Abstract

CARINI, Catón Eduardo  and  GRACIA, Agustina. Ritual, identidad y transnacionalización en una celebración budista: el Vesak en la Argentina. Runa [online]. 2016, vol.37, n.1, pp.5-20. ISSN 1851-9628.

This paper explores, through an ethnographic approach, the celebration of the Buddhist calendar’s most important festival: Vesak. Celebrated on the full moon of May, the occasion celebrates the birth, enlightenment and death of Buddha. The aim of this research is to analyze the reception of Vesak among the various Buddhist communities in Argentina, the forms of appropriation and redefinition of this ritual and the visibility it acquires in local public space. First, the paper describes the ceremony held in Buenos Aires’s Chinatown in 2014. It then examines the different social actors involved in the celebration, with special emphasis on the political uses and forms of symbolic appropriation of the holiday. Finally, the article reflects on issues of transnationalization, identity and religious imagination related to this phenomenon.

Keywords : Vesak; Buddhism; Identity; Ethnicity; Transnationalization.

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