Buddhist Shrines in India

Buddhist Shrines in India
Author: Inde. Ministry of information and broadcasting. Publications division
Publisher:
Total Pages: 122
Release: 1951
Genre: Buddhism
ISBN:

Buddhist Tourism in Asia

Buddhist Tourism in Asia
Author: Courtney Bruntz
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0824881184

This innovative collaborative work—the first to focus on Buddhist tourism—explores how Buddhists, government organizations, business corporations, and individuals in Asia participate in re-imaginings of Buddhism through tourism. Contributors from religious studies, anthropology, and art history examine sacred places and religious monuments as they have been shaped and reshaped by socioeconomic and cultural trends in the region. Following an introduction that offers the first theoretical understanding of tourism from a Buddhist studies’ perspective, early chapters discuss the ways Buddhists and non-Buddhists imagine concepts and places related to the religion. Case studies highlight Buddhist peace in India, Buddhist heavens and hells in Singapore, Thai temple space, and the future Buddha Maitreya in China. Buddhist tourism’s connections to the state, market, and new technologies are explored in chapters on Indian package tours for pilgrims, thematic Buddhist tourism in Cambodia, the technological innovations of Buddhist temples in China, and the promotion of pilgrimage sites in Japan. Contributors then situate the financial concerns of Chinese temples, speed dating in temples in Japan, and the diffuse and pervasive nature of Buddhism for tourism promotion in Ladakh, India. How have tourist routes, groups, sites, and practices associated with Buddhism come to be possible and what are the effects? In what ways do travelers derive meaning from Buddhist places? How do Buddhist sites fortify national, cultural, or religious identities? The comparative research in South, Southeast, and East Asia presented here draws attention to the intertwining of the sacred and the financial and how local and national sites are situated within global networks. Together these findings generate a compelling comparative investigation of Buddhist spaces, identities, and practices.

The Making of Southeast Asia

The Making of Southeast Asia
Author: Amitav Acharya
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2013-02-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0801466342

Developing a framework to study "what makes a region," Amitav Acharya investigates the origins and evolution of Southeast Asian regionalism and international relations. He views the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) "from the bottom up" as not only a U.S.-inspired ally in the Cold War struggle against communism but also an organization that reflects indigenous traditions. Although Acharya deploys the notion of "imagined community" to examine the changes, especially since the Cold War, in the significance of ASEAN dealings for a regional identity, he insists that "imagination" is itself not a neutral but rather a culturally variable concept. The regional imagination in Southeast Asia imagines a community of nations different from NAFTA or NATO, the OAU, or the European Union. In this new edition of a book first published as The Quest for Identity in 2000, Acharya updates developments in the region through the first decade of the new century: the aftermath of the financial crisis of 1997, security affairs after September 2001, the long-term impact of the 2004 tsunami, and the substantial changes wrought by the rise of China as a regional and global actor. Acharya argues in this important book for the crucial importance of regionalism in a different part of the world.