Daniel B. Stevenson

I have been interested for some time in the sites and economies of practice that mediated religious life in Middle Period China (10th-14th centuries), particularly as they applied to persons who identified themselves (or others) as “Buddhist.” This interest arises from the conviction that religious subjects and their traditions are not static and monolithically constituted entities, but disparate works in progress, the estimations of which are ceaselessly negotiated in relation to a diversity of shifting idioms, obligations, and historical contingencies. To me the key question becomes one of processes and agencies of cultural practice, and that question in turn implies networks, that is to say, the sites and channels through which cultural data move, locate, and come to be collectively embodied.