Based on extensive research in Sri Lanka and interviews with Theravada and Tibetan nuns from around the world, Salgado's groundbreaking study urges a rethinking of female renunciation. How are scholarly accounts complicit in reinscribing imperialist stories about the subjectivity of Buddhist women? How do key Buddhist "concepts" such as dukkha, samsara, and sila ground female renunciant practice?

Salgado's provocative analysis questions the secular notion of the higher ordination of nuns as a political movement for freedom against patriarchal norms. Arguing that the lives of nuns defy translation into a politics of global sisterhood equal before law, she calls for more-nuanced readings of nuns' everyday renunciant practices.

Buddhist Nuns and Gendered Practice: In Search of the Female Renunciant, Nirmala S. Salgado, Oxford University Press, Paperback, 319 pages, $35.00

Nirmala S. Salgado (MA, SOAS, University of London; PhD, Northwestern University) has published widely on Buddhist nuns. She teaches religion to undergraduates at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I Narration
1 Decolonizing Female Renunciation
2 Institutional Discourse and Everyday Practice
3 Buddhism, Power, and Practice
Part II Identity
4 Invisible Nuns
5 Subjects of Renunciation
6 Becoming Bhikkhunis, Becoming Theravada
Part III Empowerment
7 Renunciation and ''Empowerment''
8 Global Empowerment and the Renunciant Everyday
Notes
Works Cited
Index