Victims or Agents? A Feminist Reading of Lived Experiences of Buddhist Nuns in Myanmar
Victimhood and agency are often understood in sharp contrasts, however, as evidenced by ethnographic study of Buddhist nuns amidst violent conflicts in Myanmar, this chapter aims to argue that the interface between victimhood and agency may be diffused and overlapping. Their claims of recognising an...
| Published in: | Research in the social scientific study of religion |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2020
|
| In: |
Research in the social scientific study of religion
|
| Further subjects: | B
Cultural sciences
B Religious sociology B Social sciences B Religionspsycholigie B Religionswissenschaften B Religion & Gesellschaft B Gender studies |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Victimhood and agency are often understood in sharp contrasts, however, as evidenced by ethnographic study of Buddhist nuns amidst violent conflicts in Myanmar, this chapter aims to argue that the interface between victimhood and agency may be diffused and overlapping. Their claims of recognising and resisting victimhood can corroborate and contest the sociology of religion, gender, violence and the confluence of the three in fascinating ways. Using feminism as a critical and corrective approach, this chapter works along the following three-fold paths of inquiry: i) In what ways do the lived experiences of the Buddhist nuns in Myanmar contest the normative understanding of victimhood?; ii) How are they altering narratives of conceptualising victimhood and agency, and actualising counter-claims to victimhood and transitioning towards agency?; and iii) How the accounts of the Buddhist nuns feed in or contest the larger debates around religion and feminism? Besides the above, this chapter addresses the underlying factors that lead a society to passively assign victimhood and agency and the constraints of the interrelationships between religion, gender and violence. |
|---|---|
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Research in the social scientific study of religion
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/9789004443969_023 |