BUDDHISM, MEDITATION, and the NEGOTIATION of the PUBLIC SPHERE by Leana Marie Rudolph a Capstone Project Submitted for Graduatio
BUDDHISM, MEDITATION, AND THE NEGOTIATION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE By Leana Marie Rudolph A capstone project submitted for Graduation with University Honors May 20, 2021 University Honors University of California, Riverside APPROVED Dr. Matthew King Department of Religious Studies Dr. Richard Cardullo, Howard H Hays Jr. Chair University Honors ABSTRACT This capstone serves to map and gather the oral histories of formerly undocumented Buddhist communities pertaining to their lived experiences in the Inland Empire. The ethnographic fieldwork conducted of 11 sites over the period of 12 months explored the intersection of diaspora, economy, and religious affiliation. This research begins to explore this junction by undertaking a qualitative and quantitative study that will map Buddhist life in the Inland Empire today. It will include interviews, providing oral histories, and will be accessible through a GIS map, helping Religious Studies and Anthropologist scholars to locate these sites and have background information on these locations. The Inland Empire represents many heavily populated, post-agricultural, and manufacturing areas in America today, which since the 1970s and especially since 2008 has suffered from many economic and social crises related to suburban poverty, as well as waves of demographic changes. Taking the Inland Empire as a petri dish for broader trends at the intersection of religion, economy, and the social in the American public sphere today, this capstone project hopes to determine how Buddhism forms at these intersections, what new stories about life in the Inland Empire Buddhist sites and communities help illuminate, and what forms of digital interfacing best brings anthropological analyses to the publics it examines.
[Show full text]