Buddhist Tourism in Asia
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Edited by:
Courtney Bruntz
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With contributions by:
David Geary
About this book
This innovative collaborative work—the first to focus on Buddhist tourism—explores how Buddhists, government organizations, business corporations, and individuals in Asia participate in re-imaginings of Buddhism through tourism. Contributors from religious studies, anthropology, and art history examine sacred places and religious monuments as they have been shaped and reshaped by socioeconomic and cultural trends in the region.
Following an introduction that offers the first theoretical understanding of tourism from a Buddhist studies’ perspective, early chapters discuss the ways Buddhists and non-Buddhists imagine concepts and places related to the religion. Case studies highlight Buddhist peace in India, Buddhist heavens and hells in Singapore, Thai temple space, and the future Buddha Maitreya in China. Buddhist tourism’s connections to the state, market, and new technologies are explored in chapters on Indian package tours for pilgrims, thematic Buddhist tourism in Cambodia, the technological innovations of Buddhist temples in China, and the promotion of pilgrimage sites in Japan. Contributors then situate the financial concerns of Chinese temples, speed dating in temples in Japan, and the diffuse and pervasive nature of Buddhism for tourism promotion in Ladakh, India.
How have tourist routes, groups, sites, and practices associated with Buddhism come to be possible and what are the effects? In what ways do travelers derive meaning from Buddhist places? How do Buddhist sites fortify national, cultural, or religious identities? The comparative research in South, Southeast, and East Asia presented here draws attention to the intertwining of the sacred and the financial and how local and national sites are situated within global networks. Together these findings generate a compelling comparative investigation of Buddhist spaces, identities, and practices.
Author / Editor information
John N. Miksic is professor in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore.
--- Contributor: Brian J. Nichols Brian J. Nichols is associate professor of religious studies at Mount Royal University, Calgary. --- Contributor: Ian Reader Ian Reader is professor of religious studies at Lancaster University. He is the author of numerous books and articles on aspects of Japanese social and religious life. --- Contributor: Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg is assistant professor and codirector of the Center for Contemporary Buddhist Studies at the University of Copenhagen.Topics
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Frontmatter
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Contents
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Series Editor’s Preface
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Acknowledgments
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Introduction: Theoretical Landscapes of Buddhist Tourism in Asia
1 - PART I. Buddhist Imaginaries and Place-Making
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CHAPTER ONE. Peace and the Buddhist Imaginary in Bodh Gaya, India
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CHAPTER TWO. Imaginaries of Buddhist Fantasy Worlds in Southeast Asia: The Decline of Tiger Balm Gardens of Singapore in Comparative Perspective
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CHAPTER THREE. Loss and Promise: The Buddhist Temple as Tourist Space in Thailand
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CHAPTER FOUR. Marketing Maitreya: Two Peaks, Three Forms of Capital, and the Quest to Establish a Fifth Buddhist Mountain
84 - PART II. Secularizing the Sacred
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CHAPTER FIVE. Cambodian Pilgrimage Groups in India and Sri Lanka
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CHAPTER SIX. Buddhists, Bones, and Bats: Thematic Tourism and the Symbolic Economy of Phnom Sampeau, Cambodia
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CHAPTER SEVEN. Taking Tourism into Their Own Hands: Monastic Communities and Temple Transformations in China
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CHAPTER EIGHT. Turning to Tourism in a Time of Crisis? Buddhist Temples and Pilgrimage Promotion in Secular(ized) Japan
161 - PART III. Commodification and Its Consequences
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CHAPTER NINE. Interrogating Religious Tourism at Buddhist Monasteries in China
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CHAPTER TEN. How I Meditated with Your Mother: Speed Dating at Temples and Shrines in Contemporary Japan
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CHAPTER ELEVEN. Buddhism: A Unique Selling Proposition (USP) in Ladakh
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List of Contributors
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Index
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