On the Road to Happiness: Mapping the Social-Cultural Identity of a Buddhist Community

• In Event: 571 - Section on Sociology of Culture Paper Session. Culture and Networks: Connections, Meaning and Beyond

Abstract

The duality of Meanings and Practices is an artificial construction used to code and better understand the structure and dynamics of social fields. It is a duality without independent existences built with the purpose to comprehend and visualize the dynamic interrelation between the system of relations among Meanings with the system of relations among Practices.
In this paper we analyze the process of being Buddhist in a Catholic country by way of looking at the process of change in the interrelation structure between the systems of meaning and of practices in a western Buddhist sangha. Being Buddhist is seen here as a process of balancing the duality meanings and practices on the road to happiness. The paper attemps to see if and how the duality relates to happiness.
Data come from an intensive sociologycal study of a Buddhist monastic community in contemporary Spain.

Authors

• Jose A. Rodriguez, Universitat de Barcelona

• John W. Mohr, University of California-Santa Barbara