Defining a true buddhist : Meditation and knowledge formation in Burma

This article considers Fredrik Barth's call to reconceptualize how anthropologists approach the study of complex societies through a study of how knowledge is differentially embodied by individuals within a population and how these bodies of knowledge are produced and sustained. Burma's lay meditation movement serves as a case study for how knowledge communities emerge. The focus is on how people who acquire meditation-derived knowledge, as contrasted with cosmological and traditional forms of Buddhist knowledge, practice, and identity, comprise a community of knowers. This membership is based on individual experiences in meditation and does not conform to membership in prior social and religious categories. The case provides an example of how knowledge is constituted, justified, and shared, within an emergent community.