To answer these questions, the VIRTUE project mapped and analysed practices of religious giving in northeastern Tibet (Amdo/Qinghai) in their broader economic, social, and political contexts, drawing on ethnographic materials collected between 2008 and 2015, including oral narratives, field notes, documents, photos and DVDs. Drawing for inspiration on the ‘moral turn’ in anthropology and resurgence of interest in theories of value, the aim was to identify points of ethical reflection, tension and debate as a way of getting at shifting ideas about wealth, virtue, and the social good.
The research clearly showed a relationship between debates about religious giving and socio-economic changes. Increased emphasis on the value of individual volition over communal duty mirrored processes of economic transition that accelerated in the 2000s. In the 2010s, as disposable incomes and wealth disparities grew, the terms of debates shifted to focus on increasing expenditure. On one hand, people were critical of the prestige-oriented dynamics and socio-economic impacts of conspicuous giving, cynically viewing this as reflecting and exacerbating increasing avariciousness, competitiveness, and community breakdown. On the other hand, deeper analysis of specific cases showed that these were also moral practices that could be experienced and received as exemplary acts of faith and virtue.
Despite common imaginings of Buddhism and Tibetan culture as the anti-materialist antithesis of ‘global’ consumer society, wealth is positively associated with virtue in Buddhism and (of course) Tibetans enjoy more comfortable lives and aspire to greater prosperity. But this sits uneasily with a popular feeling that economic-mindedness and a weakening of faith and virtue are undermining the grounds of Tibetan communal well-being, morality, and identity. An underlying ‘ethic of redistribution’ in practices of giving among the economic elite has been a way of resolving this. But people have different ideas about how this ideal should be realized. Should new-found wealth be channeled to religious projects and events or to social welfare projects (e.g. education and poverty relief)? What is of most value and what makes someone a virtuous Tibetan and a good Buddhist?
Fault-lines in how people think and feel about wealth, virtue and the social good seem to be drawn along secular versus religious lines, but the research suggests that they in fact reflect two different models of generosity, each privileging a Buddhist value central to Tibetan identity. Buddhism has mediated engagements with accelerated development and changing ideas about wealth, virtue, and the social good. But it has done so in different ways - just as Buddhism and Buddhist values have been differently understood and engaged with.
During the two years, the project and its most significant results were presented and discussed at international conferences and workshops in Denmark, Germany, France, the UK, Norway, and the USA. The project resulted in new collaborations central to achieving its objective of bringing research on Tibetan Buddhism and economy into dialogue with broader debates. Notably, the project’s ‘Religion, Economy and Value: Histories of Religious Fundraising’ workshop, co-organised with Sarah Roddy (University of Manchester), brought together scholars working across a wide range of times, places, and religious traditions. A proposal for a special issue resulting from this workshop, co-edited by the project lead, is under review by a high-ranking peer-reviewed journal. The project has also yielded a journal article and book chapter (forthcoming), as well as a book manuscript, two book chapters and three co-authored journal articles (under review or in preparation). Key issues addressed by the project are being disseminated to the public through a number of forthcoming blog posts and popularised articles in English and Danish.
