Inward
Vipassana Meditation and the Embodiment of the Self
9780226361871
9780226639383
9780226639413
Inward
Vipassana Meditation and the Embodiment of the Self
Western society has never been more interested in interiority. Indeed, it seems more and more people are deliberately looking inward—toward the mind, the body, or both. Michal Pagis’s Inward focuses on one increasingly popular channel for the introverted gaze: vipassana meditation, which has spread from Burma to more than forty countries and counting. Lacing her account with vivid anecdotes and personal stories, Pagis turns our attention not only to the practice of vipassana but to the communities that have sprung up around it. Inward is also a social history of the westward diffusion of Eastern religious practices spurred on by the lingering effects of the British colonial presence in India. At the same time Pagis asks knotty questions about what happens when we continually turn inward, as she investigates the complex relations between physical selves, emotional selves, and our larger social worlds. Her book sheds new light on evergreen topics such as globalization, social psychology, and the place of the human body in the enduring process of self-awareness.
240 pages | 2 line drawings | 6 x 9 | © 2019
Fieldwork Encounters and Discoveries
Psychology: Social Psychology
Religion: Religion and Society, South and East Asian Religions
Sociology: General Sociology, Social Change, Social Movements, Political Sociology
Reviews
Table of Contents
Note on Terminology
1 Turning Inward
2 The Popularization of Meditation
3 Collective Solitude
4 Meditation in Daily Life
5 Negotiating Intimate Social Relations
6 Becoming a Meditator: Life Course Orientations
7 Bodies, Selves, and the Social World
Acknowledgments
Methodological Appendix: Ethnography of Experience
Notes
References
Index
1 Turning Inward
2 The Popularization of Meditation
3 Collective Solitude
4 Meditation in Daily Life
5 Negotiating Intimate Social Relations
6 Becoming a Meditator: Life Course Orientations
7 Bodies, Selves, and the Social World
Acknowledgments
Methodological Appendix: Ethnography of Experience
Notes
References
Index
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