The Market Economy and Ritual Discards

This workshop brings together scholars working on the intersection of ritual practices, the market economy and attendant discard in the contemporary period. Rather than being economy-less or anti-materialistic, as commonly depicted, many religious movements associate wealth and discard with spiritual virtue. Drawing on primarily Asian ethnographies, we encourage a reconsideration of spiritual excess and waste imaginaries in the 21st century.

How are religious expressions both forged by and responding to environmental precarity in the Anthropocene? How are Tibetan Buddhists responding to Modi’s Swachh Bharat (Clean India) initiative? How are religions fashioned and religious actors situated within the changing technological and discursive possibilities of neoliberal consumerism? How are religious institutions responding to shifting discourses about sustainability, pollution and hygienic waste? How are minority religions indistinguishably fusing neoliberal attitudes about profit with spiritual notions of service and care? How are Hòa Hảo Buddhist leaders mobilizing volunteers to clean up waste in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam?

These dynamics are explored within Hindu and Buddhist institutional frameworks alongside popular devotional practices and the amorphous practices contemporary minority religions. We are particularly interested in case studies that are transnational, interdisciplinary and engaged with broader debates about how religions manifest and interpret excess during a time of unprecedented environmental crisis.

Presentations

The workshop is now closed for more participants.