Number ten on the list of “Yunnan’s Eighteen Oddities” (Yunnan shiba guai) – customs seen as unique to the province – reads “monks can have romantic relationships” (heshang keyi tan lian’ai). This refers to monasticism among Yunnan’s Tai Lue people, in which young men can engage in behaviours that other monastic traditions would censure. In Worldly Engagements, Roger Casas argues that Tai Lue monasticism centres not around renunciation but the formation of masculine subjects as “morally tempered male householder[s],” a phrase adopted from Charles Keyes’s 1986 essay on monastic gender in modern Thailand (p. 6). As in Thailand, living as a Tai Lue novice or monk is understood as a temporary phase after which young men expect to return to lay life, find employment and start a family of their own. Tai Lue monastics are supposed to follow a higher level of discipline than their lay counterparts, but they also face pressure to engage in what Casas calls “competitive masculinity” by continuing to socialize with their nonmonastic peers both inside and outside the temple.
In the PRC, the Tai Lue are designated as members of the transnational Dai ethnic group. Casas perceptively notes how configurations of Tai Lue masculinity respond to stereotypes of the Tai Lue as less developed than the majority Han, though Buddhism is seen as a civilizing influence. Tai Lue expectations of machismo still hold sway, even for ordained men, but adhering to these standards risks confirming negative ethnic stereotypes. Casas explores how Tai Lue men navigate issues related to monasticism and masculinity in a richly textured ethnography that takes readers through the process of ordaining, living as a novice or monk in various kinds of temples (rural, urban, international), and finally returning to lay life.
As Casas explains in the introduction, he adopted the method of participant observation and lived in several of the temples whose residents are his primary interlocutors. Though Casas acknowledges that some of his Tai Lue interlocutors were worried about the book painting their communities in a negative light, he does not substantively address the ethical implications of highlighting how Tai Lue monasticism diverges from doctrinal ideals or reflect on his own positionality (p. 16). Given the sensitivity of this material, including discussions of methamphetamine use, further reflection on these issues would help readers better understand Casas’s relationships with his interlocutors and how his identity as a foreign male scholar informed these relationships.
Chapters one and two follow a boy’s ordination as a novice and his life with other monastics in the village temple. Novices and monks maintain close relationships with their families and lay peers, including going out with friends at night to eat dinner, drink alcohol and visit KTV bars. Chapter three departs from the book’s overall structure to consider gendered consumption practices among the Tai Lue, especially for monastics. Though Buddhist doctrine forbids intoxicants even for lay people, drinking beer or rice liquor is a critical part of commensality for Tai Lue men, including monks (pp. 68–69).
Chapter four travels from the village to Sipsong Panna’s capital of Jinghong to examine young monastics’ lives in urban temple schools. The young monastics’ formal schooling is less important than their extracurricular socializing, including basketball along with excursions to restaurants or KTV bars. While fellow villagers might overlook monastics’ minor transgressions, in urban settings with large Han populations the Tai Lue novices and monks represent their entire ethnic group, and thus they face greater pressure to avoid scandals (p. 79). Some Tai Lue monastics travel farther than Jinghong to study in Kunming, in eastern China, or in centres of Theravada learning in Thailand or Sri Lanka, which is the focus of chapter five. These experiences are opportunities for Tai Lue monks to develop new language skills and social networks, but they also pose challenges because expectations for monastic behaviour are stricter outside Sipsong Panna.
Chapter six explores how Tai Lue monks and novices communicate and form relationships with women in anticipation of eventually returning to lay life and getting married. Chapter seven follows monastics as they disrobe, get married, and start families. In the conclusion, Casas notes how Tai Lue monasticism is surviving despite decreasing ordinations due to government restrictions on child ordination and perceptions that ordination no longer confers the benefits or prestige it once did.
The connections that the book makes between Tai Lue monasticism and masculinity are compelling, especially the analysis that draws on Charles Keyes’s observations about temporary ordination turning “raw” boys into “ripe” men, and considerations of how Tai Lue men now face pressure to develop the Han “boss” (laoban) masculinity tied to entrepreneurial success (pp. 11, 163). However, there are missed opportunities to theorize masculinity with more nuance in relation to recent scholarship, and in relation to ethnicity religion, and social class. For example, the book would benefit from engaging with works such as Ward Keeler’s The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017).
Worldly Engagements is most effective in its arguments about the vernacular monasticism of contemporary Tai Lue society, which highlight the continuities between lay and monastic life rather than the discontinuities. Casas’s focus on lived Buddhism, rather than its purely textual or doctrinal forms, also aligns with increasing scholarly interest in decentring elite perspectives in favour of vernacular perspectives and practices.
This book will be of interest to readers seeking to learn more about Tai Lue society and culture in contemporary China, anthropologists of China and South-East Asia, scholars of Buddhism in China and South-East Asia, and scholars who work on religion, ethnicity and gender in these regions. Casas’s descriptive writing style makes this book accessible to advanced undergraduates as well as graduate students and scholars. As the culmination of years of ethnographic research, Worldly Engagements offers valuable insights into Tai Lue culture in the rapidly changing context of 21st-century China.
