A Swenson
Biographic Data
| ID | 6913 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Swenson |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Swenson |
| SIGNATURE | SWENSON A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Syracuse University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6588-5389 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Near Light We Shine
Buddhists in Vietnam are meeting humanitarian needs by popularizing charity. Vietnam’s rapid urbanization has intensified social service demands while straining public infrastructure. In response, charity volunteers are building roads, subsidizing medicine, and giving away food. This book draws on two years of ethnographic research conducted in Hồ Chí Minh City to analyze why and how people join these grassroots movements. Volunteers adapt practi…
People (By Group)
Fraud at the Children’s Festival
Youth charities have served as social networks where young people seek friendships, sexual connections, and romance with others who share their values. Through volunteering, urban youth created and modeled moral lifestyles for one another, both through organizing events like a Children’s Festival for disadvantaged youth and through negotiating challenges like fraud and embezzlement that can arise during these events. This chapter follows two orga…
The Merit of Meat
In this article, I use Emile Durkheim ’s theory of “social facts” to examine Buddhist charity movements in Vietnam. Durkheim defines social facts as the beliefs and customs required to belong in a community. I use Durkheim's theory to analyze how volunteer groups develop Buddhist cosmologies with distinct social facts about human subjectivity, ethics, and karma. My study traces how social facts cause different programming outcomes like decisions …
The Life and Legacies of Thích Nhất Hạnh
Thiền sư Thích Nhất Hạnh was one of the most influential Buddhist public figures of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His name is now synonymous with global mindfulness and engaged Buddhism movements. Yet before achieving international acclaim, Thích Nhất Hạnh was also an active Buddhist reformer and social organizer in his home country, Vietnam. This introduction to the special issue contextualizes Thích Nhất Hạnh as a monastic, poet, ac…
Zen Conquests
From minimalism to marketing, the concept of “Zen” has captured global imaginations since the 1960s. In Vietnam this trend coincides with a movement to reconstruct Trúc Lâm Zen Buddhism, a school established in 1301. Alexander Soucy's Zen Conquests analyzes how Vietnam's current political and economic climate drives this revitalization. Practitioners view Zen as ideal for coping with the stresses of modern life, including pressures to adopt neoli…
Introduction to the Special Issue on Buddhist Moral Emotions
This introduction to the special issue on “Buddhist Moral Emotions” explains the need for analyzing affect and emotion for a full understanding of Buddhist ethics. The introduction surveys major works in the turn to affect and advocates for ethnographic research on Buddhism as a lived religion in order to address the role of emotion in Buddhist ethics
An Uncouth Monk
In this article, I propose a new theory of “Buddhist para‐charisma” by analyzing the case of an iconoclastic monk in Vietnam. My argument draws from 20 months of ethnographic research conducted in Ho Chi Minh City between 2015 and 2019. During fieldwork, I was introduced to a highly respected monk with the extraordinary capacity to read minds and perceive karmic obstacles in the lives of his lay and monastic followers. This monk was unique for op…
The Affective Politics of Karma among Buddhist Cancer Charities in Vietnam
In this article, I explore how Buddhist charity workers in Vietnam interpret rising cancer rates through understandings of karma. Rather than framing cancer as a primarily physical or medical phenomenon, volunteers state that cancer is a product of collective moral failure. Corruption in public food production is both caused by and perpetuates bad karma, which negatively impacts global existence. Conversely, charity work creates merit, which can …
The Political Spirituality of Buddhist Volunteerism in Contemporary Vietnam
This article examines the role of religion in global trends toward economic privatization by analyzing Buddhist volunteerism in Vietnam. Government officials in Vietnam propose that policy shifts toward privatization are part of a broader move toward “socialization” (xã hội hóa). Under socialization, the nation’s citizens have a responsibility to accumulate and use private wealth to support one another. Buddhist charities have subsequently become…
Teaching and learning guide for
Compassion without pity
This article provides an overview of the changing role of dāna in contemporary Buddhism through ethnographic research on Buddhist charities in Vietnam. I begin by briefly describing how the concept of dāna has developed through Buddhist history and philosophy. Then, I explore how Vietnamese Buddhists reinterpret the concept of dāna amid (a) shifting trends in Buddhist humanitarianism and volunteering, (b) critiques of corruption in Buddhist monas…
Historicism
As the rebuilding of Berlin’s eighteenth-century Stadtschloss nears completion, German History turns its attention to the phenomenon of historicism: to the recreation of historical artefacts and practices (sometimes at astonishing expense). Historicism reached its high point in the nineteenth century, when individuals and communities turned to the medieval period to address some of the challenges of modernization. But the urge to revive extended …
Crusader Heritages and Imperial Preservation
Journal Article Crusader Heritages and Imperial Preservation Get access Astrid Swenson Astrid Swenson Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 226, Issue suppl_10, 2015, Pages 27–56, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtu024 Published: 02 February 2015
The Affective Politics of Karma among Buddhist Cancer Charities in Vietnam
In this article, I explore how Buddhist charity workers in Vietnam interpret rising cancer rates through understandings of karma. Rather than framing cancer as a primarily physical or medical phenomenon, volunteers state that cancer is a product of collective moral failure. Corruption in public food production is both caused by and perpetuates bad karma, which negatively impacts global existence. Conversely, charity work creates merit, which can …
Compassion without pity
This article provides an overview of the changing role of dāna in contemporary Buddhism through ethnographic research on Buddhist charities in Vietnam. I begin by briefly describing how the concept of dāna has developed through Buddhist history and philosophy. Then, I explore how Vietnamese Buddhists reinterpret the concept of dāna amid (a) shifting trends in Buddhist humanitarianism and volunteering, (b) critiques of corruption in Buddhist monas…
Crusader Heritages and Imperial Preservation
Journal Article Crusader Heritages and Imperial Preservation Get access Astrid Swenson Astrid Swenson Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 226, Issue suppl_10, 2015, Pages 27–56, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtu024 Published: 02 February 2015
Crusader Heritages and Imperial Preservation
Journal Article Crusader Heritages and Imperial Preservation Get access Astrid Swenson Astrid Swenson Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 226, Issue suppl_10, 2015, Pages 27–56, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtu024 Published: 02 February 2015
Historicism
As the rebuilding of Berlin’s eighteenth-century Stadtschloss nears completion, German History turns its attention to the phenomenon of historicism: to the recreation of historical artefacts and practices (sometimes at astonishing expense). Historicism reached its high point in the nineteenth century, when individuals and communities turned to the medieval period to address some of the challenges of modernization. But the urge to revive extended …
The Affective Politics of Karma among Buddhist Cancer Charities in Vietnam
In this article, I explore how Buddhist charity workers in Vietnam interpret rising cancer rates through understandings of karma. Rather than framing cancer as a primarily physical or medical phenomenon, volunteers state that cancer is a product of collective moral failure. Corruption in public food production is both caused by and perpetuates bad karma, which negatively impacts global existence. Conversely, charity work creates merit, which can …
The Political Spirituality of Buddhist Volunteerism in Contemporary Vietnam
This article examines the role of religion in global trends toward economic privatization by analyzing Buddhist volunteerism in Vietnam. Government officials in Vietnam propose that policy shifts toward privatization are part of a broader move toward “socialization” (xã hội hóa). Under socialization, the nation’s citizens have a responsibility to accumulate and use private wealth to support one another. Buddhist charities have subsequently become…
Teaching and learning guide for
Compassion without pity
This article provides an overview of the changing role of dāna in contemporary Buddhism through ethnographic research on Buddhist charities in Vietnam. I begin by briefly describing how the concept of dāna has developed through Buddhist history and philosophy. Then, I explore how Vietnamese Buddhists reinterpret the concept of dāna amid (a) shifting trends in Buddhist humanitarianism and volunteering, (b) critiques of corruption in Buddhist monas…
Introduction to the Special Issue on Buddhist Moral Emotions
This introduction to the special issue on “Buddhist Moral Emotions” explains the need for analyzing affect and emotion for a full understanding of Buddhist ethics. The introduction surveys major works in the turn to affect and advocates for ethnographic research on Buddhism as a lived religion in order to address the role of emotion in Buddhist ethics
An Uncouth Monk
In this article, I propose a new theory of “Buddhist para‐charisma” by analyzing the case of an iconoclastic monk in Vietnam. My argument draws from 20 months of ethnographic research conducted in Ho Chi Minh City between 2015 and 2019. During fieldwork, I was introduced to a highly respected monk with the extraordinary capacity to read minds and perceive karmic obstacles in the lives of his lay and monastic followers. This monk was unique for op…
The Merit of Meat
In this article, I use Emile Durkheim ’s theory of “social facts” to examine Buddhist charity movements in Vietnam. Durkheim defines social facts as the beliefs and customs required to belong in a community. I use Durkheim's theory to analyze how volunteer groups develop Buddhist cosmologies with distinct social facts about human subjectivity, ethics, and karma. My study traces how social facts cause different programming outcomes like decisions …
The Life and Legacies of Thích Nhất Hạnh
Thiền sư Thích Nhất Hạnh was one of the most influential Buddhist public figures of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His name is now synonymous with global mindfulness and engaged Buddhism movements. Yet before achieving international acclaim, Thích Nhất Hạnh was also an active Buddhist reformer and social organizer in his home country, Vietnam. This introduction to the special issue contextualizes Thích Nhất Hạnh as a monastic, poet, ac…
Zen Conquests
From minimalism to marketing, the concept of “Zen” has captured global imaginations since the 1960s. In Vietnam this trend coincides with a movement to reconstruct Trúc Lâm Zen Buddhism, a school established in 1301. Alexander Soucy's Zen Conquests analyzes how Vietnam's current political and economic climate drives this revitalization. Practitioners view Zen as ideal for coping with the stresses of modern life, including pressures to adopt neoli…
Near Light We Shine
Buddhists in Vietnam are meeting humanitarian needs by popularizing charity. Vietnam’s rapid urbanization has intensified social service demands while straining public infrastructure. In response, charity volunteers are building roads, subsidizing medicine, and giving away food. This book draws on two years of ethnographic research conducted in Hồ Chí Minh City to analyze why and how people join these grassroots movements. Volunteers adapt practi…
People (By Group)
Fraud at the Children’s Festival
Youth charities have served as social networks where young people seek friendships, sexual connections, and romance with others who share their values. Through volunteering, urban youth created and modeled moral lifestyles for one another, both through organizing events like a Children’s Festival for disadvantaged youth and through negotiating challenges like fraud and embezzlement that can arise during these events. This chapter follows two orga…
Buddhism (8 works) · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies (7 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Political science (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (4 works) · Ethnography (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works)