Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi

From jewellery to meditation pillows to tourist retreats, religious traditions - especially those of the East - are being commodified as never before. Imitated and rebranded as 'New Age' or 'spiritual', they are marketed to secular Westerners as an answer to suffering in the modern world, the 'mystical' and 'exotic' East promising a path to enlightenment and inner peace.
In Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi, Sophia Rose Arjana examines the appropriation and sale of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam in the West today, the role of mysticism and Orientalism in the religious marketplace, and how the commodification of religion impacts people's lives.

List of contents

Introduction
1 Histories of Religion and Mysticism
2 Cultural Colonialism, Muddled Orientalism, and the Mystic Poor
3 Mysticism, Incorporated
4 Hindu Hippies and Boulder Buddhists
5 Rumimaniacs
6 Lost, Star Wars, and Mystical Hollywood
Postscript

Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the author

Sophia Rose Arjana is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Western Kentucky University. Her previous books include Pilgrimage in Islam and Muslims in the Western Imagination, which was a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Year. She lives in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Summary

How Eastern religions are commodified in the modern world, and why it matters

Additional text

‘Arjana’s research adds new perspective to even the most prominent example of Muslim pilgrimages… The writing is lucid and engaging, and the research is thorough and sensitive to complexity.’

Report

'Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi highlights the hidden costs of what would appear to be positive stereotypes about Eastern religiosity. In doing so, Arjana interrogates cultural colonialism, i.e. the borrowing of other people's cultures and religions without giving credit to actual persons and institutions... With its comprehensive theoretically informed approach and exciting case studies, I would especially recommend this book for use in undergraduate classes.'
Religion (Liz Wilson, Miami University)

Product details

• Authors: Sophia Rose Arjana, Arjana Sophia Rose
• Publisher: Oneworld
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 09.06.2020
• EAN: 9781786077714
• ISBN: 978-1-78607-771-4
• No. of pages: 320
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Miscellaneous; Islam, Cultural Studies, RELIGION / General, RELIGION / Spirituality, PHILOSOPHY / Religious, RELIGION / Buddhism / Rituals & Practice, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology of Religion, RELIGION / Islam / General, RELIGION / Islam / Rituals & Practice, RELIGION / Buddhism / General, RELIGION / Philosophy, PHILOSOPHY / Buddhist, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, RELIGION / Islam / Sufi, RELIGION / Hinduism / General, RELIGION / Mysticism, PHILOSOPHY / Zen, Buddhism, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, RELIGION / Hinduism / Rituals & Practice, Hinduism, Social and cultural anthropology, Philosophy of religion