Project description
Tackling excess and abandonment of Buddhist circular economies in contemporary Japan
Buddhism and anti-materialism may go hand in hand for many, but the EU-funded REFUSE project will establish that Buddhist materiality drives Buddhist circular economies. REFUSE will explore how material exchanges, particularly with local temples, result in excess and abandonment practices in contemporary post-growth Japan and how Buddhist giving can challenge the viability of the circular economy ideal by generating waste. The project will shed light on the connection between contemporary Buddhism and Buddhist practices for processing accumulation and abandonment of Buddhist gifts and the waste-making impacts of religious activity.
Objective
Anti-materialism is the most pervasive popular assumption about Buddhism that obscures Buddhism’s material presence and its environmental impacts. Problematising such moulds, this ethnographic project will demonstrate how Buddhist materiality drives Buddhist circular economies, rooted in practices of merit-making and inherited ritual labour. By tracing Buddhist objects’ biographies and illuminating the circular nature of Buddhist material exchanges, I investigate how things given to local temples generate excess and abandonment practices in contemporary post-growth Japan. Through histories of these objects and their relations, I uncover how demographic hyper-ageing, regional depopulation, and changing consumption patterns inform and disrupt Buddhist material exchanges: how family altars and other personal ritual items, as well as meritorious food, land and object donations get caught up in discard, disposal, and reuse cycles and what emotional, ethical, practical, and spiritual implications ensue. As such, I will illuminate how Buddhist practices for processing accumulation and abandonment of Buddhist gifts are key to understanding contemporary Buddhism, and the wider issues of consumption, recycling, and aspirational non-waste economies they inhabit. I will therefore consider Buddhist giving as forces that generate and handle excess/abandonment that challenge the viability of the circular economy ideal by producing waste. Global concern about waste continues to rise: this research interrogates the waste-making impacts of religious activity and assesseses the spiritual and practical implications of managing religious excess in the world’s fastest ageing society. It complements, and is complemented by, the research at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Contemporary Buddhist Studies interrogating Buddhist economic entanglements and waste that is created by Buddhist economic exchanges, thus supporting my development as an expert within this critical field.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
MSCA-PF - MSCA-PFCoordinator
1165 Kobenhavn
Denmark