CEDRR now uses Bluesky as the primary social media platform
CEDRR has joined the Digital Humanities community on Bluesky to connect with international scholars and share innovative research.
Tereza Menšíková contributed to the Journal of Global Buddhism with the study Negotiating Boundaries Between "Religious" and "Secular": A Struggle for the Sense of Collectivity Among Ambedkarite Buddhists in Maharashtra.
Since the first mass conversion of Dalits to Buddhism in 1956, followers of B. R. Ambedkar's vision have propagated Buddhism throughout India, creating various activist networks across, but not limited to, Maharashtra. Despite their aspirations for socio-political change and emancipation for marginalized communities experiencing caste discrimination, Ambedkarite Buddhists have faced challenges in mobilization and organization since the demise of Ambedkar. This article addresses the struggle of building a sense of collectivity within the Ambedkarite Buddhist population, offering insights from the perspective of young Ambedkarite Buddhists in Mumbai. The ethnographic study primarily focuses on interpreting the Ambedkarite Buddhist tradition and its position within the broader Buddhist framework and delves into the divergence in efforts to emplace Buddhism on the "religious-secular" spectrum among practitioners. The article aims to provide an interpretation of the challenges faced by the Ambedkarite Buddhists in pursuing a unified front for effecting social change in contemporary India.
Menšíková, Tereza. 2023. “Negotiating Boundaries Between "Religious" and ‘Secular’: A Struggle for the Sense of Collectivity Among Ambedkarite Buddhists in Maharashtra”. Journal of Global Buddhism 24 (2):64-82. https://doi.org/10.26034/lu.jgb.2023.3840.
CEDRR has joined the Digital Humanities community on Bluesky to connect with international scholars and share innovative research.
In a new study published in Human Nature, LEVYNA was part of a team lead by A.K. Willard, studying how witchcraft beliefs affect social norms and behaviors. Specifically, researchers investigated whether witchcraft is regarded to be motivated by envy and how this notion influences community interactions. The findings show that, while witchcraft accusations were common, they were mostly directed at persons suspected of acting out of envy.