Shaking a Buddhist House of Cards
Fabricating Authenticity - Jason W.M. Ellsworth
Julia Oppermann [+]
Leibniz University Hannover
Julia Oppermann is an MA student in the Religion in the Public Sphere program at Leibniz
University Hannover, Germany, where she also works as the program’s social media manager. Her master’s thesis examines discourses of alternative medicine in Germany and how the category of “religion” is used to delegitimize such practices from the larger field of medicine. Her further research interests focus on new religious movements and on the interconnection of religion and law in modern societies.
Description
Expanding on Touna’s analysis, Oppermann examines a recent controversy at a small Buddhist temple in Thailand whose monks were defrocked after testing positive for methamphetamine to explore the implicit anachronism in constructions of “authentic” representations of Buddhism and Buddhist practices. Oppermann argues that these are not merely reflections of reality and that instead of attempting to delineate what does or does not get to count as “authentic Buddhism,” we should consider how and why those claims are made.