Buddhist nuns and gendered practice
Subtitle: in search of the female renunciant
By: Nirmala S. Salgado
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 319
ISBN-13: 9780199760015; 9780199760022; 9780199986231
Subjects: Frau; Buddhist monasticism and religious orders for women; Geschlechterrolle; Buddhismus; Bhikkuni; Women in Buddhism; Buddhist nuns
Description: "Based on extensive research in Sri Lanka and interviews with Theravada and Tibetan nuns from around the world, Salgado's groundbreaking study urges a rethinking of female renunciation. How are scholarly accounts complicit in reinscribing imperialist stories about the subjectivity of Buddhist women? How do key Buddhist "concepts" such as dukkha, samsara, and sila ground female renunciant practice? Salgado's provocative analysis questions the secular notion of the higher ordination of nuns as a political movement for freedom against patriarchal norms. Arguing that the lives of nuns defy translation into a politics of global sisterhood equal before law, she calls for more-nuanced readings of nuns' everyday renunciant practices."--Publisher website.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Acknowledgments; title: Introduction: Buddhist nuns and gendered practice; title: Part I: Narration. Decolonizing female renunciation ; Institutional discourse and everyday practice ; Buddhism, power, and practice; title: Part II: Identity. Invisible nuns ; Subjects of renunciation ; Becoming Bhikkhunis, becoming Theravada; title: Part III: Empowerment. Renunciation and "empowerment" ; Global empowerment and the renunciant everyday.