Description: "This book dispels popular understandings of Buddhism as a religion that emphasizes the renunciation of worldly goods, by examining how Buddhist temples and the monastic community (the sangha) require tangible resources in order to sustain themselves. The first book to focus on the material and financial relations of contemporary Buddhist monks, nuns, temples, and laypeople, it shows that rather than being peripheral, economic exchanges are often central to the relations between Buddhist monastics and laity, and are a key topic of religious debate. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork from India over Russia to Japan, and including all three major Buddhist traditions, the book focuses on the flows of goods and services between clergy and laity, the management of resources, the treatment of cash, and the role of the state in temple economies. Along with documenting ritual and economic practices, these accounts engage with the anxieties and challenges facing Buddhist societies in the contemporary era and dispel the romantic notion of the Buddhist monk"--
Brief description: Christoph Brumann is Head of Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, and Honorary Professor of Anthropology at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.
Review Quotes:
"Monks, Money, and Morality provides intimate cases studies from around the Buddhist world to show the complex consideration of money and ethics that monks must negotiate for their temples to survive. It offers insights into the way in which national politics and economics affect the practicalities of those seeking to pursue a monastic life. This eye-opening study will change perceptions of Buddhism and understandings of the role of monks in their communities." --Kate Crosby, Professor of Buddhist Studies, King's College London, UK
"At the heart of Buddhism stands the relationship between monastics and laypeople. These diverse and fascinating case studies, with their sophisticated ethnographic analyses, demonstrate that what is often thought of as an asymmetrical and hierarchical symbiosis is, in actually existing Buddhism, far more complex, far more variable, and far more interesting than that." --David N. Gellner, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oxford, UK "The book is very much about the dilemmas that a religious tradition faces when it comes to issues of money, exchange and incorporation into the capitalist economy ... a very rich collection of studies." --Jovan Maud, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology