Buddhist Law Against the State? Representing Religion, Law, and Conflict

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8201743
AutoresBenjamin Schonthal (0000-0002-3091-6576, Religion Programme, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, autor correspondente)
Ano2019
Volume87
Fascículo3
Páginas662-692
Data de publicação2019-09-07
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of the American Academy of Religion (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0002-7189 • E-ISSN: 1477-4585
EditoraOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jaarel/lfz032
OpenAlexW2953470220
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas42

Public disputes over the legal regulation of religion are often portrayed as naturally occurring conflicts between competing normative systems: religious law and state law. What, then, explains why some normative frictions become the focus of major controversies, whereas others do not? This article tries to answer this question, while examining a genre of religious law that has not received much attention by scholars of law and religion, Buddhist law in Sri Lanka. Drawing on monastic disciplinary texts, legal archives, and representations of law taken from online and popular media, this article analyzes how and why a minor, routine friction between Buddhist ecclesiastical rules and Sri Lankan statutory regulations—a dispute over whether a monk may wear his robes in prison—came to be portrayed as a grand contest between two incompatible regimes: “Buddhist law” and “state law.”

Buddhism · Comparative law · CONTEST · Islam · Normative · Political science · Politics · Public law · Religious Law · Sociology · State (computer science) · State religion · Statutory law · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Asian Studies and History · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies