The vow of stability: An ethnography of monastic life

By Richard D G Irvine

Book Overview

Though monastic life is often imagined to be a flight from the world, Benedictine monks take on the intense social commitment of life in close community. Drawing on long-term anthropological fieldwork in a Catholic English Benedictine monastery, The vow of stability: An ethnography of monastic life traces the monks' daily lives as they confront the eternal in the fabric of the everyday.

Bringing into focus the vow of stability - a lifelong commitment to the monastery and its community - this ethnography explores the rhythms and architecture that sustain shared life in a world of movement and fleeting interaction. At the same time, it analyses those social processes that damage and undermine the monastic institution and those in contact with it - in particular the harm caused by sexual abuse.

Engaging with the everyday dynamics of life in close community while paying close attention to the time-depth of monastic history, this is a study of how religious institutions endure and change through generations.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1917341083
• ISBN13: 9781917341080
• Release Date: May 2025
• Publisher: Scottish Universities Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"