Pursuing Morality: Buddhism and Everyday Ethics in Southeastern Myanmar
Justine Chambers
Paperback
Regular price$40.00With free membership trial$20.0050% off your first book+ Free shipping
Pre-order: Ships Oct 12th, 2024
Do you recommend this book?
Yes!
No
A deeply human portrait of a region defined by conflict and military dictatorship. Pursuing Morality is an in-depth and fascinating study of ordinary life in Myanmar's southeast through a unique ethnographic focus on Buddhist Plong (Pwo) Karen. Based on extensive in-depth fieldwork in the small city of Hpa-an, the capital of Karen State, Justine Chambers shines a new light on Plong Buddhists' lives and the many ways they broker, traverse, enact, cultivate, defend, and pursue moral lives. This is the first ethnographic study of Myanmar to add to a growing body of anthropological scholarship that is referred to as the "moral turn." Each chapter examines the lives of Plong Buddhists from different vantage points, calling into question many assumptions about Southeast Asian values and the nature of Buddhist Theravada practice. Critiquing the notion that moral coherence is necessary for ethical selfhood, Chambers demonstrates how the pursuit of morality is varied, performative, and embedded in an affective notion of the self as a moral agent in a relationship with wider structural political forces. This vivid account of everyday life in Myanmar complements existing scholarship on the region and offers a deeper understanding of Buddhism, moral anthropology, and ethics in Southeast Asia.
Book Details
Publisher: National University of Singapore Press
Publish Date: Oct 12nd, 2024
Pages: 304
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.00lb
EAN: 9789813252691
Categories: • Anthropology - Cultural & Social• Buddhism - General (see also Philosophy - Buddhist)• Ethics & Moral Philosophy
About the Author
Chambers, Justine: - Justine Chambers is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research focuses on ethnonational conflict, morality, violence, and everyday life in southeast Myanmar.