Young Buddhists and the Cosmopolitan Irony of Belonging in Multicultural Australia

ABSTRACT

While existing research shows low levels of negative sentiment towards Buddhists in Australia, little is known about their lived experiences of belonging, and what they do to facilitate social cohesion. This article addresses this gap by exploring experiences of belonging and intercultural engagement among twenty-two young adult Buddhists from a range of backgrounds living in Australia. It finds that while multiculturalism and positive portrayals of Buddhism facilitated the belonging of these young Buddhists, anti-religious sentiment and processes of racialisation contributed to experiences of exclusion. The article contends that these contradictory forces create an ambiguous context for the negotiation of religious belonging and intercultural engagement, which study participants addressed through processes of contextualisation, accommodation and reflexive community-building. It further suggests that Bryan Turner’s concept of cosmopolitan irony provides a useful lens through which to unpack these complexities.

KEYWORDS:

• Young Buddhists
• religious belonging
• intercultural engagement
• multiculturalism
• social cohesion
• cosmopolitan irony

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Kim Lam is an Associate Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation. She is also a Steering Committee Member for the American Academy of Religion Buddhism in the West Unit. Her work focuses on the complexities of Buddhist youth identity negotiation, and how transnational mobilities and changing patterns of cultural diversity shape contemporary manifestations of Buddhism.

ORCID

Kim Lam http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6407-9238

Notes

1 This paper adopts the definition of social cohesion used by the Australian Human Rights Commission (n.d.), which is the same as the OECD definition. Accordingly, ‘A cohesive society works towards the well-being of all its members, fights exclusion and marginalisation, creates a sense of belonging, promotes trust, and offers its members the opportunity of upward mobility’. It also includes, as Fonsec et al. (2019: 247) highlight, a recognition of the diversity of values within a community, the qualities required of individuals to co-exist with diverse others, and the interdependencies between the individual, community and institutions.

2 Data collected using the Australian Bureau of Statistics Table Builder, which also recorded birthplaces beyond the country level (e.g. South America, nfd).

3 I use the term ‘minoritised’ here in the same way Harris (2013: 16) does in her study of everyday multiculturalism amongst young Australians – as a way to capture the exclusionary processes experienced by particular groups without prescribing an ‘outsider’ status.

4 Similar findings regarding White Muslim converts in Australia ‘passing’ as White have been described by Alam (2019).