Research summary

  • Fear is fundamental to human experience.
  • It tends to be analysed as a negative and disempowering emotion, but it can also create solidarity and be a potent force for change.
  • This project will investigate the productive role of fear in contemporary religious belonging through studies of two distinct minority Buddhist communities in the UK and Japan.
  • This project is funded by a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant.
Woman in white shirt clasping hands and looking up with a pained, pleading expression in the dark.

Project overview

This project aims to understand the role that fear plays in religious belonging and the maintenance and renewal of religious communities.

Fear is recognised as fundamental to human experience. In social sciences and humanities research, fear tends to be analysed as a negative and disempowering emotion and as a powerful political tool.

Fear can create collective ‘others’ and delineate boundaries between ‘minorities’ and ‘majorities’ and it can fuel culturally motivated violence. But it can also be a productive force, creating solidarity, enhancing group cohesion and generating change.

Fear and Belonging in Minority Buddhist Communities, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, investigates the productive role of fear in religious belonging and ongoing community formation, particularly in contexts where a community is minoritised.

The project

Drawing on the life stories of members of two minority Buddhist communities in the UK and Japan, the project analyses how emotions shape people’s negotiation, performance and experience of religious belonging, and the implications of this for the maintenance and renewal of religious communities.

Studying emotions, particularly ‘negative’ or difficult emotions like fear is challenging. We are therefore combining standard interview-based life story research with other narrative and visual methods to experiment with ways of communicating understandings and experiences of fear.

This includes working with an artist and the arts organisation FutureEverything to produce an online digital artwork.

We will present and publish the research findings in a range of formats, including publications aimed at different audiences. We are also working with an artist, Sian Fan, who will produce an online digital artwork.

A Buddhist monk chanting in a temple hall, reading from the Japanese sutra titled Kingyō Seiten.

Meet the team

The project includes academics, a UK-based arts organisation, and an artist.