Natural Resources and Burmese Religions

Speaker: Alexandra Kaloyanides (Religious Studies, UNC Charlotte)
Location: Carpenter Conference Room (249), Rubenstein Library, Duke West Campus

About the talk:
This presentation explores how Myanmar’s natural resources have shaped its religious life, and how its religious life has shaped the Southeast Asian country’s extractive industries. Myanmar’s world-famous jade, rubies, teak, gold, and silver have long enriched its kingdoms. These kingdoms used these resources to patronize powerful Buddhist institutions.

This presentation explores how distinctive Buddhist practices and doctrines arose from this history of exploiting the land and negotiating with the humans, animals, and spirits who live there. This presentation focuses on artifacts from Burma’s Konbaung period (1752–1885 CE), to understand how Burmese resource extraction naturalized Buddhist sovereignty.

About the speaker:
Alexandra Kaloyanides is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte and the author of Baptizing Burma: Religious Change in the Last Buddhist Kingdom (Columbia University Press, 2023)

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