Navigating youth transitions as a buddhist:Privilege, reflexivity and sexuality

Abstract

This article focuses on how young Buddhists (aged between 18 and 25, living in the UK, who typically had not been raised Buddhist) utilised reflexivity as a strategy to navigate youth transitions. Participants’ decision-making was premised on Buddhist ethics of avoiding harm, cultivating compassion, and embracing diversity. They scrutinised their actions to ensure they positioned themselves ethically in their everyday lives, particularly regarding sexuality. This reflexivity had a positive impact at the individual level, enabling them to construct a coherent biographical narrative. Yet, analysing this through the sociological lens of advantage and disadvantage, we posit that these accomplishments were facilitated by certain classed privileges. Their Buddhist identity was cultivated because of, rather than in spite of, their existing privileged location in the social strata, resulting in a consolidation of their already-privileged biographies. Our arguments are based on an in-depth mixed-method project which encompassed questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and video diaries.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4727652
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Sociology and Policy
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Centre for Critical Inquiry into Society and Culture (CCISC)
Additional Information: Copyright (c) 2021 Sarah-Jane Page, Kam-Tuck Yip. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Funding: The research team would like to thank the AHRC/ESRC-funded Religion and Society Programme for funding this project.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Buddhism,Privilege,Reflexivity,Sexual diversity,Sexual misconduct,Youth,Cultural Studies,History,Religious studies,Sociology and Political Science
Publication ISSN: 1527-6457
Last Modified: 30 Sep 2024 12:56
Date Deposited: 04 Jan 2022 15:34
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://www.glo ... le/view/326/320 (Publisher URL)
http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2021-12-24
Accepted Date: 2021-12-01
Authors: Page, Sarah-Jane (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-6879-536X)
Yip, Andrew Kam-Tuck

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