Self-work and social change: disindividualised participation amongst young Australian Buddhist practitioners

ABSTRACT

Recent work on youth participation has mobilised a ‘DIY’ or ‘individualised’ framework to explain the nature of contemporary participation, particularly amongst minoritised religious youth. This paper examines this conceptual framework in light of concurrent claims that contemporary participation can be better conceptualised using a ‘doing it with others’ (DIWO) approach, which emphasises the collaborative nature of participation. In light of these claims, I analyse the participation experiences of 22 young adult Buddhist practitioners who are located within a neo-liberal Australian context, yet simultaneously have access to religious teachings and practices which challenge distinct notions of selfhood. This paper shows that both ‘DIY’ and ‘DIWO’ conceptions of participation find expression in the participation experiences of participants from the study, and that both DIY and DIWO approaches can additionally be seen as mutually reinforcing rather than distinctly contrasting. I propose a new concept of ‘disindividualisation’, suggesting that Maffesoli's concept of ‘disindividuation’ and Elias's work linking psychological development and social change should be considered in conjunction with an individualised or DIY perspective on youth participation to denote this kind of participatory work.

KEYWORDS:

• Young Buddhists
• DIY citizenship
• youth participation
• civic engagement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

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

Notes

1 For the purposes of this paper, civic participation is considered to be a range of activities which individuals engage in to address areas of public concern, and improve the well-being of their communities and society at large (Zaff et al. 2011, 1208), while political participation refers to participation in formal and informal political processes such as voting, protesting and campaigning (Fisher 2012, 120). In this article, I refer to both separately, as well as together under the umbrella term of ‘participation’.

2 Although it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss here, it would be useful in future to consider how class and privilege affect participation amongst young Buddhist practitioners – Hopkins et al. (2015) and Page and Yip (2017), for example, have discussed how particular classed locations enable volunteering and Buddhist identity respectively to be experienced from a relatively privileged vantage point, as expressed by Faye.

3 An Australian progressive activist group which aims to involve everyday Australians in political action and keep governments accountable.