Spirituality, Healthcare and Social Movements in East Asia: A Transnational Perspective

We are pleased to announce the lineup of the 1st EANASE International Conference, “Spirituality, Healthcare and Social Movements in East Asia: A Transnational Perspective,” to be held every Saturday of November 2021, at 9pm (Tokyo time).

This conference aims to offer such a chance by inviting academic contributions to reflect on the intertwined relationship between spirituality, healthcare and social movements in East Asia from a trans-national/local/cultural perspective. As a time of unprecedented changes and accelerated global interactions, our focus lies on the period between the nineteenth to the twentieth-first centuries.

We understand that East Asia is not a monolithic or readily-identifiable entity, but rather a historical construction that has been constantly reshaped and re-invoked for multiple reasons and by a number of actors, many of whom have come from outside the political frontiers of China, Japan and Korea.

Moreover, whereas an ‘East Asian-centred’ approach might be initially helpful to counterbalance ‘Euro-american-centred’ perspectives still prevalent in academic settings, East Asia – however defined – has flourished in a changing, closely interconnected world.

The emergence of new religious movements like Theosophy, Falungong and Taireido, or the popularisation of acupuncture, reiki and hypnosis worldwide, for instance, challenge reductionist binary views of East/West, tradition/modernity, science/religion.

Likewise, the recent dissemination of New Age practices across East Asia or the ongoing study of Buddhist meditation by American and European psychiatrists seem to reflect broader concerns that, for the past two centuries or so, have ignored national and cultural borders – and whose wider social implications are more visible than ever.

If you have any interests in our conference, please register here: https://bit.ly/eanase2021

For more details, please visit https://eanase.com/conference-schedule/.