Anti-superstition : campaigns against popular religion and its heritage in Asia

    Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

    Abstract

    An interest in alternative conservation paradigms led me to an examination of the social and historical context of Buddhist temple-building and stupa restoration in Thailand (Byrne 1995). I discovered, though, that if these alternative paradigms had gone unnoticed by Western heritage practitioners it was partly because they had been subject to active suppression and marginalisation in Asia itself. They tended to have their origins and context in the sphere of popular religion, that theatre of belief and practice which attributes magical-supernatural qualities to religious monuments and ruins and to archaeological sites and objects. It was mainly on account of this role of the magical-supernatural in popular religion that it was roundly condemned by Asian modernising reformers from the mid-late nineteenth century. The modernist campaigns against popular religion in Asia – the anti-superstition campaigns as they are sometimes referred to (Goossaert 2006) – have been widely documented and discussed by historians and anthropologists as has the resilience of popular religion in the face of these campaigns. My purpose in this chapter is to review a sample of the literature.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationRoutledge Handbook of Heritage in Asia
    EditorsPatrick Daly, Tim Winter
    Place of PublicationU.S.A.
    PublisherRoutledge
    Pages295-310
    Number of pages16
    ISBN (Electronic)9780203156001
    ISBN (Print)9780415600453
    Publication statusPublished - 2012

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