Episodic ethnicity: a case study of a Japanese Buddhist temple

Abstract

ABSTRACTA prominent thread of current scholarship suggests that ethnicity becomes detached from religion in immigrant religious organisations over time. According to scholars, the decoupling occurs in three associated ways: structurally assimilating to mirror Christian churches, returning to ‘theological’ roots, and becoming a multi-ethnic congregation. Based on historical archival research and 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork at a Japanese-Buddhist temple, this article shows how the nexus between religion and ethnicity is remarkably durable. Ethnicity may never fully disappear but can be episodic: it crystallises and becomes a grouping mechanism during important events and can dissipate during mundane everyday events. This article demonstrates how ethnicity fluctuates across time and place and is not something that simply dissipates in the process of immigrant assimilation. Implications include being more critical in studying ethnicity across various subfields, including the sociology of religion and immigration, by asking what a constructivist approach to studying ethnicity entails.