中国佛教寺院的三个不同背景下的民族志研究：以仪式为导向的寺庙，以行政为中心的佛教协会，以及大学形式的佛教学院。该项目将分析和比较这三个子机构如何通过结合民族志方法，包括参与式观察、半结构化访谈和重点访谈，以及在当地学术的基础上，以不同的方式沉思、代表和维持一种放弃的生活方式。该项目以宗教人类学和伦理人类学领域目前的辩论为基础，解决有关社会文化系统的复原力和稳健性的问题。在严格的比较方法论的帮助下，它将挑战当前在社会理论和公共话语中普遍存在的宗教认同的本质倾向，并为宗教认同是如何通过宗教愿望和宗教制度之间的持续相互作用而形成的提供新的途径。该项目将帮助其他研究人员了解宗教行为者如何适应不断变化的社会结构和条件。该项目还将以更灵活的方式增进我们对不熟悉传统的宗教行为者的机构建设努力的了解，并更好地了解宗教机构的运作及其自我改造的方式。

The contestation between secular conditions and religious aspirations is at the heart of many contemporary political conflicts and disputes. This project examines how religious identities and practices are influenced by, and adapt to, new forms of institutional secularization. Ordinarily, researchers have concluded that secularism entails legal and administrative intervention into religious life. This project, which trains a graduate student in how to conduct rigorous empirically-grounded scientific fieldwork, asks whether there are other forms of institutional and personal resilience in a context where secular governance is exceptionally strong. It also helps us to understand social and religious change in a part of the world that is critical politically and economically to the U.S. Yang Shen, under the supervision of Robert Weller of Boston University, will explore the link between institutional secularization and religious identity, and how those characterized as renouncers reconcile their monasticism with their religious identities. The project will identify the cultural assumptions, social structures and relations, and historical processes that constitute the key points of reference of Buddhist monasticism as a contemporary phenomenon, and also examine how Buddhist monasticism provides the public with a vocabulary and a space for constructing alternate life-worlds. The study is based on ethnographic research in three different contexts of Chinese Buddhist monasticism at a single site in East China: ritual-oriented temples, administration-centered Buddhist associations, and university-fashioned Buddhist academies. The project will analyze and compare how these three sub-institutions differently meditate, represent, and sustain a renunciatory way of life, by adopting a combination of ethnographic methods including participatory observation, semi-structured interviews, and focused interviews, as well as building on local scholarship. This project builds on the current debates in the field of anthropology of religion and the anthropology of ethics to address questions regarding the resilience and robustness of socio-cultural systems. Aided by rigorous comparative methodology, it will challenge the current pervasive tendency to essentialize religious identity, in social theory as well as in public discourses, and instead offers new approaches to how religious identity forms through the continuous interplay between religious aspiration and religious institution. The project will help other researchers to understand how religious actors adapt in the face of changing social structures and conditions. The project will also advance our understanding of the institution-building efforts of religious actors in unfamiliar traditions in a more flexible way, and to understand better the workings of religious institutions and the ways in which they also transform themselves.