Postsecular Turn and Digital Storytelling of Buddhist Identity

Abstract

The article analyzes the results of applied sociological research on post-secular identity narratives as presented in the digital storytelling of representative cases: the TV program “Buddhist Wednesday” (TV company Tivikom) and the TV program “Buddhist Path” (TV channel Tuva 24). The methodological framework for the study combines the author’s adaptation of K. Eder’s concepts of “identity narratives” with N. Couldry’s concept of digital storytelling. The principal methods of the applied research include case study, qualitative content analysis of video and audio texts from digital storytelling, and narrative interviews. The selected cases promote identity narratives in the secular public sphere that appeal to the spiritual, moral, and ideological values of the Buryat and Tuvan peoples as Buddhist ethno-national communities within the Russian Federation. The analysis of the narratives of “Buddhist Wednesday” and “Buddhist Path” provided direct engagement with the multiple realities of the cultural codes and identities of Russian traditional Buddhism. Each program presents narratives from corresponding communities of interpretation. “Buddhist Wednesday” promotes the identity narratives of Buryat professional clergy, teachers of the Buddhist University, and abbots of large datsans (monasteries) that are part of the Buddhist Traditional Sangha of Russia (BTSR). In these media representations, the identity narrative is constructed through the interweaving of ethno-national, Buddhist, and civic components. The Buryat Buddhist tradition and land are interpreted as the “cradle of Russian Buddhism”, with its own sacred geography, shrines, and autocephalous spiritual head, who have historically defended the Russian Fatherland. The program “The Buddhist Path” brings into the public sphere identity narratives of a hybrid community of interpretation, comprising Tuvan Buddhist clergy, lay practitioners, and academic scholars. “Buddhist Path” introduces a digital narrative into the secular public sphere in which identity assembly is presented as interweavings of signifiers of the Buddhist tradition transmitted in the Tuvan language, generations of Buddhist clergy who have made significant contributions to the formation of Tuvan statehood and its intelligentsia, as well as to the preservation of traditional spiritual and moral values of Russian society and the Tuvan ethno-national community as a unit within it.

Acknowledgments. This article was prepared with the financial support of the Russian Science Foundation, grant no. 24-48-03022 “Traditional Buddhism, Postsecularity and Contemporary Socio-Political Processes in Russia and Mongolia”. Available at: https://rscf.ru/project/24-48-03022/.