The Global in Town: Buddhist and Catholic foundations in Urban Hong Kong

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Lunch Lecture by Mariske Westendorp (Macquarie University, Sydney).

Since the late 1960s, the ‘identity of Hong Kong’ has been debated by scholars, writers and Hongkongers alike. In my lecture, I will explore this much debated ‘identity of Hong Kong’ through the religious experiences of Theravāda Buddhist and Catholic residents of Hong Kong. Despite Catholicism and Theravāda Buddhism being different religious systems, I compare followers of these two systems because they evince illuminating parallels vis-à-vis how they are perceived by their practitioners as representing the ‘true foundations’ of their systems in contemporary times marked by uncertainty. I will show this by providing ethnographic accounts of the non-normative religious practices and beliefs of four of my informants. Their search for foundations invites specific meaning in the context of Hong Kong, which may be characterized as lacking a primary national identification and having an ever-changing built environment. Moreover, the individual cases I will present are interesting when viewed in light of today’s global world in which boundaries have become almost obsolete and are transcended in everyday practice (by travelling and using products from other regions of the world to being connected via different (social) media), and in which national identifications (long held to be the primary identifications) have become overshadowed by others.

The speaker
Mariske Westendorp is an anthropologist, who specializes in the anthropology of (urban) religion. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies, Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology and Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Religion Studies at the Radboud University, Nijmegen (The Netherlands). She is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology, Macquarie University, Sydney (Australia). The focus of her current research is on the intricate relationships between Hong Kong Christian and Buddhist religious institutions, practices and ideas on the one hand, and urban Hong Kong’s political and social urban processes on the other. Other research interests include urban anthropology, and the role of religion in development work and projects.

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About IIAS Lunch Lectures

Every month, an IIAS researcher or visiting scholar will present his or her work-in-progress in an informal setting to colleagues and other interested attendees. IIAS organises these lunch lectures to give the research community the opportunity to freely discuss ongoing research and exchange thoughts and ideas.