Transnational connections and religious development in the Jain Diaspora through an exploration of the e-diaspora

Jainism is an Indian religion, established in the sixth century BCE. From the mid-19th century onwards, a shift has been noted from the ascetic ideal of world-renunciation to an ideology of world-transformation, mostly fueled by British educated Jains and from within the Jain diaspora community. The growing degree of transnational connectedness through computer-mediated communication makes the analysis of e-diasporas an important part of any research on contemporary diasporic phenomena. This paper will investigate the different developmental trajectories of Jainism in diaspora that can be discerned in the Jain e-diaspora. A corpus of some 300 interconnected Jainism-related websites and web-based resources (including facebook pages and discussion groups), forms the basis for the visualization of the Jain e-diaspora used in this paper. From the topological characteristics of this network graph we can draw some preliminary conclusions, based on the formation of clusters (based on common location, common sect adherence, or other common factors), the degree of interconnectedness, and the connection with websites based in India and with other South Asian diasporas such as the Hindu e-diaspora. The paper will then look into the content of the main sites in the corpus. Questions that will be addressed at this stage include: What is the target audience? What sectarian or philosophical view is propagated? What are the main topics of discussion? Is the website, and by extent the network, representational or participatory? This analysis of the Jain e-diaspora yields valuable insights into the structure of the Jain diaspora, and into the developmental trajectories of this religion in the context of the diaspora. Additionally, this paper will address the limitations of web-based research, such as questions of representativeness, access, and gender and generational patterns of ICT use. In doing so, it will propose a research agenda for further ethnographic inquiry.

ISBN:9781848883567

Jaar van publicatie:2015

Toegankelijkheid:Closed