BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.3.5//EN TZID:America/Toronto X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/Toronto BEGIN:VEVENT UID:153@buddhiststudies.utoronto.ca DTSTART;TZID=America/Toronto:20221201T100000 DTEND;TZID=America/Toronto:20221201T113000 DTSTAMP:20221110T202659Z URL:https://buddhiststudies.utoronto.ca/events/saskia-abrahms-kavunenko-po lyester-blessings/ SUMMARY:Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko\, Polyester Blessings: The Persistent Inca rnation of Purity in Contemporary Mongolia DESCRIPTION:POSTPONED until Spring 2023 - new date TBD\n\n\n\nPlease join u s for the next presentation in our second series in this important convers ation Buddhism and Posthumanism: Questioning the Place of Humans in Multis pecies Environments\, featuring researchers\, activists\, and Buddhist stu dies scholars focused on reconsidering the place of humans in an interconn ected world.\nAbstract: In the presocialist period (before 1921) in Mongol ia there were very few prayer scarves in use. Prayer scarves were made fro m silk\, and they were expensive to purchase. Where ritual offerings were enduring\, such as the rocks placed upon the sacred rock cairns that stand atop Mongolia’s mountain passes\, they discoursed with invisible beings who would protect and assist in the procurement of good fortune for those who passed. In the contemporary period\, religious items are often mass p roduced and are cheap and easy to purchase. These items are now made from materials that cannot reintegrate into ecological systems. Frequently util ised in Buddhist and other rituals\, prayer scarves have proliferated in q uantity. At once highly valued and yet easily replaced\, the sacredness of these scarves makes their single-use yet enduring qualities deeply ambigu ous. Unlike the sacred rocks whose stability marks the sanctity of the lan dscape\, store-bought imperishable prayer scarves take on a new kind of ma teriality that lingers problematically. By looking at the multiplication o f polyester prayer scarves in Mongolian rituals\, this talk will examine t he intersections between Buddhism\, capitalism and environmentalism in Inn er Asia. It will explore how certain spatial and temporal aspects of globa l capitalism are being betrayed by the enduring materiality of plastics\, even in religious rituals. Plastics\, I argue\, as an unintended consequen ce of their actuality\, can draw our attention to what it means to exist w ithin capitalism.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBio: Dr Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko is an anthropologist and the author of Enlightenment and the Gasping City. Her work is situated at intersections between environmental changes and cultur al praxis\, in multi-scalar and trans-species contexts. She has carried ou t extensive research on Buddhism and other religious traditions in Mongoli a\, Australia and India\, particularly as they relate to uncertainty\, pol lution\, and the more-than-human world. She is currently a Research Fellow within the Center for Contemporary Buddhist Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Her current research project "Impermanent – Imperishable: Pl astics and Praxis among Buddhists in Oceania" looks at how Buddhists in Oc eania relate to radical permeability and toxicity amidst the changing ecos ystems on the planet. Dr Abrahms-Kavunenko has carried out research projec ts at The University of Edinburgh\, The University of Erfurt\, New York Un iversity Shanghai and The Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Sh e is the co-founder of Cenote a travelling multi-disciplinary residency pr ogram.\n\n LOCATION:Online\, Online only\, Toronto\, Canada X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Online only\, Toronto\, Can ada;X-APPLE-RADIUS=100;X-TITLE=Online:geo:0,0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Toronto X-LIC-LOCATION:America/Toronto BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20221106T010000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR