Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - VIRTUE (Wealth, Virtue and Social Justice in Contemporary Tibet)

Teaser

The VIRTUE project examined the relationship between Buddhism and ideas about wealth, virtue and the social good in contemporary Tibet, a ‘Buddhist’ society experiencing rapid state-led development, rising consumption levels and growing inequalities. As China has become...

Summary

The VIRTUE project examined the relationship between Buddhism and ideas about wealth, virtue and the social good in contemporary Tibet, a ‘Buddhist’ society experiencing rapid state-led development, rising consumption levels and growing inequalities. As China has become richer, funds have flowed to monasteries on the Tibetan plateau. Growing interest in Tibetan Buddhism among affluent urban Chinese has been an important factor, but there has also been an upsurge in local religious giving concurrent with growing wealth and wealth disparities. Tibetans have poured resources – in some cases the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of euros – into a wave of new religious construction and escalating levels of expenditure on rituals and sponsorship of monastic events. Supporting the monastic community and building temples are among the most common forms of Buddhist generosity practice. Yet, their recent dynamics and scale have been the subject of critique and debate, including among monks and laypeople who have participated.

Previous scholarship has examined doctrinal, sociological and economic dimensions of the Buddhist gift, while the ethnographic record gives us some insight into the diversity of religious giving. However, the idea that individuals and communities might make reflective decisions or judgments about the value of particular forms or modes of giving – and that these might change over time – has received little attention.

When, why and how have religious-economic practices come to be the subject of moral reflection, debate and critique? What this can reveal more generally about Tibetan experiences of development and (changing?) conceptions of the relationship between wealth, virtue and the social good? How might this research on Buddhism and Tibet contribute to wider debates about value and exchange, commodity and gift, and religion and economy in the contemporary world?

Work performed

To answer these questions, the VIRTUE project mapped and analysed practices of religious giving in northeastern Tibet (Amdo/Qinghai) in their broader economic, social, and political contexts, drawing on ethnographic materials collected between 2008 and 2015, including oral narratives, field notes, documents, photos and DVDs. Drawing for inspiration on the ‘moral turn’ in anthropology and resurgence of interest in theories of value, the aim was to identify points of ethical reflection, tension and debate as a way of getting at shifting ideas about wealth, virtue, and the social good.

The research clearly showed a relationship between debates about religious giving and socio-economic changes. Increased emphasis on the value of individual volition over communal duty mirrored processes of economic transition that accelerated in the 2000s. In the 2010s, as disposable incomes and wealth disparities grew, the terms of debates shifted to focus on increasing expenditure. On one hand, people were critical of the prestige-oriented dynamics and socio-economic impacts of conspicuous giving, cynically viewing this as reflecting and exacerbating increasing avariciousness, competitiveness, and community breakdown. On the other hand, deeper analysis of specific cases showed that these were also moral practices that could be experienced and received as exemplary acts of faith and virtue.

Despite common imaginings of Buddhism and Tibetan culture as the anti-materialist antithesis of ‘global’ consumer society, wealth is positively associated with virtue in Buddhism and (of course) Tibetans enjoy more comfortable lives and aspire to greater prosperity. But this sits uneasily with a popular feeling that economic-mindedness and a weakening of faith and virtue are undermining the grounds of Tibetan communal well-being, morality, and identity. An underlying ‘ethic of redistribution’ in practices of giving among the economic elite has been a way of resolving this. But people have different ideas about how this ideal should be realized. Should new-found wealth be channeled to religious projects and events or to social welfare projects (e.g. education and poverty relief)? What is of most value and what makes someone a virtuous Tibetan and a good Buddhist?
Fault-lines in how people think and feel about wealth, virtue and the social good seem to be drawn along secular versus religious lines, but the research suggests that they in fact reflect two different models of generosity, each privileging a Buddhist value central to Tibetan identity. Buddhism has mediated engagements with accelerated development and changing ideas about wealth, virtue, and the social good. But it has done so in different ways - just as Buddhism and Buddhist values have been differently understood and engaged with.

During the two years, the project and its most significant results were presented and discussed at international conferences and workshops in Denmark, Germany, France, the UK, Norway, and the USA. The project resulted in new collaborations central to achieving its objective of bringing research on Tibetan Buddhism and economy into dialogue with broader debates. Notably, the project’s ‘Religion, Economy and Value: Histories of Religious Fundraising’ workshop, co-organised with Sarah Roddy (University of Manchester), brought together scholars working across a wide range of times, places, and religious traditions. A proposal for a special issue resulting from this workshop, co-edited by the project lead, is under review by a high-ranking peer-reviewed journal. The project has also yielded a journal article and book chapter (forthcoming), as well as a book manuscript, two book chapters and three co-authored journal articles (under review or in preparation). Key issues addressed by the project are being disseminated to the public through a number of forthcoming blog posts and popularised articles in English and Danish.

Final results

Bridging the divide between studies of economy and religion and complicating existing scholarly typologies of the Buddhist gift, the VIRTUE project furthers our understanding of Buddhism as a lived religion as well as our knowledge of Tibetan society and economy. Through its interrogation of critical terms such as virtue, volition, prestige, profit, generosity, and gift, it has brought research on Buddhism and Tibet into dialogue with wider theoretical debates. Religion and economy is not a new field, but it has been dominated by culturalist and economistic approaches. The VIRTUE project shows that more sustained attention to moral and affective dimensions of religious-economic practices helps us better understand the dynamic relation between economy and religion in human society and lives – and to challenge assumptions underpinning academic and popular knowledge of the world’s cultures, religions, and economies.

The broader issues that the project addresses about human well-being and social justice are of wider public relevance - this was evident in responses to the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral (an outpouring of donations that in turn provoked outrage). The findings also provide potential insights for policy makers and influencers by clearly showing that neither rational choice nor generalisations about religions and cultures are sufficient to explain why people might or might not engage in development and welfare initiatives. We need experiential data to understand what well-being and social need mean to different people and why.

Website & more info

More info: https://ccrs.ku.dk/research/centres/centre-for-contemporary-buddhist-studies/.