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

世俗条件与宗教愿望之间的冲突是当代许多政治冲突和争端的核心。该项目研究宗教身份和做法如何受到新形式的制度世俗化的影响，并适应这种世俗化。通常，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的和行政干预。这个项目，培训研究生如何进行严格的以政治为基础的科学实地考察，询问是否有其他形式的机构和个人的弹性在世俗治理是非常强大的背景下。它还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。在波士顿大学的罗伯特·韦勒的指导下，杨慎将探索制度世俗化与宗教身份之间的联系，以及那些被描述为放弃者的人如何调和他们的修道生活与宗教身份。该项目将确定文化假设，社会结构和关系，以及构成佛教僧侣生活作为当代现象的关键参考点的历史过程，并研究佛教僧侣生活如何为公众提供一个词汇和空间，以构建替代的生活世界。本研究基于对中国东部同一地点的三种不同佛教寺院文化背景的民族志研究：以仪式为导向的寺庙、以行政为中心的佛教协会和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不同地冥想，代表和维持一种放弃的生活方式，通过采用民族志方法的组合，包括参与性观察，半结构化访谈，重点访谈，以及建立在当地的奖学金。该项目建立在宗教人类学和伦理人类学领域目前的辩论基础上，以解决有关社会文化系统的复原力和稳健性的问题。借助严格的比较方法，它将挑战目前普遍存在的趋势，本质化的宗教身份，在社会理论以及在公共话语，而不是提供新的方法来宗教身份的形式，通过不断的相互作用之间的宗教愿望和宗教机构。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理解，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.