CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Kitamura, Mako |
|---|---|
| Title | Reimagining the 'Missionary': Gender, Purpose, and Faith-driven Migration in Transnational Japanese Buddhist Movements |
| Summary | This thesis challenges the conventional, often Christian-centric and male-oriented notion of the “missionary,” arguing that it inadequately captures the complexity of contemporary faith-driven migration. Focusing on the global Buddhist movement Soka Gakkai, the study reconceptualizes “mission” as deeply entangled with individuals’ life purpose and everyday practice. Based on seven months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with thirteen members in Austria and Poland, the research explores how migration emerges from “contingent mobilities” and is later reframed through faith, not as purely agentive, but as shaped by being “acted upon” (Mittermaier, 2012). It also highlights the gendered dynamics of mission, showing how women’s agency is cultivated through disciplined self-formation (Mahmood, 2005) despite contradictory gender discourses within Soka Gakkai. By examining the interplay of gender, mission, and contingency, this thesis broadens sociological and anthropological understandings of religious migration, illustrating how faith is lived and reimagined in transnational contexts. |
| Supervisor | Berg, Anna; Zentai, Violetta |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/kitamura_mako.pdf |
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