Religions and Social Change in Mainland Southeast Asia and Southwestern China : Institutions, Corridors and Practices.

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In this research project, 13 formal joint researchers and another 6 research collaborators, most of whom are graduate school students, specializing each country for years, had equally opportunities to conduct the research during the term. As for official data on religions and cultures, we could collect them in government organizations, libraries, research institutes and universities in collaboration with native specialists and bureaus. Also we conducted field survey in local communities as well as suburbs. As a result, we obtained and updated basic data concerning the development of institutional regulations and activities of local people in Theravada Buddhist countries (Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Yunnan [China], and Laos). We believe this project could contribute greatly to the empirical studies of religion and society especially those in socialist countries. The issues varies from actual practices and institutions in geo-political border regions between countries to newly appeared practices in a specific nation-sate in relation with rapid social change today ; those are in migratory people, development policies, urban-rural formation, female ascetics, textual tradition, and the like. We also collected data about local tradition and activities among Christianity in uplanders' communities (Myanmar and Thailand) and Muslim minority in Thailand. The report includes 19 full papers contributed by all members who conducted the research. They describe in detail what has changed in the institutional formation of religion in each country as well as how each religious adherent appropriates their practice with abundant data. We are expecting the revised version of the report should be published in both Japanese and English to contribute academic works in each country to where we are in debt, while a part of the results is shown very soon in panel presentation at the 75th Annual Meeting of Japanese Association of Southeast Asian History, 11^<th> June,2006.