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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

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Anthropology

Faculty Publications

Linfield University

Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Defining Choices Redefined: Heroic Life Narratives Of Taiwanese Buddhist Monastics, Hillary Crane Jan 2019

Defining Choices Redefined: Heroic Life Narratives Of Taiwanese Buddhist Monastics, Hillary Crane

Faculty Publications

The Taiwanese Buddhist monastics in this study confront negative stereotypes that dominate within their wider societal context, and they challenge these stereotypes by positing counter-narratives. After exploring the monastics’ interest in proselytizing both to me and to a wider audience as a context that influences the interview encounter, this chapter focuses on the monastics’ response to negative stereotypes and their endeavors to craft a new, positive image of monastics. I argue that they employ the heroic trope of the da zhangfu (大丈夫, ‘great man’) to reconceive as heroic the life choices they have made that wider Taiwanese society characterizes as …

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Energy And Economy: Recognizing High-Energy Modernity As A Historical Period, Thomas Love, Cindy Isenhour Jan 2016

Energy And Economy: Recognizing High-Energy Modernity As A Historical Period, Thomas Love, Cindy Isenhour

Faculty Publications

This introduction to Economic Anthropology’s special issue on “Energy and Economy” argues that we might find inspiration for a much more engaged and public anthropology in an unlikely place—19th century evolutionist thought. In addition to studying the particularities of energy transitions, which anthropology does so well, a more engaged anthropology might also broaden its temporal horizons to consider the nature of the future “stage” into which humanity is hurtling in an era of resource depletion and climate change. Net energy (EROEI), or the energy “surplus” on which we build and maintain our complex societal arrangements, is a key tool …

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Flirting With Conversion: Negotiating Researcher Non-Belief With Missionaries, Hillary K. Crane Jan 2013

Flirting With Conversion: Negotiating Researcher Non-Belief With Missionaries, Hillary K. Crane

Faculty Publications

This article discusses Crane’s research in a Taiwanese Buddhist monastery. Crane came to the field as a former Catholic, which provided a particular lens through which to perceive the phenomena she researched. Beyond the difficulties of having one's research interests misinterpreted by the community one is researching and the ambiguities that result from remaining open to conversion when studying religious communities, Crane examines the further difficulty confronted when researching religious personnel who have an interest in representing their religious ideals both to and through the researcher. The article examines Crane’s time in the Buddhist monastery and explores her personal ambivalence …

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Resistance Through Transformation? The Meanings Of Gender Reversals In A Taiwanese Buddhist Monastery, Hillary Crane Jan 2011

Resistance Through Transformation? The Meanings Of Gender Reversals In A Taiwanese Buddhist Monastery, Hillary Crane

Faculty Publications

This chapter demonstrates that Taiwanese Buddhist nuns resist the limitations of traditional Han gender ideologies by drawing on opportunities offered within those traditional gender constructions—opportunities that allow them to define themselves in opposition to the limited female gender characteristics and roles they reject. Crane argues that we should not interpret these nuns' masculine identification simply as resisting dominant Han gender ideologies. Instead, the nuns embrace the traditional, sexist Han ideologies, even to the point of exaggeration—portraying women not only as dangerous to the spiritual cultivation of others, but also of limited spiritual ability. They define the negative characteristics of women …

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Becoming A Nun, Becoming A Man: Taiwanese Buddhist Nuns’ Gender Transformation, Hillary Crane Jan 2007

Becoming A Nun, Becoming A Man: Taiwanese Buddhist Nuns’ Gender Transformation, Hillary Crane

Faculty Publications

This paper explores apparent contradictions in the gender identifications of Taiwanese Buddhist nuns. Because the texts and teachings of their tradition provide conflicting messages about women's spiritual abilities, the nuns create a complex gender cosmology as a means to accommodate textual contradictions without rejecting any textual statements. This strategy allows the nuns to assert that they have spiritual abilities equal to those of men without rejecting or contradicting textual statements that they do not. Without denying that they are women (and that they are therefore threatening to men) the nuns primarily identify with the male gender. Compartmentalizing and contextualizing gender …

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The Stoic Monastic: Taiwanese Buddhism And The Problem Of Emotions, Hillary Crane Jan 2006

The Stoic Monastic: Taiwanese Buddhism And The Problem Of Emotions, Hillary Crane

Faculty Publications

This paper explores the stoicism of Taiwanese monastics and argues that, in this context, emotions are believed to be dangerous in part because they interfere with spiritual cultivation. A stoic exterior further represents an inner state of calm and a lack of emotionality. Since women are believed to have more emotional problems than men, nuns in particular seek to control their emotions, in part by studying the example of monks. Women’s emotions are contrasted with the trait of compassion, which is associated with men and thought to be selfless. Cultivating compassion is the focus of much of their spiritual practice …

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Resisting Marriage And Renouncing Womanhood: The Choice Of Taiwanese Buddhist Nuns, Hillary Crane Jan 2004

Resisting Marriage And Renouncing Womanhood: The Choice Of Taiwanese Buddhist Nuns, Hillary Crane

Faculty Publications

The traditional Chinese perception of Buddhist monastics is that they choose to renounce the world out of desperation — after failing in the world such that their only options are suicide or the monastery. That this perception of the monastic life persists in Taiwan today is evident in monastics’ own descriptions of their families’ responses to their choice as well as in several recent scandals related to monastic life. Despite the widespread negative perception of monastics, increasing numbers of women are choosing this life. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with relatively new monastics, the author explores the choice Buddhist nuns make …

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Grounds For Argument: Local Understandings, Science, And Global Processes In Special Forest Products Harvesting, Thomas Love, Eric Jones Jan 1997

Grounds For Argument: Local Understandings, Science, And Global Processes In Special Forest Products Harvesting, Thomas Love, Eric Jones

Faculty Publications

In posing the question "Where are the pickers?", Love and Jones suggest that the shifting paradigm in forestry is real and that academia is not leading the shift. Love and Jones illustrate the emergence of special forest products' legitimacy in competing uses of forests with their experience and research in mushroom harvesting in the Pacific Northwest.

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Comment On David Guillet's "Toward A Cultural Ecology Of Mountains: The Central Andes And The Himalayas Compared", Thomas Love Jan 1983

Comment On David Guillet's "Toward A Cultural Ecology Of Mountains: The Central Andes And The Himalayas Compared", Thomas Love

Faculty Publications

Thomas Love comments on David Guillet's essay "Toward a Cultural Ecology of Mountains: The Central Andes and the Himalayas Compared."

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