1999 Meeting Abstracts A214 Panel

Icons, Idols, and Objects: Facets of Materiality in East Asian Buddhism

Gary Laderman, Emory University, Presiding
Fabio Rambelli, Williams College
Michael Walsh, University of California, Santa Barbara
James Robson, Stanford University
Dorothy Wong, University of Virginia
Eric Reinders, Emory University
Gil Anidjar, Williams College, Respondent

This panel focuses on a variety of material objects crucial to East Asian Buddhism: land, mummified bodies, ritual implements, images, etc. The presenters look at the various exchange mechanisms, accumulation processes, practical uses, and discourses built up around these objects. After a brief examination of a particular instance of materiality, the presenters introduce their own theoretical interpretation of the role of materiality in Buddhism. We work with these shared questions: How did objects come to embody the sacred? What is gained (in our overall understanding of Buddhism") by focusing our attention on the materiality of Buddhism? The papers study the processes of exchange by which things are inserted in a sacred economy and exchanged for symbolic-religious capital (merit, prestige, etc.) thereby often generating material wealth. The study of Buddhist materiality is intended, in part, to remedy the logocentric emphasis on texts and ideas in Religious Studies.