Between Strangeness and an Alternative Buddhist Lifestyle: An Expression of Religious Non-Conformity in Consumer Culture

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216275%3A25210%2F22%3A39919820" target="_blank" >RIV/00216275:25210/22:39919820 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://rascee.net/index.php/rascee/article/view/142/153" target="_blank" >https://rascee.net/index.php/rascee/article/view/142/153</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.20413/rascee.2022.15.1.57-74" target="_blank" >10.20413/rascee.2022.15.1.57-74</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Between Strangeness and an Alternative Buddhist Lifestyle: An Expression of Religious Non-Conformity in Consumer Culture

Original language description

This study contributes to the sociological understanding of the social perceptions of religious engagement and its self-presentation in consumer culture. Drawing on three years of comparative ethnographic research on the Buddhist lifestyle in five different organisations in France and the Czech Republic, it reveals that Buddhist engagement, through its practices, is considered peculiar or even potentially dangerous by the participants’ environment. Remarks of the people surrounding them reflect typical features of the popular understanding and the literature on sects, cults and new religious movements and express social pressure to respect different social norms. They also partly represent social demands to adopt a conformist lifestyle because of their often individualised and activity-centred character. At the same time, Buddhist practitioners’ self-presentation of their engagement is in line with alternative lifestyle discourses since it challenges different social practices, forms of sociability, ethics and other values. The importance, diversity and positive image associated with this alternative stance can be considered an expression of the value of non-conformity that reflects the individualism and disdain of conformism typical of consumer culture.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_SC - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the SCOPUS database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60304 - Religious studies

Project

—

Continuities

S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach

Publication year

2022

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe

ISSN

1553-9962

e-ISSN

1553-9962

Volume of the periodical

15

Issue of the periodical within the volume

1

Country of publishing house

HR - CROATIA

Number of pages

18

Pages from-to

"57–74"

UT code for WoS article

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EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85146259647