Trine Brox | University of Copenhagen (original) (raw)
Papers by Trine Brox
Journal Of The American Academy Of Religion, 2024
Taking examples from lived Tibetan Buddhism, this article explores the role of religion in the ge... more Taking examples from lived Tibetan Buddhism, this article explores the role of religion in the generation, sorting, and handling of waste that is produced or ends up in the religious field. Rather than assuming that waste is the negative and worthless endpoint of consumption, it introduces the concepts of “waste imaginaries” and “waste trajectories” to examine the importance of religion in the relationship between how and why things come to be defined and sorted as waste and the ways in which they are then handled and treated. By examining how Tibetan Buddhists talk about and act around different kinds of waste, both sacred and banal, the article unfolds the moral politics of waste, showing how waste trajectories are negotiated through changing and sometimes conflicting waste imaginaries.
Social Compass , 2022
With Buddhism’s integration into the global market economy, the trade in Buddhist commodities is ... more With Buddhism’s integration into the global market economy, the trade in Buddhist commodities is booming. I ask how the value of such goods is measured, communicated, and contested by the diverse range of actors who buy and sell them. The analytical framework draws on recent conceptual developments in the fields of religion and of technology to develop Jens Beckert’s typology of value. While Beckert draws on Durkheim’s sociology of religion to differentiate between physical and symbolic values, I take the example of a powerful Buddhist technology, the Tibetan prayer wheel, to demonstrate the entanglement of materiality and belief in the different types of value ascribed to religious goods.
NVMEN: International Review for the History of Religions, 2021
This article investigates how the cultural politics of ethnoreligious belonging play out through ... more This article investigates how the cultural politics of ethnoreligious belonging play out through everyday aesthetic practices at a market for Tibetan Buddhist objects in Chengdu, China – a multiethnic place that is perceived and experienced as “Tibetan” by the Tibetans and Chinese who work, live, and shop there. Based upon ethnographic research in Chengdu, I explore how Tibetan urbanites navigate the sensorially intense market, sorting its sights, sounds, and smells to determine who and what belongs as authentically Tibetan Buddhist. In the process, I argue, they are laying claim to an ability to feel the in/authentic acquired through being born and raised as a Tibetan. This practical ability is what I call an aesthetic habitus. Yet, many Tibetans fear this ability is being eroded; it is no longer clear who and what belongs, contributing to anxieties that Tibetans as a distinct ethnoreligious community will be extinguished.
The waxwork is a new medium of Buddhist materiality that now coexists with the metal statue, the ... more The waxwork is a new medium of Buddhist materiality that now coexists with the metal statue, the photograph, and the painted scroll in the Tibetan cultural sphere. It is usually departed Buddhist masters who are immortalized as wax effigies. The hyperrealistic aesthetics extends their presence among devotees since wax can be formed and colored to look exactly like the living person. Tibetan waxworks are particularly fascinating in relation to the Buddhist sacred. In this article, I introduce the waxwork as a new medium of Buddhist materiality, and I present one assemblage of a deceased religious authority and its living maker.
Landscapes of Little Lhasa, 2019
This article problematizes the juxtaposition of place and identity. By analyzing different dimens... more This article problematizes the juxtaposition of place and identity. By analyzing different dimensions of landscape, it asks how an ethnically diverse neighborhood in Chengdu, China, has become considered a Tibetan place. The article engages with and pushes John Brinckerhoff Jackson's distinction between political and vernacular landscapes, introducing a third category: the commercial landscape. Each of these three dimensions of the landscape, which are deeply entangled but conceptually distinct, transforms multi-ethnic space into a Tibetan place. The vernacular emerges from the traces of quotidian life in the form of languages, bodily practices, sights, scents, and colors: it 'feels' Tibetan. The political relates to the securitization of Tibetan spaces and how people re-imagine the traces of state-led spatial management and organization. Finally, the commercial has to do with the appropriation of Tibetan aesthetics in the pursuit of profiting from a Tibetan Buddhist identity. I argue that these three different landscapes are what enable us to recognize a multi-ethnic space as a Tibetan place.
Journal of Global Buddhism, 2019
The article discusses material religion in a commercial setting and begins with Walter Benjamin’s... more The article discusses material religion in a commercial setting and begins with Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936). Benjamin argues that mechanical reproduction emancipated works of art from religious rituals and evaporated the aura of art. This has resonance among some Tibetan Buddhists in the context of mass-produced Buddhist material objects. Are such objects fit to be given as gifts, implemented in rituals, and worshipped on altars? Based upon ethnographic work at a Tibetan Buddhist market in urban China, this article argues that, although factory-made, for-profit objects are not made or handled according to Buddhist tradition, the aura can be produced in different ways and at different points of an object’s life. This article presents three very different modes of action employed by marketers, customers, and ritual specialists. The modes of action are packaging, ritual action, and faith labor.
![Research paper thumbnail of Brox 2018 tekst teknologi trope: det tibetanske bedehjul [Text, Technology and Trope: The Tibetan Prayer Wheel]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/58317532/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Fund og Forskning, vol. 57, 2018
Tibetan Buddhist practices include the engagement with Buddhist script in the form of tightly pac... more Tibetan Buddhist practices include the engagement with Buddhist script in the form of tightly packed scrolls of paper that are placed in drums and spun in order to accumulate merit. On the scrolls are written or printed mantras (sacred or magic sounds in the form of a series of syllables) or dhāraṇīs (formula condensing lengthy texts or teachings). The receptacles containing such scrolls are the iconic prayer wheels, whose materiality enables and restricts particular modes of textual engagement. What kind of texts are these scrolls? How does one read texts that come in the form of tightly packed scrolls? They cannot be read by immersing oneself in the content of the text because its materiality restricts access to it. Instead it fits perfectly with the prayer wheel technology that allows circumambulatory recitation, the article argues.
The prayer wheel is not only an important object in recitation practices for Tibetan Buddhists, but has also become a key marker of Tibetan identity. Yet its history, culture and practice have received very little scholarly attention. This article attempts to eradicate this blind spot. It endeavors to show how the prayer wheel has earned itself its iconic status by explaining how the prayer wheel is a receptacle of sacred script and a devise for reciting sacred script. The article zooms in on (i) the cult of the book in the Tibetan culture sphere, (ii) the technology of prayer wheels; and (iii) the recurring tropes of the wheel, circumambulation, and rotation in Buddhism, as well as the merit connected with them. In view of this particular constellation of book cult, technology, and dominant trope, it makes sense that, first of all, Tibetan Buddhists have adopted and further developed a technology that optimizes interaction with sacred script; secondly, that rotation is considered an adequate way to interact with Buddha’s doctrine; and third, that this devise has become an icon for the Tibetan civilization. It is especially the sacred text within the wheel, the article argues, that endows the prayer wheel with high status in a hierarchy of Buddhist material objects. Finally, this raises questions about modernised prayer wheels – when technological progress has enabled further development of devises that can contain and spin Buddhist script such as optic discs, prayer wheel apps, and automised praying machines. How does their materiality impact textual engagement?
The article is based upon data produced through (i) ethnographic inquiry, such as interacting with the stakeholders who deal with Buddhist material culture for different reasons, eg. producers, marketers, ritual specialists, practitioners, and consumers, and (ii) textual sources that includes Tibetan and English-language scholarship, catalogues, user’s guides, and marketing material. This multi-modal method has produced knowledge about the prayer wheel as practice, i.e. what we can call popular religion, and as theory, i.e. according to how the prayer wheel is idealised in the writings of Buddhist masters.
CFP
This one-day workshop seeks to engage with the resurgance of interest in Tibetan materialities by... more This one-day workshop seeks to engage with the resurgance of interest in Tibetan materialities by inviting papers to discuss Tibetan materialities and cultural economies, without necessarily privileging a Buddhist frame of referance. We welcome papers from scholars working in Tibetan contexts within or outside the geographical boundaries of Tibet, and who would like to engage in interdisicplinary discussions about materiality and economy. We imagine papers addressing topics within market and museum contexts such as sustainable tourism, heritage economies, Tibetan Museologies as well as encounters between different kinds of economies, including the digitalization, massproduction, branding, authenticity and marketing of Tibetan culture. We particularly welcome papers with an applied or practice oriented dimension that ask legal and economic questions of Tibetan heritage, curatorial or collection practices and sustainable tourism.
Zanta left her remote Tibetan village in Sichuan Province with her son to seek better opportuniti... more Zanta left her remote Tibetan village in Sichuan Province with her son to seek better opportunities in the Chinese capital. She found, however, that she was marginalized both where she was “supposed to” belong, in rural Tibet as well as in urban Beijing, where she was seeking a school education for her young son. She had nowhere to call home. This conversation will explore migration and belonging in this era of mobility, dislocation and globalization.
This article is the result of the collaboration between a Norwegian university professor, Trine Brox, and an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, Jocelyn Ford. We met in the United States in 2014, brought together by our mutual research interest in the little-studied phenomenon of Tibetan migration to eastern China. In 2017, we met again for the screening of Jocelyn’s documentary about Zanta at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, where Trine works.
Dissonances and Resonances, 2010
This workshop seeks to engage with a seeming resurgence of interest in theories of value. In stud... more This workshop seeks to engage with a seeming resurgence of interest in theories of value. In studies of religion, value has generally been used in the sociological sense of ideas about the good and desirable (religious/cultural values), a field of study recently revitalised by Joel Robbins. Value in the economic sense of 'price mechanism' (Graeber) has been employed analogically to uncover the economic workings of religion, for example in concepts such as symbolic value and the religious marketplace. However, economistic dimensions of religion are often assumed to be antithetical to religious values, particularly in analyses of religion and consumer society (Carette and King). We seek to question this assumption through discussion of the relationship between sociological and economic approaches to value in relation to religions and spiritualities in the contemporary world. Instead of understanding the commodification of religion as inevitably leading to a devaluation and lack of authenticity, we look at how commodification might also provide added value to local religious goods, ideas and lifestyles, as argued by Comaroff and Comaroff (2009) in relation to the commodification of ethnicity. For example, how has the marketing and branding of religion aided a process of growth and revitalization of religious institutions? What possible contentions and ambiguities arise within the nexus of religion and economics when religious or spiritual values become marketized and positioned within an economic value regime? How might discussion of value (economic) and values (sociological) open up ideas about the relationship between the individual (value as connected to strategy, agency, motivations, aspirations, interests, "homo economicus") and the collective (values as moral, traditional, connected to socialization practices)?
The main protagonist of this paper is H.R.H. Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark (1908–1980), an o... more The main protagonist of this paper is H.R.H. Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark (1908–1980), an old-world ethnographer and explorer who went to Kalimpong in the 1950s, first as a member and later as the leader of the Third Danish Expedition to Central Asia. The expedition’s aims were to explore and document empty spots on the map and to rescue the remnants of local cultures in Upper Asia. With the developing crisis in Tibet, however, Prince Peter was stranded in Kalimpong, waiting in vain for permission to enter Tibet. Yet unfavourable political circumstances turned into great opportunities for the expedition as the advance of the People’s Liberation Army into Tibet led to a stream of refugees into Kalimpong: “We had been denied entry into Tibet, but Tibet had come to us.” In this article, we explore Prince Peter’s seven years in Kalimpong and how he navigated this particularly intense contact zone, negotiating difficult political, personal, and professional circumstances.
In the official Dharamsala narrative, the birth of the Tibetan exile occurred in March 1959 when ... more In the official Dharamsala narrative, the birth of the Tibetan exile occurred in March 1959 when the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and his Tibetan followers fled from Tibet to South Asia in order to protect their lives, culture and religion from Communist Chinese destruction. It is also this exile, so the story goes, which made Tibetan customs, art, literature and philosophy globally available and relevant. In Denmark, such a connection to Tibet had already been established before this official beginning of exile. A particular Tibetan-Danish relationship highlights an underexposed phase in modern Tibetan history: how exile in the case of many Tibetans began even a decade before the Dalai Lama settled in India in 1959. This early exile was witnessed by a member of European royalty, a prince who, at the time, was heading for Tibet in the name of scientific exploration. Yet instead of entering Tibet to explore and 'discover' the Tibetan civilization in the 1950s, the prince ended up conducting a sevenyear rescue mission of tangible and intangible Tibetan cultural heritage-today preserved and kept for posterity in Denmark. We relate this largely overlooked story of how his unsuccessful attempt to lead a scientific mission to Tibet led to the salvaging of a different Tibet-that of a Tibet in exile.
Tibet har givet næring til mange fantasier om et afsidesliggende, fredeligt og ophøjet Shangri-la... more Tibet har givet næring til mange fantasier om et afsidesliggende, fredeligt og ophøjet Shangri-la. Det er især den kultur og filosofi (og i dag livsstil), som associeres med den tibetanske buddhisme, der har haft magnetisk tiltrækningskraft på eventyrere, missionærer, skattejægere, dharma bums – og videnskabsfolk. I hendes undersøgelse af de historiske dansk-tibetanske forbindelser, har Tibetolog Trine Brox gennemgået Nationalmuseets Tibet-arkiver og talt med både tibetanske og danske fagfæller for at genfortælle Tibetologistudiet ”skabelsesberetning.” Tibetologistudiets historie er fyldt med fantastiske beretninger og blandt disse er H.K.H. Prins Peter af Grækenland og til Danmark’s store arbejde for at hjemskaffe tibetanske manuskripter og etnografika.
Taking a historical context as a starting point, this chapter illuminates the historical relation... more Taking a historical context as a starting point, this chapter illuminates the historical relationship between Buddhism and economic engagements and shows how this relationship has played out in contemporary Asian and non-Asian contexts. With a focus on local practices and understandings of economic exchanges related to "Buddhism"e.g. lay-monk exchange relations, monastic businesses, spiritual consumerism, and Buddhist branding-it illuminates the economic life of Buddhism and the diverse modalities of Buddhism and economic relations. Moreover, how Buddhists have positioned themselves in relation to a capitalistic market economy, both as a critique and as an engagement, is examined, as well as how marketing strategies have been utilized to secure the position of Buddhists in regional and global contexts. The intersection between Buddhism and the global market economy, the authors argue, reveals an important flashpoint through which one can gain a more complex understanding about contemporary formations of Buddhism, modernity, and globality.
![Research paper thumbnail of Strandet i Kalimpong: Prins Peters Tibet-ekspedition 1950-1957.” [Stranded in Kalimpong! Prince Peter’s Tibet-expedition 1950-1957]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/50961419/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](In 1950 the Third Danish Expedition to Central Asia was stranded in the small mountain town of Ka... more In 1950 the Third Danish Expedition to Central Asia was stranded in the small mountain town of Kalimpong in the Indian Himalayas at the gateway to Tibet – the country that the expedition leader Prince Peter hoped to explore, but which was closed off by Communist China’s advance into Tibet. Instead, Tibet came to Kalimpong through an increasing flow of Tibetan refugees who supplied Prince Peter’s now-stationary Tibetan expedition with an extraordinary wealth of ethnographic information, accounts and objects as well as a very large body of physical-anthropological material. The article recounts Prince Peter’s seven years of ethnographic work documenting and rescuing Tibetan civilization from the relentless advance of modernity and the Chinese army by collecting tangible and intangible Tibetan cultural heritage. His initial ethnographic approach embodied contemporary ideas about the expedition mode’s scientific suitability for collecting knowledge about foreign cultures and remote peoples. As Prince Peter could not gain access to Tibet, but had access to the many resident Tibetans as well as traders, travellers and refugees who were flowing into Kalimpong, he changed from a mobile expedition mode to localized fieldwork, and carried out ethnographic investigations and collections among the Tibetans who were staying in the town. Prince Peter’s fantastic Tibetan collections are today part of the National Museum’s Ethnographic Collection and give us fascinating insights into the life and work of the adventurer, ethnographer and expedition leader Prince Peter. Through the accounts and objects that he collected we also encounter the many Tibetans and other people who crossed his path in Kalimpong.
Koktvedgaard Zeitzen, Miriam and Trine Brox 2016 “Strandet i Kalimpong: Prins Peters Tibet-ekspedition 1950-1957.” [Stranded in Kalimpong! Prince Peter’s Tibet-expedition 1950-1957.”] In Nationalmuseets Arbejdsmark 2016: pp. 52-65.
This chapter takes the relationship that Buddhists have historically had with economic practices ... more This chapter takes the relationship that Buddhists have historically had with economic practices as a starting point for discussing contemporary entanglements of Buddhism and economy. Based on a literary review of previous studies on Buddhism and business and building upon our own research, we analyze the diverse range of influences that have impacted the manner in which Buddhism and business have been entwined, taking a look at historical as well as regional, national, and global impacts on the formulation of Buddhism within encounters with global market economies. Our review spans lay-monk exchange relations, Buddhist economic ethics, monastic businesses, spiritual consumerism, globalized Buddhism, secularized Buddhist technologies in the corporate world, and Buddhist branding, all of which testify to the diverse modalities of Buddhism and economic relations, illuminating also the economic life of Buddhism.
Buddhism, Business, and Economics
Trine Brox and Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg
The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism
Edited by Michael Jerryson
Print Publication Date: Jan 2017 Subject: Religion, Buddhism Online Publication Date: Dec 2016 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199362387.013.42
Journal Of The American Academy Of Religion, 2024
Taking examples from lived Tibetan Buddhism, this article explores the role of religion in the ge... more Taking examples from lived Tibetan Buddhism, this article explores the role of religion in the generation, sorting, and handling of waste that is produced or ends up in the religious field. Rather than assuming that waste is the negative and worthless endpoint of consumption, it introduces the concepts of “waste imaginaries” and “waste trajectories” to examine the importance of religion in the relationship between how and why things come to be defined and sorted as waste and the ways in which they are then handled and treated. By examining how Tibetan Buddhists talk about and act around different kinds of waste, both sacred and banal, the article unfolds the moral politics of waste, showing how waste trajectories are negotiated through changing and sometimes conflicting waste imaginaries.
Social Compass , 2022
With Buddhism’s integration into the global market economy, the trade in Buddhist commodities is ... more With Buddhism’s integration into the global market economy, the trade in Buddhist commodities is booming. I ask how the value of such goods is measured, communicated, and contested by the diverse range of actors who buy and sell them. The analytical framework draws on recent conceptual developments in the fields of religion and of technology to develop Jens Beckert’s typology of value. While Beckert draws on Durkheim’s sociology of religion to differentiate between physical and symbolic values, I take the example of a powerful Buddhist technology, the Tibetan prayer wheel, to demonstrate the entanglement of materiality and belief in the different types of value ascribed to religious goods.
NVMEN: International Review for the History of Religions, 2021
This article investigates how the cultural politics of ethnoreligious belonging play out through ... more This article investigates how the cultural politics of ethnoreligious belonging play out through everyday aesthetic practices at a market for Tibetan Buddhist objects in Chengdu, China – a multiethnic place that is perceived and experienced as “Tibetan” by the Tibetans and Chinese who work, live, and shop there. Based upon ethnographic research in Chengdu, I explore how Tibetan urbanites navigate the sensorially intense market, sorting its sights, sounds, and smells to determine who and what belongs as authentically Tibetan Buddhist. In the process, I argue, they are laying claim to an ability to feel the in/authentic acquired through being born and raised as a Tibetan. This practical ability is what I call an aesthetic habitus. Yet, many Tibetans fear this ability is being eroded; it is no longer clear who and what belongs, contributing to anxieties that Tibetans as a distinct ethnoreligious community will be extinguished.
The waxwork is a new medium of Buddhist materiality that now coexists with the metal statue, the ... more The waxwork is a new medium of Buddhist materiality that now coexists with the metal statue, the photograph, and the painted scroll in the Tibetan cultural sphere. It is usually departed Buddhist masters who are immortalized as wax effigies. The hyperrealistic aesthetics extends their presence among devotees since wax can be formed and colored to look exactly like the living person. Tibetan waxworks are particularly fascinating in relation to the Buddhist sacred. In this article, I introduce the waxwork as a new medium of Buddhist materiality, and I present one assemblage of a deceased religious authority and its living maker.
Landscapes of Little Lhasa, 2019
This article problematizes the juxtaposition of place and identity. By analyzing different dimens... more This article problematizes the juxtaposition of place and identity. By analyzing different dimensions of landscape, it asks how an ethnically diverse neighborhood in Chengdu, China, has become considered a Tibetan place. The article engages with and pushes John Brinckerhoff Jackson's distinction between political and vernacular landscapes, introducing a third category: the commercial landscape. Each of these three dimensions of the landscape, which are deeply entangled but conceptually distinct, transforms multi-ethnic space into a Tibetan place. The vernacular emerges from the traces of quotidian life in the form of languages, bodily practices, sights, scents, and colors: it 'feels' Tibetan. The political relates to the securitization of Tibetan spaces and how people re-imagine the traces of state-led spatial management and organization. Finally, the commercial has to do with the appropriation of Tibetan aesthetics in the pursuit of profiting from a Tibetan Buddhist identity. I argue that these three different landscapes are what enable us to recognize a multi-ethnic space as a Tibetan place.
Journal of Global Buddhism, 2019
The article discusses material religion in a commercial setting and begins with Walter Benjamin’s... more The article discusses material religion in a commercial setting and begins with Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936). Benjamin argues that mechanical reproduction emancipated works of art from religious rituals and evaporated the aura of art. This has resonance among some Tibetan Buddhists in the context of mass-produced Buddhist material objects. Are such objects fit to be given as gifts, implemented in rituals, and worshipped on altars? Based upon ethnographic work at a Tibetan Buddhist market in urban China, this article argues that, although factory-made, for-profit objects are not made or handled according to Buddhist tradition, the aura can be produced in different ways and at different points of an object’s life. This article presents three very different modes of action employed by marketers, customers, and ritual specialists. The modes of action are packaging, ritual action, and faith labor.
Fund og Forskning, vol. 57, 2018
Tibetan Buddhist practices include the engagement with Buddhist script in the form of tightly pac... more Tibetan Buddhist practices include the engagement with Buddhist script in the form of tightly packed scrolls of paper that are placed in drums and spun in order to accumulate merit. On the scrolls are written or printed mantras (sacred or magic sounds in the form of a series of syllables) or dhāraṇīs (formula condensing lengthy texts or teachings). The receptacles containing such scrolls are the iconic prayer wheels, whose materiality enables and restricts particular modes of textual engagement. What kind of texts are these scrolls? How does one read texts that come in the form of tightly packed scrolls? They cannot be read by immersing oneself in the content of the text because its materiality restricts access to it. Instead it fits perfectly with the prayer wheel technology that allows circumambulatory recitation, the article argues.
The prayer wheel is not only an important object in recitation practices for Tibetan Buddhists, but has also become a key marker of Tibetan identity. Yet its history, culture and practice have received very little scholarly attention. This article attempts to eradicate this blind spot. It endeavors to show how the prayer wheel has earned itself its iconic status by explaining how the prayer wheel is a receptacle of sacred script and a devise for reciting sacred script. The article zooms in on (i) the cult of the book in the Tibetan culture sphere, (ii) the technology of prayer wheels; and (iii) the recurring tropes of the wheel, circumambulation, and rotation in Buddhism, as well as the merit connected with them. In view of this particular constellation of book cult, technology, and dominant trope, it makes sense that, first of all, Tibetan Buddhists have adopted and further developed a technology that optimizes interaction with sacred script; secondly, that rotation is considered an adequate way to interact with Buddha’s doctrine; and third, that this devise has become an icon for the Tibetan civilization. It is especially the sacred text within the wheel, the article argues, that endows the prayer wheel with high status in a hierarchy of Buddhist material objects. Finally, this raises questions about modernised prayer wheels – when technological progress has enabled further development of devises that can contain and spin Buddhist script such as optic discs, prayer wheel apps, and automised praying machines. How does their materiality impact textual engagement?
The article is based upon data produced through (i) ethnographic inquiry, such as interacting with the stakeholders who deal with Buddhist material culture for different reasons, eg. producers, marketers, ritual specialists, practitioners, and consumers, and (ii) textual sources that includes Tibetan and English-language scholarship, catalogues, user’s guides, and marketing material. This multi-modal method has produced knowledge about the prayer wheel as practice, i.e. what we can call popular religion, and as theory, i.e. according to how the prayer wheel is idealised in the writings of Buddhist masters.
CFP
This one-day workshop seeks to engage with the resurgance of interest in Tibetan materialities by... more This one-day workshop seeks to engage with the resurgance of interest in Tibetan materialities by inviting papers to discuss Tibetan materialities and cultural economies, without necessarily privileging a Buddhist frame of referance. We welcome papers from scholars working in Tibetan contexts within or outside the geographical boundaries of Tibet, and who would like to engage in interdisicplinary discussions about materiality and economy. We imagine papers addressing topics within market and museum contexts such as sustainable tourism, heritage economies, Tibetan Museologies as well as encounters between different kinds of economies, including the digitalization, massproduction, branding, authenticity and marketing of Tibetan culture. We particularly welcome papers with an applied or practice oriented dimension that ask legal and economic questions of Tibetan heritage, curatorial or collection practices and sustainable tourism.
Zanta left her remote Tibetan village in Sichuan Province with her son to seek better opportuniti... more Zanta left her remote Tibetan village in Sichuan Province with her son to seek better opportunities in the Chinese capital. She found, however, that she was marginalized both where she was “supposed to” belong, in rural Tibet as well as in urban Beijing, where she was seeking a school education for her young son. She had nowhere to call home. This conversation will explore migration and belonging in this era of mobility, dislocation and globalization.
This article is the result of the collaboration between a Norwegian university professor, Trine Brox, and an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, Jocelyn Ford. We met in the United States in 2014, brought together by our mutual research interest in the little-studied phenomenon of Tibetan migration to eastern China. In 2017, we met again for the screening of Jocelyn’s documentary about Zanta at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, where Trine works.
Dissonances and Resonances, 2010
This workshop seeks to engage with a seeming resurgence of interest in theories of value. In stud... more This workshop seeks to engage with a seeming resurgence of interest in theories of value. In studies of religion, value has generally been used in the sociological sense of ideas about the good and desirable (religious/cultural values), a field of study recently revitalised by Joel Robbins. Value in the economic sense of 'price mechanism' (Graeber) has been employed analogically to uncover the economic workings of religion, for example in concepts such as symbolic value and the religious marketplace. However, economistic dimensions of religion are often assumed to be antithetical to religious values, particularly in analyses of religion and consumer society (Carette and King). We seek to question this assumption through discussion of the relationship between sociological and economic approaches to value in relation to religions and spiritualities in the contemporary world. Instead of understanding the commodification of religion as inevitably leading to a devaluation and lack of authenticity, we look at how commodification might also provide added value to local religious goods, ideas and lifestyles, as argued by Comaroff and Comaroff (2009) in relation to the commodification of ethnicity. For example, how has the marketing and branding of religion aided a process of growth and revitalization of religious institutions? What possible contentions and ambiguities arise within the nexus of religion and economics when religious or spiritual values become marketized and positioned within an economic value regime? How might discussion of value (economic) and values (sociological) open up ideas about the relationship between the individual (value as connected to strategy, agency, motivations, aspirations, interests, "homo economicus") and the collective (values as moral, traditional, connected to socialization practices)?
The main protagonist of this paper is H.R.H. Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark (1908–1980), an o... more The main protagonist of this paper is H.R.H. Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark (1908–1980), an old-world ethnographer and explorer who went to Kalimpong in the 1950s, first as a member and later as the leader of the Third Danish Expedition to Central Asia. The expedition’s aims were to explore and document empty spots on the map and to rescue the remnants of local cultures in Upper Asia. With the developing crisis in Tibet, however, Prince Peter was stranded in Kalimpong, waiting in vain for permission to enter Tibet. Yet unfavourable political circumstances turned into great opportunities for the expedition as the advance of the People’s Liberation Army into Tibet led to a stream of refugees into Kalimpong: “We had been denied entry into Tibet, but Tibet had come to us.” In this article, we explore Prince Peter’s seven years in Kalimpong and how he navigated this particularly intense contact zone, negotiating difficult political, personal, and professional circumstances.
In the official Dharamsala narrative, the birth of the Tibetan exile occurred in March 1959 when ... more In the official Dharamsala narrative, the birth of the Tibetan exile occurred in March 1959 when the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and his Tibetan followers fled from Tibet to South Asia in order to protect their lives, culture and religion from Communist Chinese destruction. It is also this exile, so the story goes, which made Tibetan customs, art, literature and philosophy globally available and relevant. In Denmark, such a connection to Tibet had already been established before this official beginning of exile. A particular Tibetan-Danish relationship highlights an underexposed phase in modern Tibetan history: how exile in the case of many Tibetans began even a decade before the Dalai Lama settled in India in 1959. This early exile was witnessed by a member of European royalty, a prince who, at the time, was heading for Tibet in the name of scientific exploration. Yet instead of entering Tibet to explore and 'discover' the Tibetan civilization in the 1950s, the prince ended up conducting a sevenyear rescue mission of tangible and intangible Tibetan cultural heritage-today preserved and kept for posterity in Denmark. We relate this largely overlooked story of how his unsuccessful attempt to lead a scientific mission to Tibet led to the salvaging of a different Tibet-that of a Tibet in exile.
Tibet har givet næring til mange fantasier om et afsidesliggende, fredeligt og ophøjet Shangri-la... more Tibet har givet næring til mange fantasier om et afsidesliggende, fredeligt og ophøjet Shangri-la. Det er især den kultur og filosofi (og i dag livsstil), som associeres med den tibetanske buddhisme, der har haft magnetisk tiltrækningskraft på eventyrere, missionærer, skattejægere, dharma bums – og videnskabsfolk. I hendes undersøgelse af de historiske dansk-tibetanske forbindelser, har Tibetolog Trine Brox gennemgået Nationalmuseets Tibet-arkiver og talt med både tibetanske og danske fagfæller for at genfortælle Tibetologistudiet ”skabelsesberetning.” Tibetologistudiets historie er fyldt med fantastiske beretninger og blandt disse er H.K.H. Prins Peter af Grækenland og til Danmark’s store arbejde for at hjemskaffe tibetanske manuskripter og etnografika.
Taking a historical context as a starting point, this chapter illuminates the historical relation... more Taking a historical context as a starting point, this chapter illuminates the historical relationship between Buddhism and economic engagements and shows how this relationship has played out in contemporary Asian and non-Asian contexts. With a focus on local practices and understandings of economic exchanges related to "Buddhism"e.g. lay-monk exchange relations, monastic businesses, spiritual consumerism, and Buddhist branding-it illuminates the economic life of Buddhism and the diverse modalities of Buddhism and economic relations. Moreover, how Buddhists have positioned themselves in relation to a capitalistic market economy, both as a critique and as an engagement, is examined, as well as how marketing strategies have been utilized to secure the position of Buddhists in regional and global contexts. The intersection between Buddhism and the global market economy, the authors argue, reveals an important flashpoint through which one can gain a more complex understanding about contemporary formations of Buddhism, modernity, and globality.
In 1950 the Third Danish Expedition to Central Asia was stranded in the small mountain town of Ka... more In 1950 the Third Danish Expedition to Central Asia was stranded in the small mountain town of Kalimpong in the Indian Himalayas at the gateway to Tibet – the country that the expedition leader Prince Peter hoped to explore, but which was closed off by Communist China’s advance into Tibet. Instead, Tibet came to Kalimpong through an increasing flow of Tibetan refugees who supplied Prince Peter’s now-stationary Tibetan expedition with an extraordinary wealth of ethnographic information, accounts and objects as well as a very large body of physical-anthropological material. The article recounts Prince Peter’s seven years of ethnographic work documenting and rescuing Tibetan civilization from the relentless advance of modernity and the Chinese army by collecting tangible and intangible Tibetan cultural heritage. His initial ethnographic approach embodied contemporary ideas about the expedition mode’s scientific suitability for collecting knowledge about foreign cultures and remote peoples. As Prince Peter could not gain access to Tibet, but had access to the many resident Tibetans as well as traders, travellers and refugees who were flowing into Kalimpong, he changed from a mobile expedition mode to localized fieldwork, and carried out ethnographic investigations and collections among the Tibetans who were staying in the town. Prince Peter’s fantastic Tibetan collections are today part of the National Museum’s Ethnographic Collection and give us fascinating insights into the life and work of the adventurer, ethnographer and expedition leader Prince Peter. Through the accounts and objects that he collected we also encounter the many Tibetans and other people who crossed his path in Kalimpong.
Koktvedgaard Zeitzen, Miriam and Trine Brox 2016 “Strandet i Kalimpong: Prins Peters Tibet-ekspedition 1950-1957.” [Stranded in Kalimpong! Prince Peter’s Tibet-expedition 1950-1957.”] In Nationalmuseets Arbejdsmark 2016: pp. 52-65.
This chapter takes the relationship that Buddhists have historically had with economic practices ... more This chapter takes the relationship that Buddhists have historically had with economic practices as a starting point for discussing contemporary entanglements of Buddhism and economy. Based on a literary review of previous studies on Buddhism and business and building upon our own research, we analyze the diverse range of influences that have impacted the manner in which Buddhism and business have been entwined, taking a look at historical as well as regional, national, and global impacts on the formulation of Buddhism within encounters with global market economies. Our review spans lay-monk exchange relations, Buddhist economic ethics, monastic businesses, spiritual consumerism, globalized Buddhism, secularized Buddhist technologies in the corporate world, and Buddhist branding, all of which testify to the diverse modalities of Buddhism and economic relations, illuminating also the economic life of Buddhism.
Buddhism, Business, and Economics
Trine Brox and Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg
The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism
Edited by Michael Jerryson
Print Publication Date: Jan 2017 Subject: Religion, Buddhism Online Publication Date: Dec 2016 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199362387.013.42
Tibetan landscapes Call for papers! We want to add one or two papers to our great workshop prog... more Tibetan landscapes
Call for papers! We want to add one or two papers to our great workshop program for TIBETAN LANDSCAPES, November 16 at the CCBS, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Send your abstract, short bio and a few words about your motivation for participating to ccbs@hum.ku.dk by September 24, 2018.
The workshop Tibetan landscapes privileges the concept of landscape, i.e. the material traces of human activity, which can help us understand the histories, communities, politics, cultures, religious practices, and economies of Tibetan people and places.
We would like to bring to your attention a new research network, Object Lessons from Tibet & the ... more We would like to bring to your attention a new research network, Object Lessons from Tibet & the Himalayas.
We will launch the network with a one-day seminar on the 9th June at the University of Manchester, UK. The seminar brings together researchers working with the visual and material culture of Tibet and the Himalayas. In particular, we will think about the roles of things in the production, loss and recovery of knowledge, both in the colonial past and the present.
We are seeking participants to join a panel that explores the trade in Buddhist things. Histori... more We are seeking participants to join a panel that explores the trade in Buddhist things.
Historically, trade routes served as transmission belts for Buddhist theology. The nexus between trade and Buddhism is most commonly understood in the spread of Buddhist theology and art across Asia. Today, this practice continues to grow and diversify. The spread of Buddhism has contributed to the development of new markets and a growing industry in Buddhist objects, artefacts, paraphernalia, and merchandise. Moreover, Buddhism is also a value that is traded. This traded value includes statues and scriptures, but also comes in the form of immaterial value; namely in the promises or potential that are ascribed to objects, artefacts and paraphernalia that are considered or are branded as Buddhist.
This panel calls for papers dealing with the translations and transformations of Buddhism in relation to the trade in Buddhist things. Such objects can be Buddhist because they represent commodified Buddhism, are objects needed for Buddhist practice, or products marketed as Buddhist. By engaging in discussions regarding the trade and translation of Buddhist material culture we want to develop new analytical approaches and ask how trade practices translate and transform objects related to Buddhism. We aim to build a broad geographical understanding of practice. Therefore, possible subjects might include the trade in amulets in Thailand, Japan, and Vietnam, or the global trade in Tibetan painted scrolls produced in Nepal, India and China. We are also interested in other Buddhist objects that are traded, including offerings for the Buddhist altar, religious images and statues, prayer beads, charms, monastic paraphernalia, and so forth. A further area for discussion relates to the people who need such objects for their Buddhist practice, for the Buddhist temple, or for inserting the spiritual in an otherwise secular, modern world. How are these Buddhist things translated and transformed as they change hands from the artisan in the workshop, to the petty merchant, the art dealer, the tourist, the Buddhist practitioner, the ritual specialist and so forth? How do these things become Buddhist?
Deadline for submitting abstracts to Marie Yoshida (marie.yoshida@nias.ku.dk) is 1 March 2017.
Please include in your submission: • Name, institutional affiliation, short bio • Abstract that clearly lays out the title, argument and methodology (approx 250 words) • Intended panel (Trade and translation of Buddhist material culture across Asia)
Conveners and organizing committee will assess the submitted abstracts and inform you of the decision soon hereafter.
For more information, visit: http://asiandynamics.ku.dk/english/adi-conference-2017/panels/trade-and-translation-of-buddhist-material-culture-across-asia/
The panel is organized by the BBB-project: https://centerforcontemporarybuddhiststudies.wordpress.com/bbb-project/