------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (April 2010)

Michael J. Walsh, _Sacred Economies: Buddhist Monasticism and
Territoriality in Medieval China_. New York: Columbia University
Press, 2010. xiv + 237 pp. $50 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-231-14832-0.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Robert D. Tollison, Department of Economics,
Clemson University.


_Sacred Economies_ is by Michael J. Walsh, an associate professor of
Religion and Asian Studies at Vassar College. The book can be
characterized as a case study of a long standing Buddhist monastery in
southeast China called Tiantong.  (Other monasteries and their land
holdings are brought into the discussion, but Tiantong is the focus.)
The central question that Walsh addresses is how did these spiritual
centers took hold, gained ground, and mostly survived in medieval
China. His findings are threefold. The occupants of the monasteries
were devout Buddhists, who created an esteemed and valued religious
product.  (Walsh refers to this process as creating “spaces” in which
to pursue a meaningful existence.) The leaders of the monasteries
simultaneously pursued an economic agenda, which entailed the
production and sale of physical goods and services (grain mills, oil
presses, silk, medicines, and so on), money lending, and the exchange
of religious services (prayers, better karma, salvation, long life,
happiness, liberation, and so on) for the economic support of the
monastery. The form of the latter transactions was generally land
donations for certain religious services. (Walsh refers to these
services as “merit.”) Basically, then, medieval Buddhism had a
commercial side which was used to further its religious activities.
Walsh also analyzes the nature of the religious “product” provided by
the monasteries in exchange for donations of land. That is, what were
individuals buying in these cases (more below)?

There are many attractive aspects of _Sacred Economies_. Perhaps the
main attraction is the approach of the author, who more or less
immersed himself in his subject. By this I mean that he visited the
Tiantong monastery and its surrounding property (in an earlier
period). This is what might be termed “Marco Polo” economics, and the
personal familiarity of the author with his project rings true
throughout the book.  Other attractive features of the book include
the emphasis on survival and organizational behavior. In a sense
_Sacred Economies_ can be seen as a case study in organizational
economics.

There are also many parallels in Walsh’s account of the medieval
Buddhist monasteries with the development of the medieval Catholic
Church in Western Europe at approximately the same time. Both
organizations had to coexist with and even co-opt civil authorities,
both had to finance the operations of their churches and related
activities, both were dominant landowners, both linked their religious
products to revenue streams (“merit” and “purgatory”), and so on in
many other ways.

The book is also attractive in that it represents an effort to analyze
the activities of an early religion from an (mostly) economic
perspective. This is a growing area of inquiry, and Walsh’s book fits
within this approach, although he seems unaware of this work.

That said Walsh’s use of economics is problematical. For reasons that
escape me, he chooses to apply Marx’s labor theory of value (see
especially Chapter 1) to discuss the nature of the exchange
relationship between the monastery and the land donor. This makes for
tortuous reading and reasoning, and it adds nothing of value to the
analysis. What we end up with is some wooly concept of this exchange
process that appears intended to elevate the purity of the motives of
the participants to a higher plane rather than simply calling it
capitalism, self-interest, positive-sum trade, or whatever. Indeed,
the labor theory of value has no explanatory power at all, especially
in the case of unimproved mountainous land (the main type of land
accumulated by monasteries).

What does the Marxian (il)logic contribute to the analysis? Why not
analyze exchange for what it was? Both parties found it in their self
interest to exchange “merit” for land. The monastery gained a revenue
stream with which to generate more “merit,” and the land donor
received various religious services. The monastery also increased its
political clout as its economic base grew larger. Real economics and
real politics were in play here. There is no need to try to whitewash
the process with Marxian rhetoric.

The medieval Buddhist monasteries were economic as well as religious
organizations. Both types of output were valuable in the marketplace.
The parallel to the medieval Catholic Church is again clear. The fact
that a good is spiritual does not mean that it has no economic value
or that the laws of supply and demand do not apply to it. The receipt
of land in exchange for a more favored place in the hereafter is a
transaction that routinely took place in Western Europe in, say, 1200.
Standard economic analysis has been used to explain this type of
transaction, and such analysis can be used in the case of the early
Buddhists. Why muddy the water with the labor theory of value?

A related point is that the book introduces a large amount of Marxian
jargon, which at times confuses things. For example, “Here Marx is
dealing explicitly with the product of the capitalist whose aim is to
produce surplus-value. I am not calling the Buddhist monks in China
capitalists; I am saying that with them, as with any institutionalized
group, exchange was the rule, both use-value and surplus value were
present, and economics worked hand in hand with salvation” (p. 20).
The last statement is fine (hand in hand); those leading up to it are
either contradictory (the monks were not capitalists) or inexplicable.
At a minimum such language makes the book hard to read in places.

I do not want to overdo these critical points. I think that Walsh is
correct that religious exchange processes are complex, and involve
transactions that economists have rarely studied. Maybe we need some
new descriptors. At the same time we need a common language in which
to communicate so as not to miss real contributions that are obscured
by the way in which they are presented.

The book is a good read. It has photographs of the Tiantong monastery
and other illustrations, several appendices detailing land holdings by
various monasteries and a floor plan of Tiantong, a glossary in both
English and Chinese, copious footnotes, and a valuable bibliography.

In all, I came away from reading _Sacred Economies_ with more
questions than answers, and this is a compliment to the author.


Robert D. Tollison is the J. Wilson Newman Professor of Economics at
Clemson University. He has published numerous books and papers in
various areas of economics, and is currently working on a study of the
determinants of secularism. Email: [log in to unmask]

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